It pains me to say that most of us are missing the point when it comes to President Trump’s rambling election fraud speech. Which is exactly what he wants.
Within minutes of its airing Thursday night, the internet and pundits were abuzz debating whether voting machines were secure and whether the federal government has a right, or even a duty, to oversee voter rolls (it has neither). Long posts were written condemning voter identification efforts, and more posts written attacking those condemnations.
This, friends, is exactly what the speech was meant to accomplish — myopic bickering.
To be specific, myopic bickering about the past, as a dark future creeps ever closer — like, say, Nov. 3.
The question we should be asking now isn’t whether there is massive fraud in U.S. elections — even the conservative Heritage Foundation has documented only 71 cases of such fraud in California in more than 25 years.
The question is will we allow Trump to sow just enough doubt in the minds of average Americans that what comes next seems inevitable and even necessary?
Trump falsely claimed that he was revealing “an election system so broken and so vulnerable that no one can possibly defend it.”
“This cannot be allowed to continue,” he said.
Those are ominous words, ones we should take seriously.
“This is a very sad thing to be able to say about the president of the United States, but I think it’s quite clear,” said Mindy Romero, director of the Center for Inclusive Democracy, a nonpartisan research facility. “This is about a certain set of political goals, and using this misinformation to achieve those political goals.”
Trump knows that the midterms present a threat to his power and he, and those around him, have been working for years to create a strategy to invalidate our election results just in case they don’t fall in his direction. Whether the overall outcome favors Democrats or Republicans in the midterms, the wins and losses are going to be close, giving him the chance to attack Democratic wins.
On Jan. 6, 2021, Trump learned from the unlikely teacher Mike Pence the difficult lesson that plans work only when people are in place to implement them. As vice president, Pence, you may recall, refused to stop the election certification process that legally, rightfully, fairly allowed Joe Biden to take office.
Since then, Trump has purged dissenters from top roles, instead putting in flat-out sycophants, election deniers and conspiracy theorists — more than one of whom has been associated with the racist Great Replacement theory that Democrats are secretly helping Black and brown people to illegally cross the border in exchange for these folks illegally voting for Democrats, thereby replacing the “true” America of conservative white people.
So the apparatchiks are in place, Soviet-style. There will be no Penceian savior on the inside this time around.
More than one election expert I have spoken to in recent months fear that because there is no one left on the inside to object, we could see post-election turmoil like this: Republicans lose one or both houses of Congress. Trump calls fraud. The Department of Justice or outside lawyers, or both, sue to overturn results. Congress, the Republican one still in place, refuses to seat newly elected Democrats until the court cases are resolved.
A constitutional crisis is at hand. Democrats say they were elected. Republicans won’t let them serve. No one is clear who is in Congress and who isn’t. In effect, the body is frozen and it’s legitimacy undermined. Into that vacuum, Trump pushes his already great power even further.
As movie-terrible as that sounds, that internal structure is in place and this scenario is far less impossible or even improbable than we could hope.
“What we’re talking about is just misinformation and what could be used as a justification for potentially interfering with seating of elected officials,” Romero said. “Particularly Congress.”
Now, with the internal stuff squared away, Trump’s focus is neutralizing outside dissent. That’s you and me, and that’s what this speech was about. Sowing doubt, tossing seeds of chaos into the soil to see what grows. Letting us know it’s coming, so we as Americans have time to bicker, argue, and tear away at our trust in elections so that by the time we vote, we expect the worst to happen.
“Unfortunately, there are some members of the public that are going to believe what they’re being told and when they hear election results, question it,” said Chad Dunn, legal director of the UCLA Voting Rights Project. “This kind of communication misleads Americans and does a disservice to our democracy.”
Dunn told me he’s “as worried as I’ve been in my life” about the next election.
Trump’s far right is wasting no time on this effort. After Trump’s speech, the Department of Homeland Security sent out a letter to California and three other states claiming California has more than 190,000 non-citizens registered to vote, and demanding the state “confirm their intentions to collaborate with DHS in order to ensure free, fair, and honest elections.”
This is a misleading, erroneous count and does not include the obvious fact that there is no evidence that undocumented people actually voted in any California election in any noticeable numbers.
But it creates that chaos and doubt. California isn’t going to share its voter rolls willingly with the federal government because elections — according to the Constitution — are state affairs. And there is no evidence that the federal government has a better way of vetting citizenship than California does. So it becomes one more point of bickering.
But what Dunn, Romero and other honest elections experts want Americans to know is that our elections are free and fair and all is not lost. Far from it.
The answer to the propaganda and lies is to remain aware of it, remain above it. Spread truth and refute falsehoods.
Dunn said that Americans should demand that any voter fraud be taken to the courts — where it belongs, and where we can determine the validity of the evidence.
“If you’re concerned about this, if you’re inclined to believe the president, demand proof, demand resolution in court at trial with the the showing of evidence,” he said. “And reserve judgment until you see that.”
Romero has her own advice — never underestimate the power of the vote.
“Show up and to participate,” she said. “Regardless of how [you’re] going to vote — Democrat, Republican, otherwise — just to show up and participate.”
Because in the end, we only lose democracy if we willingly let it go.