Worry, Don't Panic, Over Trump's Efforts to Subvert the Elections
America's system is quite foolproof but he can still try to delegitimize it
Donald Trump and his administration are waging an unprecedented, multi-pronged attack on this year’s midterm congressional elections. Even compared to his attempts to overturn the 2020 presidential election, the scope and severity of this assault is unprecedented.
Despite all this, most—if not all—of these lines of attack will fail. They are built on magical thinking, pursued by people who lack basic understanding of how these things work. Some of these threats are more serious and pressing. But there can be a temptation to doomerism that we should reject.
Trump is dangerous, but he is not omnipotent.
It’s essential to have a clear-eyed view of the system’s weak points—but also the relatively strong bulwarks, so as not to give more credence to Trump’s absurdities than they deserve. With that in mind, let’s consider the likely scenarios: not just what he will try, but also how and why he will fail.
1. Cancel the Elections
The most straightforward and extreme threat would be outright trying to cancel the midterms, a possibility Trump has “jokingly“ floated.
The federal government does not run elections in the United States; that task is handled by state and local governments as provided by the Constitution. While the federal government can impose (through laws passed by Congress, not presidential fiat) certain rules on state conduct of elections, the states still run the actual polling places, counting of votes, and the like. And the date of federal elections is firmly set by statute. There simply is no mechanism for the president to decree any kind of delay or cancellation.
To be sure, legal and constitutional limits mean nothing to this administration. There are few if any limits on what they might try to do. But some moves are still beyond any pretense of lawful authority or what could plausibly be achieved. Even the most right-wing judges and courts have not given any indication they’d condone outright canceling of elections by presidential diktat. The simple reality is that the states would ignore it and conduct them anyway, and Trump lacks the practical means to stop them.
2. Total Federal Takeover
Marginally more serious than canceling the elections is Trump’s recent suggestion that he would “nationalize” election administration in some states, displacing the state’s role altogether in favor of direct federal administration. As is so often the case, whenever it suits him, Trump will embrace the exact opposite of traditional conservative positions, including on the Supreme Court.
This threat, however, is not that much more plausible than trying to cancel elections altogether. A full federal takeover was not attempted even at the height of the struggles over desegregation and the Voting Rights Act. The only precedent in American history would be during Reconstruction, when states were being run by the army and regular civilian governments simply didn’t exist.
Moreover, the federal government simply lacks the capacity. American elections are a vast enterprise, involving a workforce on the order of a million people nationwide, at tens of thousands of polling places and counting centers. No federal agency has the infrastructure or manpower to do this, even on a geographically limited scale. Nor could such a vast enterprise be spun up in the timeframe of just a few months until the general election.
To even suggest this kind of takeover is an outrageously fundamental attack on constitutional federalism, but it also reflects Trump’s simple ignorance of how anything works.
3. Executive Orders Interfering with Elections
Short of a total federal takeover would be executive orders, some of which have already been issued, purporting to override state election laws. These include Trump’s longstanding demand to abolish postal voting, impose requirements regarding proof of citizenship and Voter ID requirements, and implement via executive action many of the ideas in the Republicans’ SAVE Act, a truly diabolical piece of legislation that just passed the House but has little chance of getting past a Senate filibuster.
Executive orders do not have the force of law and do not supplant federal statutes enacted by Congress, much less state laws. They are only internal directives from the president to the executive branch—not other government entities. Contrary to Trump’s assertion, the states are not his mere “agents.” States can, and already are, simply ignoring his missives as null and void. When necessary, they’ve also been successful at winning victories in court. Even red states have been quietly noncompliant, in part because most of Trump’s demands would be obviously illegal and chaotically disruptive even if states wanted to comply.
In some instances, the Department of Justice has attempted to enforce Trump’s demands with civil litigation against the states, including demanding access to state voter rolls. These efforts have been shot down in court, and even the Trump-friendly Supreme Court has declined to intervene. The DOJ’s arguments in these cases, ostensibly about the need to enforce civil rights laws, are so completely baseless and in such blatant conflict with long-settled law they have been, in essence, laughed out of court. In no case has any state actually been forced to comply.
4. ICE at the Polls
One thing that is within Trump’s direct control is federal agencies, and in particular ICE. There is a well-founded fear that the lawless brutality seen on the streets of Minneapolis will be brought to bear against polling places. As we have seen, this partisan paramilitary force’s actions are hardly limited to terrorizing non-citizens. The goal of scaring people away from the polls would be obvious.
One obstacle here would be, again, simple lack of sufficient manpower for the vast scale of American elections. The number of voting sites nationwide is more than double the total number of ICE and Border Patrol officers combined. Even with selectively targeting certain cities and states, the number of places that could be targeted would be relatively miniscule.
States generally have laws restricting activity within a certain distance of polling places, other than authorized poll workers and of course voters themselves coming and going. Some legislators are considering strengthening these protections. State attorneys general must also be prepared to seek emergency injunctions against voter intimidation by federal agents, including possibly on election day.
The open thuggery of voter intimidation by ICE would also backfire, spurring defiant Americans to turn out in even greater numbers. We are, if nothing else, a rather contrarian people, and few things would strike a deeper chord than thugs trying to terrorize voters into abstaining. This would indeed be the most obvious result, and may be enough reason for Trump’s inner circle to pour cold water on the idea.
One concern is that this might work on a relatively smaller scale, targeting only deep blue urban areas to tip competitive races. But the political geography of the 2026 elections makes this more difficult than you might expect. Of the Senate races up this year, only one, Jon Ossoff’s reelection bid in Atlanta, is in a competitive state where targeting a deep blue urban area could, in theory, flip the outcome. On the House side, competitive races are by definition not in deep blue urban areas. Rather, control of the House will depend on two or three dozen swing districts, across a large number of states. These districts are predominantly middle-class suburbs, mostly white, and where roughly half of voters are Republicans. Chaotic disruption in these districts would be more politically risky, impacting their own voter base and local officials, and would still exceed the scale of available federal resources.
5. Delegitimization with Conspiracy Theories
Central to all effects at election subversion is the longstanding pattern, from both Trump and his allies, to push flagrantly false statements and conspiracy theories about the integrity of the vote. In anticipation of a midterm wipeout, these efforts have already kicked into overdrive.
These claims are generally the same ones that have been made before, including in the 2020 election. Millions of “illegals” are voting. The machines are hacked. The count is fabricated. Ballot boxes were stuffed with fake votes.
None of this has any grain of truth to it. The reality is our modern electoral system is an astonishing masterpiece of effective redundancies, fail-safes, and security measures. Recounts only ever move very tiny numbers of votes, because the initial counts are so accurate. Election fraud on any meaningful scale simply does not happen.
But the point isn’t to convince any objective observer; no real evidence is ever presented, and the ludicrous falsity has consistently failed to convince even the most conservative of judges. Instead, the goal is rhetorical delegitimization of the elections, to convince at least some large chunk of the public that Democratic victories aren’t real.
Unlike in 2020, the full weight of agencies across the federal government can now be brought to bear on promoting the Big Lie. Disturbingly, DOJ recently seized ballots from the 2020 election in Fulton County, Georgia with the Director of National Intelligence, Tulsi Gabbard, on the scene. Under normal circumstances, these paper ballots—which have already been counted and recounted and audited repeatedly—would have already been disposed of by now, six years after the election. But the county was still keeping them in warehouses because of ongoing litigation.
Seizing old ballots for an election that’s come and gone is not the same thing as seizing ballots from an election in progress. The only plausible purpose will be to manipulate, misrepresent, perhaps outright falsify these ballots in a sham investigation, and then publicize the resulting claims. This plays into delegitimizing the 2026 elections, but relatedly reflects Trump’s obsession with “proving” he was right about 2020 as well.
Promoting conspiratorial election denialism is, and will continue to be, the main drumbeat of the attempt to subvert the midterms. It is the essential predicate on which everything else rests, including to pressure Republican members of Congress.
The danger of provoking a genuine crisis is real. But the good news is there’s a pretty hard ceiling on public buy-in. A majority of the Republican base, perhaps, but nowhere close to a majority of the American people. Even under democratic backsliding or competitive authoritarian regimes, public opinion still matters.
Most people never bought this stuff before, and most will reject it now. In that context, it’s still a high hurdle to bring enough key actors on board, pull enough procedural levels, and achieve the consensus acceptance required to successfully overturn election outcomes. A lot of damage can be done in the attempt, especially the further erosion of democratic norms. Pushback, debunking, and a kind of harm minimization strategy will be an important part of fighting back, including to defeat the outside chance that any of it could work.
6. Seating the Members of Congress
Once the election has been held and the votes counted, the only thing left is the duly elected members of Congress to arrive at the Capitol and start doing business. As set by the 20th Amendment, the terms of the old Congress expire on Jan. 3, and the terms of the new Congress immediately begin.
Speaker Mike Johnson has no say in this matter. It is the new Congress, not the old Congress, which exercises its power to judge the “qualifications and returns” of its members. On Jan. 3, Johnson is no longer speaker, and the first order of business for the House is to elect a speaker.
During this process of “organizing“ the House, as it’s known (the Senate is different because only a third of its membership is being seated each time), there are some odd quirks in how the dissolved House bootstraps itself back into existence for a new Congress. The first thing is that members-elect gather in the House chamber, and it is this group that constitutes the House-to-be. Members-elect are defined as anyone presenting the official certification by the state, usually resolved by litigation prior to this point if there is any dispute. The clerk of the House then treats this as the roll of members-elect.
Next come the oaths of office. First, the not-quite-yet House elects its speaker. The speaker takes the oath—and then administers it to everyone else. This is the point at which members-elect become actual members, and the House is up and running.
At times, there have been disputes about the election results or qualifications of a member-elect, typically in more legitimate circumstances where there is a serious disagreement. The tradition is that the challenged member will “stand aside” from taking the oath with the others, and then the House, once sworn and seated, will decide the matter. However, this standing aside is a matter of courtesy and collegiality; it is not an enforceable rule. In other words, using the tactic to wipe out a large chunk of the other party’s members in order to flip the majority would not work. Those members-elect would still be able to be sworn in and seated and then vote on deciding the challenge, and would obviously do so against it in this kind of case.
A quorum of the credentialed (i.e., certified) members-elect of the House who gather on Jan. 3 are, for all constitutional purposes, the House of Representatives. The old House’s speaker or majority have no say in the process. The president isn’t involved. In the most extreme scenario, a majority could even gather somewhere other than the Capitol and would still constitute the legitimate House. Hopefully things won’t get as far as a tennis court oath, but Democrats should be prepared to do it if the need arises.
Obstructing the seating of the new Congress on Jan. 3 presents the same fundamental obstacle Trump faced on Jan. 6. The votes just aren’t there for it to work. Even a substantial fraction of the GOP isn’t enough. A minority is ultimately still a minority. There’s no one neat trick around the fact that there are fewer of them in the room, on the floor of the House.
Don’t Panic … Too Much
In sitting down and analyzing each of these threats, and concluding they’re unlikely to work, it would be a mistake to therefore not worry. The fight is real, the dangers are real, and this is one of the most fraught moments for democracy in American history. It’s no small thing that the immense powers of the presidency are being turned on nothing less than trying to steal elections and erect, in effect, an unelected sham legislature in place of Congress.
At the same time, we should not slide into demoralized defeatism, the real goal of election subversion. The president will try all or most of these things, and he will lose. He does not have magical powers, and despite his best efforts he is not yet an absolute dictator. As weakened and damaged as our constitutional system is, the conduct of elections is still one of its most entrenched, the sheer bulk of it planted firmly on a massive scale.
This is a deliberate attempt to shift the Overton window. It is a cynically manipulative dynamic where the White House can be seen “walking back” an idea that’s both illegal and impossible to make the merely illegal seem less extreme. In a way, this gambit relies on opponents giving Trump’s most absurd threats too much credibility.
While most, and maybe all, of the administration’s proclamations are unlikely to have any direct effect on how elections are run, they are laying the groundwork for conspiracy theories and election denialism of the sort Trump has long peddled regarding any elections whose outcome he dislikes.
The playbook, in other words, is much the same as was attempted, albeit more belatedly, in the 2020 election. Arguments which had no legal plausibility or route to prevailing, and find no purchase in the courts, but which provide talking points to enablers and sycophants in the public arena. Non-citizen voting, for example, happens only in trivially small numbers and is prevented by ample existing safeguards. But it has become an inevitable hallmark of right-wing election denialism to ludicrously claim millions of ineligible foreigners are casting ballots. By making demands ostensibly targeting this fake problem, Trump seeks to discredit election results even if he can’t stop them.
A small chance of a catastrophic outcome, such as installing a fake Congress and thus precipitating outright violent conflict, still matters a lot and must still be addressed. But for our own sake, for having a clear understanding of the facts, we should understand how and why he is likely to fail. Sometimes optimism can be rational, a danger with a 5% chance might be deadly serious but it is not a 100% inevitable certainty. Resistance is not futile.
The larger battle will be after the midterms. Congress will face an ongoing constitutional mega-crisis in how to confront his authoritarianism. It’s possible Democrats, should they win, will disappoint, and will need to be pressured to treat this as the existential moral emergency it is, including pursuing impeachment and removal of both Trump and many other members of the administration.
The fight won’t be easy, but victory is not only possible—it is very likely.
© The UnPopulist, 2026
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Thank you for this. It is always good to get some perspective and avoid catastrophizing.
Great article, my one caveat is that I think Trump would be able to swing the balance if the election comes down to a few legitimately contested seats in states that count mail-ins slowly. Similar to Bush v. Gore, it’s much easier to steal a legitimately quite close election than the landslide that 2026 is shaping up to be.
Nonetheless, blue states with significant mail in voting should do everything in their power to count votes quickly rather than let the process drag on for weeks