The following post is a possible worst-case scenario for the midterm elections.
I am a former Assistant US Attorney in Chicago. In 1982, I was one of the assistants who worked with a team of FBI agents to open an investigation into extensive voter fraud that had become normalized in Chicago under Mayor Daley. Our investigation exposed ways that the Daley machine rigged the system to manufacture fake votes to affect the outcome of the governor’s race between Adlai Stevenson and James Thompson. Dirty tricks had become the norm in Chicago: Dead people “voting”, drunks paid not to come to the polls, votes being bought for $2 a vote and much more. Our investigation led to the prosecution of the largest and most consequential vote fraud case(s) in Chicago’s history. The exposure also led to a major cleanup of Chicago’s corrupt political system under the Daley machine. I prosecuted the leading case involving Judge of Election, Raymond Hicks, and wrote the grand jury report. Where There’s Smoke, There’s Fire: 100,000 Stolen Votes in Chicago | The Heritage Foundation
Vote fraud is illegal and undemocratic no matter which political party does it.
These days it’s Trump and his Republican election deniers who are trying to cheat to win more votes and suppress more votes of the people they don’t want to have a voice.
THE CHEATERS
Trump is a cheater by nature. (Read Commander-in-Cheat by Rick Reilly if you don’t believe me – about how Trump always cheats at golf) As president he is trying to cheat to stay in power. He is unpopular with the American people because of the cost of living, his unnecessary war with Iran and the closed Strait of Hormuz, failure to expose the elites in the Epstein Files. The midterms are coming and Trump is scared.
- The Republican-led congress is afraid to hold Trump accountable for his corruption and violation of norms and laws.
- Trump wants the Republicans to stay in power so he can avoid accountability.
- Trump always breaks things first and gets someone else to clean up after him.
- Our courts are too slow to prevent him from acting and rely on Trump’s willingness to comply. (DOGE, the East Wing, the Lincoln Monument pool, the Iran war just to name a few times when Trump acts fast and courts are too slow and toothless.)
What will Trump do to try to stay in power and keep control of the House and Senate?
This post does not cover every possibility. In writing this I tried to imagine the sneakiest thing I could think of that Trump and his allies could try to do to create maximum chaos in our upcoming election.
It is the worst-case scenario because going to the courts for a remedy in advance will not work and because Trump could make it look like he is engaging in election protection when he is actually engaging in election fraud. Trump’s allies and election deniers are willing to help him.
I also thought about what could be done to stop this potential plot from being successful. I hope you will read to the end of this post to learn what could be done to prevent Trump from getting away with this plot to wreck the midterm election.
All of us can help to keep this plot from happening by EXPOSING it and by voting in large numbers.
FIRST, WHAT TRUMP’S PRIMETIME ADDRESS TELLS US ABOUT HOW HE MIGHT TRY TO STEAL THE ELECTION
Donald Trump’s primetime address on election integrity was supposed to be a bombshell. Instead, it seemed to be a nothingburger: Rehashed information about the same old same old complaints Trump has had since he lost the election in 2020 to Joe Biden and had a hissy fit over it.
In his address Trump named communists as the bad guys. That seemed like an odd move. Communists? He accused China of foreign interference in our 2020 election. (Nope. The Chinese thought about it but did not actually interfere.) He accused Venezuela of messing with voting machines. (Nope. They didn’t.) He failed to mention that the Russians meddled to help him win against Biden. When it comes to communism, China is a communist country, and Venezuela is an authoritarian socialist state in which government owns stakes in some businesses. But many Americans don’t know the difference and would think Venezuela is communist.
To be clear, what Trump said about foreign interference in his address to the nation was false. Declassified information released after his speech on the federal website that Trump told us to take a look at to prove what he said was true directly contradicted what Trump said in his address to the nation. The declassified information confirmed that NO VOTES WERE STOLEN in the 2020 election. Even John Soloman, Trump’s own lackey, said so on camera in an MS NOW interview by Vaughn Hillyard, after Trump’s speech. (After he said that, Trump’s flying monkeys hurried him away from the cameras.) But the fact that what he said was false doesn’t matter to Trump or his allies and followers.
Countries do try to meddle in the elections of other countries. We do it too. Our cyber security and election protection teams (CISA and other agencies) have, in the past, been great at keeping our elections free and fair.
So why did Trump dismantle these agencies that protect our elections against foreign interference? Well…DUH!
TRUMP very clearly planning to meddle in our midterm elections and he doesn’t want any federal agencies to contradict what he will say is happening. He wants to shape the narrative. He wants HIS propaganda to be uncontradicted.
SO, HERE WE GO.
THIS IS WHAT I THINK TRUMP COULD BE UP TO
It’s Election Day. November 3, 2026. Americans are voting in record numbers. Exit polling and data about who is voting makes it clear that Democrats are overperforming in close races for the House, the Senate, governorships, and other races that were thought would be unwinnable for Democrats after Trump was elected in 2024.
James Talarico is winning against Ken Paxton in the Texas race for Senate, but it is close. Dr. Amy Acton appears to be narrowly winning the Ohio’s governor race against Vivek Ramaswamy. Annie Andrews is beating Lindsay Graham’s sister in South Carolina for the Senate seat there.
There are no ICE agents at the polling places and MAGA types are saying “See? This is a free and fair election!” Harry Enten on CNN is checking the numbers that tell pollsters who is voting and who is staying home along with exit polling data. “Wow!” he says, “Sure looks like a blue tsunami happening in America!”
While Americans are still voting in record numbers, before the polls have closed on the East Coast, the White House makes a sudden announcement. There will be a bombshell press conference. Major networks break from their normal programming.
With cameras trained on him, a sweating Nicholas Maduro emerges in his orange prison jumpsuit, stands in front of the cameras and makes a tearful confession. “It’s true”, he says. “My country has been interfering in your elections by programming your voting machines using a secret electronic cyber system that remotely changes the outcome in battleground districts to help Democrats win. We alter vote totals by hacking voting machines to change election outcomes. China is helping us with the technology. We do it because we don’t want Republicans to win elections in America,” he says. “This is the truth. Your election is being stolen. I am not looking for leniency in my trial. I just want to come clean about what I know.”
Trump steps up to the podium. “This is a national emergency that affects our election,” he proclaims. “The federal government must take over this election to be sure it is free and fair. I am ordering the Director of National Intelligence, Bill Pulte, to investigate this foreign interference. I am ordering the military to immediately seize ballots and voting machines in key districts. Any secretary of state who refuses to turn over the ballots and voting machines will be arrested. Americans, if you love our country, you will defend democracy by going to the polling places we know are being hacked (the battleground districts will be the ones they identify). We know those machines are being hacked. You must shut down polling places until we can get the military there to take charge of voting machines and ballots. If you don’t stand up now you won’t have a country anymore!”
Marc Elias, Norm Eisen, Democracy Forward and Democratic AGs and Democratic governors across the country have already considered this possible scenario in their tabletop war gaming. They have been planning for it. Lawyers in every affected state rush to federal courts across the country with pre-drafted temporary restraining orders “To prevent imminent, irreparable harm while the case is being decided”.
But Pete Hegseth is already activating the military to take over the key polling places that are battleground district polling places that could tip the balance of the House. The military is ordered by Trump to take control of ballots and voting machines whether or not the election has been certified.
Polling places especially in battleground districts then become mini-January 6th staging grounds for standoffs.
If the military get to the polls and seize ballots and voting machines before the ballots are duly certified the all-important chain of custody could be broken. It could become impossible to establish which candidates actually won their midterm elections.
This would be Trump’s goal, of course: to make it impossible to tell who won key races that could change control of the House. If races that would decide the composition of the House and Senate are interrupted before they are concluded it would turn those races into disputed elections.
What are Disputed Elections?
If the election is in dispute and the House has not yet resolved it, the Speaker cannot unilaterally seat the member. The House must first determine the validity of the election before seating. Once certified and qualifications confirmed, the House must accept the member-elect www.ketr.org.
Mike Johnson will say he cannot under these circumstances seat anyone whose election is disputed. (Which is legally correct).
WHAT WOULD HAPPEN NEXT?
The Democrats would ask the Supreme Court to hear this controversy on an emergency basis. Will 6 Christian Nationalists who have done everything they can to create a unitary executive who is all powerful stop Trump? (They might. Read on.)
The current composition of Congress would be maintained pending the outcome of the Supreme Court’s decision. This would be a case of first impression (never seen before) by the Court. For that reason, it could take too long for briefings, arguments and a determination.
Meanwhile, the entire country is in a state of outrage, knowing that Trump used a fake confession from Maduro (or some other emergency) to green light the bogus declaration of a national emergency related to voting and stop the midterm elections in the key districts that will affect the composition of the House and maybe the Senate.
Americans take to the streets to protest.
IS THERE A WAY TO PROACTIVELY PREVENT TRUMP FROM UNDERMINING OUR MIDTERM ELECTION?
This fever dream I just described could be what Trump is planning (or it could be something similar). He might think this could work as his Hail Mary to keep Republicans in power since he can’t get Congress to pass the SAVE ACT and is being thwarted in his other attempts to cheat and rig the election by attorneys like Marc Elias and Norm Eisen who are taking him to court (over 200 cases so far and more coming) and winning around 90% of those cases.
Is Trump really planning to do this?
We don’t know for sure what he has up his sleeve, but Trump seems to be remarkably unconcerned about the midterms. He only cares about his vanity projects, throwing his weight around abroad by invading other countries, trying to re-open the Strait of Hormuz after starting a war that closed it, making a ton of money corruptly off of the presidency and trying to stay in power so he won’t face accountability. He sure doesn’t care about helping the American people. We also know the anti-democratic right-wing enablers he has surrounded himself with are ruthless and power-hungry. For these reasons, I think this fever dream should be taken seriously whether or not it would succeed in the end.
WE COULD HELP DEFEAT THIS PLAN
If Trump’s “secret” plan is exposed and talked about all over social media, with your friends and family and their friends and family, then Trump would be checkmated. He would be exposed carrying out something that he obviously engineered. The plan would be debunked, in-other-words. He might abandon it and give up trying to implement it.
What could happen next might be very surprising.
Trump is deeply under water with the American people. Only 15% of Americans strongly approve of him now. In every poll Americans disapprove of the war, tariffs and even the way his administration is carrying out immigration policy (shooting Americans dead for the crime of looking Hispanic or trying to protest). He is also physically and mentally not well: getting infusions, secret trips to Walter Reed Hospital, lots of dementia testing he clearly is not acing despite what he says. He is also check mated in the Iran war.
If Trump has to face a Democratic Congress with a supermajority full of amped up representatives who demand accountability for his massive corruption… if Trump feels cornered and exposed in this way… you have to wonder if he might decide to chicken out of the presidency the way he has chickened out of so many things when he faces strong opposition. Might he step down? opening the door for JD Vance to pardon him for all of his crime-ing? Hmm…that might not be too far-fetched.
But first—
THERE IS GOOD NEWS
Governors, secretaries of state, AGs, mayors, election protection groups, the ACLU, the Brennan Center and many many others KNOW this is going to happen.
Maybe there won’t be a fake confession by Maduro, but they think there will be some other rigged up to trigger a declaration of a national emergency by Trump. These groups doing tabletop war gaming to counter what Trump will do and figure out how they will defeat it. And they are not just being reactive. They are thinking pro-actively because they learned from the January 6th attack on the Capitol that they cannot be caught flat-footed.
I know this because I have had conversations with some of these leaders on the frontline of the fight. There are meetings going on with thousands of stakeholders across the country. They share best practices and strategies for election protection. Groups on the ground are organizing to set up such things as vets at the polling places, rapid response teams, local police alerts, election protection legal teams and much more.
I am also told that like so many things Trump does, his very obvious cheat-to-“win” effort is creating backlash. The leaders I am talking with want Americans to know that there will be massive attention on election protection. They also tell me that if you want to stop Trump, then get out the vote. If there is a big blue wave, Trump’s plan will fail.
HERE’S MORE ABOUT HOW WE STOP TRUMP FROM STEALING THE ELECTION
- EXPOSE THE PLAN! Use your social media and network to share this post and tell people what Trump probably has up his sleeve.
- VOTE LIKE YOU LIVE IN HUNGARY. The bigger the blue tsunami, the less possible it will be for Trump to pull off this stunt.
- BE INFORMED AND TELL OTHERS. Know that the federal government has NO power over these elections. Federal election administration is up to the states. Whether or not Trump declares a national emergency does not alter the fact that the states are empowered to run their own elections.
- FORCE THE SUPREMES STAND UP FOR OUR DEMOCRACY. The Court has foolishly endowed Trump with way too much power. The Supremes want a powerful unitary executive, but I don’t think they love Trump. How do we know? They did not intervene to keep E. Jean Carroll from getting her millions from Trump when Trump asked them to help him out. They did not give Trump a win on his birthright citizenship case or his tariffs. I think this Court is all in on helping corporations and the ultra-wealthy, but not Trump per se. Create pressure on the Court to do the right thing. If there is a march, join it.
Share this post!
AND SHOW UP TO VOTE!!
