US midterms: 'The danger is not so much massive electoral fraud as a deliberately engineered fog of doubt'

Midterm elections have always been an essential check on the president in the United States, allowing voters to correct the course of an administration. The upcoming November 3 vote is more crucial still. For millions of Americans, it could be one of the last chances to place meaningful democratic limits on a president who, since returning to office 18 months ago, has methodically weakened the institutions meant to restrain him. On November 3, the entire House of Representatives and one third of the Senate will be up for election. The vote could strip Donald Trump of his grip on all levers of power in Washington, restore congressional oversight and bring back some of the constitutional balance that has been lost. That is precisely why he is now going after the elections themselves. Midterm elections generally punish the party that controls the White House. In 2018, during Trump’s first term, the Democrats gained 40 seats (out of 435) and took back control of the House of Representatives. Today, with record-low approval ratings, rising inflation and a deeply unpopular war in Iran, the risk of another electoral setback is very real. That explains Trump's determination to tilt the playing field before a single ballot is cast, interfere with the electoral process and sow doubt about the results in advance. One tactic is an unprecedented wave of partisan gerrymandering. Trump pushed Republican-led states to redraw their districts in their favor, a move made easier in April, when the Supreme Court gutted the Voting Rights Act, the landmark 1965 law protecting minority voting rights. As a result, the electoral map is increasingly uncompetitive, forcing Democrats to win about 53% of the national vote just to hope for a simple majority in the House. Even more alarming are Trump's efforts to disrupt the very mechanisms of voting. Since his defeat to Joe Biden in 2020, he has relentlessly and baselessly claimed that millions of undocumented people voted illegally. In 2020, he tried to stay in power through political pressure, fake electors and disinformation campaigns, culminating in the assault on the Capitol on January 6, 2021. That attempt failed because institutional safeguards held. Since then, many of the officials, prosecutors and election security experts who embodied those safeguards have been dismissed or replaced with loyalists. What was improvised in 2020 is now being systematically prepared from within the government. You have 52.83% of this article left to read. The rest is for subscribers only.