Col#286- 6/16/26
ELECTION TAMPERING
By
Richard Davis
It’s not a matter of if but when. The Republicans are poised to take some degree of a beating in the mid-term elections in November and Trump is already trying to manipulate the outcome. No surprise.
Elections are controlled by states so Trump’s options are limited, but that hasn’t stopped him from trying to use the U.S. Postal Service to rig the vote-by-mail system.
The Brennan Center for Justice has analyzed a Trump executive order that they point out is illegal. Breaking the law is something Trump does well because he never has to be accountable for his actions.
According to the Brennan Center, “…President Trump issued a new executive order that aims to illegally rewrite the rules for federal elections. The principal thrust of the order is to charge the U.S. Postal Service (USPS) with determining who may vote by mail and instructs it to refuse to deliver ballots sent by anyone not included on newly created federal mail voter lists. It threatens criminal penalties for election officials, mail carriers, and others who send ballots to or deliver ballots from individuals the administration deems ineligible. Perhaps to facilitate this usurpation of state and federal laws governing mail voting, it also orders the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) to compile lists of voting-age U.S. citizens in every state, using incomplete and unreliable federal data sources.”
Trump hides behind his lie that mail-in voting creates fraud. According to the Brookings Institution four out of every ten million votes, or 0.000043%, are fraudulent. All the studies done relating to voter fraud clearly indicate that voting by mail does not increase the risk of fraud. Voter fraud was a non-issue until Trump created lies about it and continued to poison the minds of his brain-dead followers, including a number of people in congress.
Hopefully, Trump’s executive order will be found to be illegal in the courts and there will be enough time to be able to block him from implementing it. He has had too much success implementing illegal executive orders, causing damage until he is finally forced to change course. But he often simply ignores the courts.
The Brennan Center notes that if this executive order is put in place it will, “ …inject chaos into our elections, block eligible American citizens from voting, undermine voter privacy, and expose election officials and others to criminal prosecution simply for doing their jobs.”
This order is just the beginning of Trump’s slash and burn action to make it difficult for people to vote, especially people of color and people in places where mail-in voting is popular. There has been speculation that Trump will place ICE agents and border patrol stormtroopers at polling places in order to intimidate people.
I hope that Democrats will make an effort to stop Trump’s election interference by anticipating his illegal moves and eliminate some of the barriers he is likely to erect to sway the vote in November.
Citizens and legal voters who have a fear of deportation are already keeping away from places where they receive food benefits and other services because they think ICE will be there to grab them. Their children are staying out of school for fear of ICE abduction.
These people who are living in fear, and others who may be find it difficult to vote if Trump succeeds in his illegal war against voting, could make the difference in the outcome of the election. He needs to be stopped now before it is too late.
