6 thoughts on “Will the 2026 and 2028 US Elections be Fair?”

1. Trump tells Texas Republicans to redraw the state congressional map to help keep House majority from the AP (7/15/2025)

   The map was supposed to be re-drawn at the end of the decade. (Democrats in other states have begun to do something similar in response. I’m not keen on this, but I understand this.)

   Trump Wants to End Mail-In Voting Ahead of Next Year’s Midterms from the NYT (8/18/2025)

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2. Coincidentally, the New Yorker podcast yesterday on this: Is the 2026 Election Already in Danger? (9/22/2025)

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3. Trump Empowers Election Deniers, Still Fixated on 2020 Grievances from the NYT (10/22/25)

   I don’t have the energy to summarize this, but I recommend reading this gifted article.

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4. Today, voters in Virginia and New Jersey chose Democratic governors, Abigail Spanberger and Mickie Sherrills, respectively. Trump and other MAGA-types are baselessly crying foul.

   Republicans Reprise Unfounded Claims of Widespread Election Interference from the NYT

   Before the polls even opened on Tuesday, Mr. Trump called a vote in California to redraw congressional districts ahead of next year’s midterm elections, as Texas and other Republican-controlled states have done, “a GIANT SCAM.”

   “The entire process, in particular the Voting itself, is RIGGED,” Mr. Trump declared without citing anything to support the claim. He suggested that Republicans were somehow “shut out” of mail-in voting, warning that a “serious legal and criminal review” was on the way. Mr. Trump has long railed against mail-in voting, but it was not clear what he meant by a review.

   There is little evidence that significant voter fraud is, or has been, a problem in California. The Heritage Foundation, a conservative research organization, lists only a single case in 2024 in its “election fraud map” and only 69 cases since 1982.

   Caroline Leavitt, the WH press secretary claimed that California’s system of allowing vote by mail was “ripe for fraud.” Whne asked for evidence,

   …she cited, “fraudulent ballots that are being mailed in in the names of other people and the names of illegal aliens who shouldn’t be voting in American elections.” A White House official, when asked by email for examples, repeated many of the claims about potential, though not real, fraud, and cited a Department of Justice lawsuit against the state saying it reported finding more than two million duplicate registrations, while seven counties did not report duplicates. The lawsuit does not claim any of the duplicates resulted in duplicate votes.

   Ms. Leavitt said preparations for an executive order on elections were underway but did not detail what review Mr. Trump referred to.

   Trump and his followers have been saying this kind of thing over and over again, including in the 2020 election. And over and over again they haven’t been able to come up with substantive evidence to support their claims.

   Trump’s referencing a “review” of the election is ominous as well.

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5. Move to Seize Ballots Thrusts F.B.I. Into Trump’s Election Conspiracy Claim from the NYT

   The ballots in question are from Fulton County in Georgia.

   Fulton County, which is largely nonwhite and voted overwhelmingly for Joseph R. Biden Jr., quickly became a nexus of Mr. Trump’s effort to cling to power after he lost the 2020 election. It has remained central to a host of conspiracy theories about that election that have persisted, animating an activist base in the state. After leaving office, Mr. Trump and some of his allies were criminally charged with election interference in Georgia, and the former president was booked at the Fulton County jail.

   This short CCN clip, by a former assistant deputy director of National Intelligence, explains that the Director of National Intelligence (DNI) has no legal authority to conduct or oversee investigations on U.S. soil.

   This is just strengthening the impression that the FBI has been politicized, and it raises questions about whether the Trump administration will interfere with the 2026 elections (e.g., by claiming to find evidence of voter fraud or interference in the 2020 election and then using that as a justification to interfere in the 2026 election).

   2/2/26

   Trump Had Unusual Call With F.B.I. Agents After Election Center Search from the NYT

   Rather than going to senior department or F.B.I. officials, Mr. Trump spoke directly to the frontline agents doing the granular work of a politically sensitive investigation in which he has a large personal stake.

   “It is extremely dangerous to our democracy and a shocking abandonment of years of sound policy for the president to be directly involved in the conduct of domestic criminal investigations, especially one that seeks to redress his personal grievances and to make the director of national intelligence an instrument of his political will,” said David Laufman, who served as a senior Justice Department official in both Republican and Democratic administrations. “It’s now more clear than ever that the independence of the Department of Justice and the F.B.I. is completely compromised and they are essentially under the direction and control of the White House.”

   Last month, the president, in declaring once again that the 2020 election had been stolen from him, left little doubt about his intentions.

   “People will soon be prosecuted for what they did,” he said in remarks at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland.

   2/3/2026

   Trump, in an Escalation, Calls for Republicans to ‘Nationalize’ Elections from the NYT

   “The Republicans should say, ‘We want to take over,’” he said. “We should take over the voting, the voting in at least many — 15 places. The Republicans ought to nationalize the voting.”

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6. Georgia Ballot Inquiry Originated With Election Denier in Trump White House from the NYT

   An F.B.I. search warrant affidavit unsealed on Tuesday shows that a criminal investigation into 2020 election results in Fulton County, Ga., was set off by a leading election denier in the Trump administration and relied heavily on claims about ballots that have been widely debunked.

   Here’s more on the election denier, Kurt Olson:

   Mr. Olsen played a central role in Mr. Trump’s attempt to overturn the 2020 election, including speaking to the president multiple times on Jan. 6, 2021. He has continued to push false claims about elections, and was recently appointed to a key role in the Trump administration.

   (Trump appointed him the Director of Election Security and Integrity.)

   Some state election officials say they no longer trust their federal partners from theAtlantic

   “The trust,” Maine Secretary of State Shenna Bellows told us, “has been absolutely destroyed.” The sentiment is not confined to Democrats. Some state-level Republican election officials, who, like others interviewed for this story, requested anonymity to speak freely, said that federal officials’ activities involving elections have become so unusual that they are starting to question the federal officials’ competency and motives. These state officials wonder whether the feds are trying to do what Trump has accused others of doing: rig an election.

   With just more than eight months before midterm elections, Trump has already said that he will accept the results only “if the elections are honest,” and has mused that “we shouldn’t even have an election” given that the midterms typically result in defeats for the president’s party. He has called for the greater use of identification at all polling places, a ban on mail voting, and a prohibition on certain types of voting equipment. Inside the White House, his obsession with disproving the results of the 2020 election, which he lost, has led to the creation of a standing working group that meets regularly to coordinate federal efforts to investigate past elections and reform future election processes.

   (emphasis added)

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