The lifeline election (part two)

Can Trump steal the midterms?

Earlier in the week I looked at the Democrat’s improving chances of taking the Senate along with the House in the November midterms. Doing so would seriously impede Trump’s presidency. Republican House Speaker Mike Johnson recently acknowledged this, saying: “If we lost the midterms….it would be the end of the Trump presidency in real effect.”

Given this, and Trump’s record for refusing to accept election results, there’s a general expectation he’ll try and find ways to rig voting to his advantage and much speculation on potential ways he could do.

I’ve previously expressed scepticism about his ability to stop a fair race. It’s not because I have any faith in his commitment to democracy. If he could press a button that made him dictator-for-life he no doubt would. He’s made it very clear that he intends to try and interfere due to his apparently sincere belief that the Democrats will otherwise steal the election.

The issue is whether he can.

Trump’s problem is that elections are run by states and overseen by Congress, something made explicit in the constitution. The President has no role and no jurisdiction to get involved. There are ways he could try to circumvent this but each is fraught with risk and legally dubious at best. Essentially, he can try and insert the federal government into the process, or he can attempt to persuade Congress to pass legislation that might help Republicans (like the SAVE America Act currently being debated in the Senate), or he can encourage illegal voter intimidation.

In the rest of the post I’ll look at each of these in turn and why they’re unlikely to work. As we go through the options I’ll set out why Trump’s increasingly desperate attempts to avoid defeat are more likely to backfire and hurt the Republicans than help them win.