Trump Outrage Watch: Nine Ways Trump could mess with our Elections

Donald Trump urged attendees at the Republican Party’s first-ever midterm convention to raise their hands and pledge, “I don’t care if I’m registered or not, I’m going to try and cheat like hell like they do.”  – Dallas, TX, Sept. 10, 2026

According to every poll I’ve seen, Donald Trump is so unpopular that his party faces epic defeats in the Nov. 3 midterm elections. You don’t have to accept the startling prediction of Nate Silver that Democrats are 73.9 % likely to flip the US Senate from Red to Blue, though his guess that the House is 92.9% likely to flip is less outlandish.

RealClearPolitics.com’s aggregation of 15 polls shows Trump’s average approval rating at 38.5% and disapproval at 60.5%. Other polls show deep public dissatisfaction with his Iran war, his tariffs, costly energy, food and housing prices, ICE violence and his using the presidency for self-enrichment.

And Real Clear’s generic Congressional ballot average, indicating which party the public wants to run the House, favors Democrats by 8.3%. Historically, a lead that large almost guarantees Democrats will take over the House. The Cook Political Report has Democrats likely to pick up two to six Senate seats (they need 4 for control). 

If only the House goes Democratic, it will lead to non-stop investigations, possibly followed by a third Trump impeachment. If the Senate goes, too, there will be more investigations and passage of bills Trump will hate (and likely veto.)

The ominous nature of this situation for Republicans suggests that Trump, given his record, will try to cheat this year as he did in 2020. 

He has already tried to do so by disenfranchising likely Democratic voters (requiring seniors, young people and minorities to show birth certificates or passports to register to vote), ordering the US  Postal Service to send  mail-in ballots only to persons on a national voter list, and suing states to provide full voter lists, including sensitive personal information, to be used in purging suspected non-citizens. Practically all of these past efforts have been struck down by the courts on the grounds that the Constitution assigns election management to  the states and gives no role to the president. 

This means, he will have to do his dirty work after the election. Reuters, after interviewing more than 50 election officials, listed nine ways Trump could challenge a midterm result that his party lost: 

1) charge that results he doesn’t like were the result of fraud or that voting machines were altered to produce false outcomes.

After he lost out to Joe Biden in 2020, he and his minions claimed that non-citizens voted, that election workers tampered with ballots and that late-arriving ballots were suspicious. Also, that domestic or foreign adversaries hacked into voting machines to produce unfavorable results. Investigations and judicial reviews invariably found his charges invalid, but they served to create doubts about election systems generally and caused election workers to be harassed or threatened. 

2) Pressure election or state government officials to change or cancel results. 

It happened most nakedly in Georgia in 2020, when Trump unsuccessfully badgered Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger (on tape) to “find me 11,780 votes,” the number necessary to overturn the state’s certified results in Trump’s favor. Trump lawyers and other allies also pressured officials in Michigan, Arizona and Pennsylvania as part of Trump’s wider effort to overturn his loss to Joe Biden. Apprehension is heightened by the fact that the number of election officials who believe Trump’s 2020 charges has risen from 17 states to 20.

3) Seizing ballots and/or voting machines and records, potentially disrupting vote counting, breaking the chain of custody on election materials and delaying certification of results. 

This January FBI agents raided election offices in Fulton County, Georgia, seizing hundreds of boxes of 2020 election records after Trump officials revived previously debunked claims of irregularities. 

Some officials also point to Trump’s own statements. In January, Trump told The New York Times he should have ordered the National Guard to seize voting machines in swing states after his 2020 loss.

4) Have federal election monitors interfere with voting.

The Justice Department plans to deploy 1,000 federal election monitors in the midterms, the largest number in its history and nearly double the 590 deployed in the 2024 election. Assistant Attorney General Harmeet Dhillon has said their goal is to ensure “nothing funky is happening and that people are able to vote.”

The Justice Department has routinely sent monitors to polling places to assess compliance with civil rights and voting laws, such as requirements to help voters with disabilities. Election officials and voting-rights advocates say recent events have raised questions about whether monitors could go beyond that traditional role. They point to Wyoming, where Republican Governor Mark Gordon objected after Justice Department monitors sought to interview voters and inspect voting equipment in Laramie County during the August primary. Election officials denied the requests.

5) Station ICE agents near polling places to intimidate voters, especially Hispanics, into leaving without voting.

Sending armed federal agents directly to polling places would likely violate federal laws, according to legal experts, though agencies such as US Immigration and Customs Enforcement could conduct law-enforcement operations in nearby areas.

Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin recently declined to rule out ICE activity at polling locations, saying at a September news conference in New York City that immigration agents could be deployed “if there is a threat to that polling place or we’re serving a warrant.” 

A Homeland Security spokesperson said ICE is not planning operations targeting polling locations, but that agents could be deployed to assist local law enforcement in the event of a major incident, regardless of where it occurs. A county clerk in Kansas said “at every meeting we’ve had (with poll workers), the question has been, ‘If federal officers or ICE show up in our polling place, what do we do?’ They’ve thought about it, they’re worried about it.”

6) Station federal troops or federalized National Guard at the polls.

Some legal experts view the possible deployment of military forces as among the most dramatic and potentially unlawful election scenarios.

Trump could seek to invoke the Insurrection Act, which gives the president broad power to address riots and other domestic crises, claiming that left-wing activists interfered with the election or that state officials allowed noncitizens to vote. Stationing troops near polling places or in surrounding communities could depress turnout, particularly in areas with lots of Democrats, and trigger immediate legal challenges, according to the election officials and legal experts.

The Insurrection Act provides an exception to a federal law forbidding military involvement in domestic law enforcement. Yet even under those circumstances, other federal laws forbid troops from deploying to polling locations, interfering with election administration or intimidating voters.

Asked by PBS News in May whether he would send the military or immigration agents to voting locations in November, Trump said he would “do anything necessary to make sure we have honest elections.” A White House spokesperson did not address the issue in response to questions from Reuters.

In an August letter to a Democratic US senator, General Dan Caine, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said the military had “no plans” to send troops to polling places or seize election materials. “I have neither received nor anticipate receiving any unlawful order” related to such a deployment, he wrote.

7) Declaring a national emergency.

Some Trump allies have urged him to consider the dramatic step of declaring a national emergency over alleged voter fraud or foreign election interference, arguing that doing so could provide a basis for greater federal involvement in how votes are counted, including requiring hand counts. Trump has declined to rule out the idea. He has used the “national emergency” invocation repeatedly to justify other measures he’s taken.

Many legal experts say a national emergency declaration would not give the President constitutional authority to take over the administration of elections, which is largely a state responsibility. But they warn that an attempt to do so could trigger confusion, litigation and delays in certifying results while courts determine the limits of presidential power.

In a Time magazine interview published in October, Trump left open the possibility of declaring a national emergency related to the 2026 midterms. “I don’t rule anything out or in,” he said.

Asked about concerns that the administration could invoke emergency powers in connection with the election, the White House did not directly address the scenario. Instead, spokesperson Lauren Bis defended the administration’s election-security agenda, arguing that voter-ID requirements and efforts to prevent noncitizen voting are needed to strengthen public confidence in elections.

8) Having federal agents investigate and/or charge state and local election officials for allowing non-citizens to vote.

Trump’s Justice Department sent letters in July to every state’s chief election official warning that state and local election administrators could face prosecution if federal authorities conclude they knowingly allowed noncitizens to vote or failed to take adequate steps to keep them off voter rolls. Election officials from both parties have characterized the warnings as baseless intimidation, but say they are prepared to respond if federal authorities move forward with investigations or prosecutions.

“You can stop threatening your friends in Idaho,” wrote James Craig, a lawyer in the office of Idaho’s Republican attorney general, in a July 10 letter to Justice Department officials that his office shared with Reuters. Noting the conservative state’s support for the administration’s policies, Craig added, “Idaho has taken a leading role in ensuring that its voter registration list is purged of non-citizens.”

The letters were sent to remind election officials “of their obligations under federal law to maintain accurate voter rolls,” Assistant Attorney General Harmeet Dhillon said in a statement to Reuters. “This is not about administrative errors; it’s about knowing failures to act.”

Still, investigations alone can carry consequences, some election officials said. Responding to subpoenas, document demands, and interviews could consume the time and resources of already stretched election offices.

9) Having Congress refuse to seat newly-elected Democrats.

Trump could pressure Republican leaders in Congress to use procedural maneuvers to delay or challenge the seating of Democratic candidates in close races, attempting to keep a Republican majority while legal disputes play out in court, according to election law experts.

Many legal scholars, however, consider it unlikely that congressional leaders could simply refuse to seat duly certified winners. The debate focuses largely on a hypothetical scenario in which House Speaker Mike Johnson replaces the House clerk with a Trump ally who delays recognizing Democratic victors. The clerk is elected by the House as its administrative manager and responsible for recognizing new members elected by the states, but the speaker can dismiss the clerk at any time and appoint an acting replacement. Still, many election law scholars say the clerk has a statutory duty to recognize candidates certified by states and that courts would likely intervene if that duty were ignored.

The greater concern, they say, is that unresolved election disputes or delayed certifications could leave seats unfilled when the new Congress convenes on January 3. In a narrowly divided House, even a small number of unfilled seats could influence the election of the speaker and temporarily affect control of the chamber while legal challenges are resolved. The most likely result, one legal analysis concluded, would not be a successful overturning of election results but significant confusion and political turmoil.

Taylor Haulsee, a spokesperson for Speaker Johnson, dismissed such scenarios as speculative, saying that Johnson had successfully presided over the seating of a new (Republican) Congress in January 2025.

There’s yet another scenario that Reuters missed: Trump could enlist Russia to interfere in the US elections beyond what it is already doing. That, according to New York Times’ reports on intelligence community findings, basically is designed to sow distrust among Americans, particularly toward Democrats. They’ve involved charges of corruption against Democratic Senators and charges that Democrats are ceasing to support Israel. So far, there’s no evidence of Russia (or other foreign adversaries) having meddled directly with US election machinery. But negative on-line shots at Democrats definitely are being fired to help Trump,  particularly after Trump decided to buy diesel from Russia. There is a school of thought that Trump’s purchase, which will provide billions to Russia, was a payoff to Vladimir Putin to get him to interfere in the US midterms.

Former Treasury Secretary Robert Rubin warned in a New York Times op-ed that an effort by Trump to upend the 2026 election could raise doubts about America’s dedication to the rule of law. And that would have serious consequences for the American economy, discouraging foreigners from investing in the US. It could also threaten the dollar’s position as the world’s reserve currency and diminish investors’ confidence in the full faith and credit of the US, which could cause an even larger increases in interest rates than the US is now experiencing. “The integrity of our elections, in other words, has been one of the keys to American prosperity,”  he wrote.

Want a reason to vote Democratic on Nov. 3? Trump’s net worth has increased by $3 billion during his second term while he is cutting Medicaid for the poor by more than $900 billion over 10 years. His efforts to overturn the 2020 election result, culminating in deadly violence at the US Capitol on Jan. 6, 2020. His pardoning all that day’s  perpetrators. Plus his past moves to rig this year’s midterms and his probable post-election efforts to steal this election… Take your pick.