This Will Not Stop Unless We Stop It: Trump, "Election Security," and the Next Chapter

Trump told us where this is all heading. It's on us to believe him.

On Thursday night, President Donald Trump commandeered the airwaves for a prime-time address and told the American people a horror story. China had stolen voter data on over 200 million plus Americans and had been trying to coerce our corporations and journalists into smearing him in order to influence the 2020 Election and remove him from power. This insidious plot, which also included manufactured ballots for Joe Biden, had been covered up by Deep State operatives within the intelligence community, an effort an anonymous agent had characterized as a “secret government.” Prior, former president Barack Obama had hidden similar information, going so far as to distribute burn bags to members of his administration so that they might destroy the evidence. This larger scheme ran much further than the government, its leaders, and members of the economic elite and journalist class. Democratic Party operatives had been raided by the FBI because they had falsified voter registrations. To make matters worse, our voting machines are vulnerable to hacks and tampering. Trump characterized this as a “crisis” that necessitated both the passage of the SAVE Act by Congress and a flurry of investigations and prosecutions.

Of course, this horror story was fictional, a thrown-together, half-ass tapestry combining disproven claims, false leads, and held together by conspiracy theory threads long since disintegrated. But it didn’t matter because the point of the speech was never to convince critics. The point was to begin the process of weaving this alternate reality into the larger political imagination.

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It’s unclear whether the SAVE Act will be passed. It seems unlikely since it lacks necessary support and the GOP isn’t interested in killing the filibuster to push it through. This is a voter suppression bill, but it’s hardly the only effort being undertaken by the Trump Administration to affect elections. The Department of Homeland Security is hard at work threatening the states over a claim that 200,000 noncitizens are registered to vote. Gerrymandering has been a consistent tool of the trade and Republicans have spent years disenfranchising Black citizens. In the 2020 Election, Trump and cronies harassed public officials to falsify reports and since returning to power they’ve raided offices and seized voting machines. Even Dominion Voting Systems has been purchased by GOP election official Scott Leiendecker. Republicans have even gone so far as to question whether they will recognize Democrats who win Midterm elections, which creates the possibility of a massive constitutional crisis. And, who can forget, the attempted coup of January 6th.

The stakes are much bigger than the SAVE Act.

It’s free and fair elections themselves.

From studying authoritarians, there are many things I can tell you to expect. Increased surveillance. Oppression and violence when facing popular opposition. Widespread corruption. Self-destructive actions. White supremacist, patriarchal ideology that leads to in groups and out groups, the former enjoying all rights and protections and the latter being targeted by the state’s institutions. Colonial adventuring and destructive, unnecessary wars. And, it should go without saying, unrivaled antipathy toward democratic governance and a desire to do away with liberal democracy and elections altogether. If they can’t dispatch with elections, they will happily control them in a system that has come to be known as illiberal democracy.

Trump has now created, to use his own word choice, a “crisis” that could trigger extraordinary acts on his part, thus capitalizing on the unitary presidency that the wealth class and judiciary has realized and Trump and company have continually expanded. Here, terms and concepts become fungible. If he can claim there is a foreign threat equivalent to a wartime action coupled with internal treason, we’re not entirely sure how far things could go. This is a backstop, an ultimate act should all other means of manipulation and rigging fail.

Could he cancel or rig an election? Possibly. Political actions are fungible as we have been learning this past decade. Suddenly, out of nowhere, a president is immune to prosecution if they’re carrying out “official acts.” And, if he were to do so, we also know now that Congress would either comply with his crimes or conspire alongside him. The Supreme Court has shown a willingness to indulge this project and, should he attempt to do this, would you feel entirely confident of what the decision would be? Would you stake everything on a 5-4 decision either way? Not to mention how many court orders the Trump Administration has already defied.

Election interference is more than just canceling or rigging. Several operations are already underway as these conspiracies are redundant in nature. Marco Rubio and others have ramped up rhetoric about declaring “socialists” and the “far left” as terrorist groups and it’s not hard to imagine, as we’ve seen in other countries, and attempts here within the U.S., such as continual pushes to outlaw communists from seeking office, a situation where the GOP will try and ban leftists identifying as socialists from power. Trump and those around him have declined to say they will not use the National Guard or ICE to intimidate voters or patrol election sites. And, before Trump’s speech on Thursday, Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt refused to answer whether Trump would accept the Midterm results, which shouldn’t come as a surprise as he has refused to validate every election he’s ever been a part of until he had been victorious.

Just as we’ve seen over and over, several states will likely be plunged into legal battles following November’s results, and that’s if the election happens at all. Republicans have gained invaluable knowledge and experience with election denialism following 2020 and will build off their experiences navigating courtrooms and state-level mechanics, where several election deniers have sought power following that debacle.

Predictably, analysis following the address has missed the mark. Trump has been accused of simply re-litigating his 2020 loss and being a sore loser. Others merely criticized his delivery, which was obviously terrible, but it misses the point. What happened Thursday night was an introduction to a larger operation, which begins with sowing the seeds of an alternate reality where America’s elections can be manipulated and controlled. Relying on misrepresented and possibly even fabricated “evidence,” he began the process of normalizing this radical position and worldview. Many will dismiss it, obviously, on its face, but there will certainly be corporate media outlets and figures that take this narrative and grant it undeserved legitimacy.

We’ll see this in the predictable framing we’ve all grown used to. The GOP will push some voting restriction, or Trump will float some authoritarian action, and we’ll be inundated with sanewashing articles and columns about the need for “common sense reform” that includes infuriating wording like, “while the president’s actions could be seen as extreme, election reform is an issue needing addressed.” You’ll see bits of this insane speech littered throughout, including findings from the CIA and FBI that are spurious at best and reframed for authoritarian usage.

Again, we should not expect our elections moving forward to happen uninterrupted or to be free and fair. Perhaps they will be, and if so we should be relieved, but our eyes cannot continue to be set upon some future date where our votes will “save” us. Even if elections are held and are free and fair, we have already seen that the Democratic Party, as presently constituted, is not the “resistance” party we desire them to be and even major wins have failed to produce much in the way of reform or redirection. In fact, to even have the ability to vote, we must mobilize for collective action to counteract these plans and operations, especially should they come to fruition and interfere with our elections. It will not be enough to react if and when it happens. Such a reaction would likely chaotic, scattered, unorganized, and, possibly, futile because if there’s anything authoritarians enjoy more than ending elections it’s using the power at their disposal to crack down on dissidents, and all signs point to each one of us and our organizations potentially being designated as enemies of the state.

Trump’s address can’t be ignored. Despite social media accounts saying it was “boring” or “tired” or just “more of the same,” it constituted a new chapter in this authoritarian takeover. Once more: we are granted a gift whenever an aspiring dictator makes his intentions clear. Rather than plans and intentions transpiring behind closed doors, the public airing allows us the opportunity to predict and prepare. Trump is a buffoon, an embarrassment, and yes, any speech he gives is going to be self-indulgent and an intolerable bore. But we must listen if only for our own sake.

Some have already argued that he “can’t do this.” Many are the same voices who have told us time and time again what Trump and the authoritarians can’t do and then watched as he did exactly that. I want to believe, as much as anybody, that any attempt to subvert our elections would fail, but I am not going to simply hope that our institutions or corrupted politicians will stand in his way or that precedent will simply hold because it exists. In this period, with this man, with this fascist movement, I don’t have the privilege of believing that will simply be the case.

Work to get people elected who will promise to reform the system and change the Democratic Party, but also work beyond the ballot. This is a dangerous and unpredictable situation.

We simply can’t cede any more time or ground to the fascists.