Bob Bauer writes, very much in line with what I wrote in the NYT yesterday:
On August 18, Donald Trump announced on Truth Social that he would sign another executive order, following one issued in March, to “help bring honesty” to elections and to the 2026 mid-term elections in particular. According to Trump, its aims are to end to mail-in voting and to replace voting machines in favor of “watermark paper” ballots. Trump claims the legal authority to do this because it is “good for the country.” The president has no such authority, but it appears that his plans may include exploiting a particular feature of the American electoral process. That process is entrusted to election officials and administrators selected through partisan processes, and Trump is evidently seeking to make Republican state and local official support for “honest elections” a litmus test of party loyalty….
Trump could certainly call on Republican-controlled state legislatures to pass bills that support in various ways this drive against mail-in voting and voting machines. But he has other ways to apply partisan pressure in achieving these goals. As the Presidential Commission on Election Administration noted in its 2014 Report: “The United States runs its elections unlike any other country in the world,” and one of [its] distinguishing features…is the choosing of election officials and administrators through a partisan process. Some are appointed and others elected, but almost all are selected on a partisan basis.” It is complex, decentralized system run by local officials in more than 8,000 individual jurisdictions. In the last years since the “stop the steal movement” gelled, the vast majority of these officials across the country and the political divide have held firm against pressures to follow the president in his claims about “rigged” elections.
There have been a small but notable number of exceptions. Officials declined to certify lawful vote tallies until courts intervened or sought a change in the rules to give them broad discretion to do so. In one case in Colorado, Mesa County Clerk Tina Peters arranged to give unlawful access to county voting equipment to conspiracy theorists seeking to support Trump’s false claims about the 2020 election. She was prosecuted on state law charges, convicted and sentenced to nine years in prison.
These are only a few examples of how the American system of elections is vulnerable to partisan political pressure directed by a zealously committed president. The way it can all go from here under intensifying pressure from Trump can be seen in the ongoing tale of the Colorado prosecution. Trump has denounced the prosecution of Peters as a “Communist prosecution by the Radical Left Democrats to cover up their Election crimes and misdeeds in 2020.” At Trump’s direction, the Department of Justice sought to have a state court release Peters. An administration working with its party to undermine confidence in the integrity of the mid-terms can both demand Republican official support and offer protection in return. While a president cannot issue pardons for state crimes, he can ensure that the Department of Justice takes other action to aid in applying pressure to election officials. DOJ has reportedly started going down that path, exploring the options for criminally prosecuting election officials for not meeting the administration’s expectations for computer security protocols.
In broadcasting his conclusion that “VOTING MACHINES… ARE A COMPLETE AND TOTAL DISASTER” and that mail-in voting is a “SCAM,” the president is leaving no doubt that Republican election officials should share his view as members of the “Republican party” partnering with him in what he terms a “movement.” The President tried in his challenge to the 2020 election to have the department seize voting machinery to support his allegations of fraud, but while such an order was prepared, senior DOJ officials at the time successfully resisted. Those officials are now gone and those taking their places are far less likely to put up a fight in the Oval Office when the time comes. State and local election officials will likely now also face pressure to support in 2026 actions like the seizure of voting machines he could not achieve 6 years ago. The attacks on the 2020 election have already resulted in an extraordinary turnover of election officials who had enough of the “challenges, burnout, threats and harassment that [they have been] facing.”
It is impossible to identify every possible challenge to the process we may see in the months ahead. Federal and state courts will be called upon to respond as defenses are mounted under federal and state constitutional and statutory law. The success of any such legal defense will depend on the particular case and the forum in which it is presented. It is more certain that a well-coordinated attack would enable the president to seize at least the initial advantage, leaving the courts to catch up with severely destabilizing moves the administration may take, such as machine or ballot seizures and threats or actions to prosecute election officials who won’t get on the program.
Over the years, as well as at the present time, I have met and worked on a nonpartisan basis with election officials around the country, both Democrats and Republicans, who have been elected or appointed to discharge these responsibilities. I have never failed to be impressed with their professionalism. The vast majority from both parties—in red, blue, and purple states—do their jobs exceptionally well and without regard to partisan pressures. But it does appear that Donald Trump is preparing to subject them, and through them the system with its built-in partisan features, to severe pressure, and he will have federal law enforcement at his command for this purpose. The electoral process will be tested in unprecedented ways….