How it will happen - The path to stealing an election
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How it will happen - The path to stealing an election
Election Day through early January will be chaos. Here’s what you need to know.
Reminder that until Tuesday you can get 40 percent off American Doom subscriptions to support our work in these crucial coming months. That work includes scoops today at Wired and Zeteo that I’ll detail a bit below.
Also, you can hear more of my discussion with Georgia Public Broadcasting’s Orlando Montoya about my book, If I am Coming to Your Town, Something Terrible Has Happened here. Some of that interview can also be heard on Montoya’s Narrative Edge podcast. You can order the book here. Now, on to the news… - jg
From now through early January, Donald Trump and his Justice Department will lead sweeping efforts to overturn the results of next week’s elections.
For months, the Trump administration and DOJ have been responsible for numerous election interference actions that have little precedent in American history. The FBI’s seizure of ballots in Fulton County, Georgia was the first time the federal government has taken election records from a state and local government.
Now, Trump, his DOJ and other federal government agencies will attempt to carry out more historic acts of interference in next week’s election, including seizing ballots or voting machines, sending troops or federal law enforcement to polling locations, and attempting to refuse to seat Democrats when they arrive in Washington on January 3 to take their seats in the Senate and House.
Before I get to a the timeline of possible and highly likely events, a few items that you should be aware of.
Elon Musk’s political lawyers have started a new, national election denier organization that is staffed by the current Florida Secretary of State, the president of Cleta Mitchell’s Election Integrity Network, and current and former Georgia election officials.
Longtime Doom readers will recognize the names Janice Johnston and Julie Adams. For years, Johnston oversaw turmoil and partisanship as she helmed the Georgia State Election Board, pushing the body to investigate Trump’s lies about election fraud. Now, she’s on the board of the new, Musk-linked organization, called the Association of State and Local Election Officials.
Julie Adams remains in her position on the Fulton County election board, despite reporting at Doom and elsewhere that she works for the Election Integrity Network. Adams is also a board member of the new Musk-linked election denial group.
This bodes poorly for democracy. Musk is already the largest disseminator of election disinformation in the country, and this cycle has spent more on Republican candidates than anyone in American history. That his political lawyers have started a group that aims to take pro-Trump “election integrity” policies nationwide shows that he’s at least tentatively involved in the long game of anti-democratic electioneering on the part of Republican election officials. You can read more about these developments in a story out today at Wired.
For years, those officials, including Johnston and Adams, have worked to sow doubt in and challenge the results of any election that didn’t result in Republican wins. American Doom has been at the forefront of investigating these officials, especially those at the county level. Now, we’ve learned that one of those officials — the current executive director of the Georgia State Election Board, James Mills — has been granted quasi-legal permission by the Justice Department to access the 2020 ballots seized by the FBI from Fulton County in January.
This is an important development because it shows that the DOJ is in contact with election denial allies, at least in Georgia and probably elsewhere. The emails we’ve obtained show Mills discussing accessing the seized ballots with Trent McCotter, a deputy attorney general at the DOJ. McCotter is currently helping to lead the agency’s lawsuits against California that seeks to preemptively throw out as many 20,000 ballots under very questionable claims that they’ll be submitted by noncitizens.
Previously, Mills hired a private investigator to probe questionable claims of fraud and problems with Georgia’s election systems, and was behind efforts to have the DOJ and Homeland Security effectively prohibit the use of Georgia’s voting machines.
So, Musk’s political lawyers are doubling down on the election denial movement, and the DOJ — which under Trump has become the government arm of that movement — is working with the MAGA-dominated Georgia State Election Board.
Taken by themselves these developments would be enough to predict significant federal interference in next week’s elections. But there is much, much more than that.
Now to Election Day
For the next several days, the DOJ will continue filing in federal court to prevent states from counting certain ballots under questionable claims of possible voting by noncitizens. These claims will continue to be used to argue that the midterm elections were beset with widespread fraud and that the results can’t be trusted.
Trump and Republicans will further argue that, because the DOJ didn’t get its way on sequestering alleged noncitizen ballots in California, Washington state and elsewhere, the results of next week’s elections should not be certified.
Trump, the DOJ and Republicans will also make this argument for the results of the senate race in Alaska if and when they lose their lawsuit there. Trump and Republicans are only focused on Alaska because of tight margins in the race for one of the state’s seats in the Senate. A Democratic win in that race could tip the balance of power in the Senate away from Republicans.
Alaska is an outlier for the Trump administration’s attempts to interfere in the midterms. While the case there focuses on the alleged illegality of a candidate, most of the claims that will be used by Trump and Republicans to say the election was stolen focus on noncitizen voting and mail-in ballot fraud.
Election day
An army of Republican-trained poll watchers (who have already acted aggressively in Georgia), election denial activists like Scott Presler, and more than 1,000 DOJ election monitors will be on the frontlines on Nov. 3 amplifying every minor problem imaginable to claim that the election is being stolen.
These claims will be seized upon by Trump and Republican candidates and state and local officials to challenge results even as they are being counted. Combined with claims of widespread voting by noncitizens, routine Election Day issues like voting machines going down, long lines at polling locations, and mail-in ballots being counted after in-person voting ends will be used to argue for recounts and audits, and for states not to certify results themselves.
Also on Election Day, the DOJ may begin asking magistrate judges for search warrants to seize ballots or voting machines. Such a move would mark the first time in American history that the federal government has attempted to seize election records in an ongoing election, as researchers at William and Mary Law School have pointed out.
The DOJ could also make less formal requests for ballots, ballot envelopes or other election records, as well as voting machines, in the hopes that friendly state and local election offices will simply hand over the materials.
Election lawyers and other officials and experts from both Democratic and Republican presidential administrations have warned judges not to approve search warrants for ballots. Doing so would allow the Trump administration to interrupt the chain of custody for ballots and other materials that is required for states to certify results. Those certification deadlines come days or weeks after Election Day, depending on the state.
While ballots themselves would not be able to prove the Justice Department’s claims of widespread voting by noncitizens — an exceedingly rare occurrence that has never affected the outcome of any federal election — seizing ballot envelopes would theoretically allow the DOJ to identify alleged noncitizen voters. Regardless, if Trump’s DOJ successfully seizes ballots, ballot envelopes or voting machines, it would allow the Trump administration to make virtually any claim they want in order to challenge the results.
Already, current FBI officials are warning that the agency could be asked to seize ballots and voting machines, MS NOW reported Wednesday.
The aftermath
On Election Day or immediately after, the Republican National Committee, election denial groups and the Justice Department will file scores of lawsuits demanding to throw out hundreds of thousands or millions of ballots. Like ballot seizures, these lawsuits could also tie up certification and prevent the results from being finalized as we inch closer to January 3.
If states haven’t certified results by January due to federal interference, the U.S. will be in the midst of a full-blown constitutional crisis with both parties claiming their candidates won and potentially sending them to Washington to take their seats. Once there, things will get even messier.
Regardless of state certification of results, it is possible that Republicans will object to the seating of their Democratic counterparts, a process outlined in my Zeteo story from a few months back. Election and constitutional law experts as well as some Democrats have poo-poohed this theory for years, both publicly and to me during the reporting process for various stories. I believe that many academics and Democratic higher-ups are mistaken in discounting the odds that Republicans will object to seating Democrat candidates who win their elections.
As far back as the 2015 Iowa primary, Trump has refused to concede any election that he has lost. There is no indication that will change now.
If mass challenges to the seating of new Democratic members of the Senate and House temporarily allow Republicans to claim a majority in both chambers, we’ll be further entrenched in a constitutional crisis.
From here, it’s not clear what would happen next. The courts have never had a role in this specific area of determining political power in the legislative branch. We would be in completely uncharted territory. (There were two previous instances of parties taking power through contested elections — one in the 1980s and another in the 1830s — but both resolved themselves before it rose to the level of something like the Supreme Court.)
The upshot
Massive, overwhelming wins by Democrats are the best way to combat all of the forthcoming attempts by Trump and Republicans to undo the will of the American people and take power by quasi-legal means post-election or parliamentary maneuvers on January 3. The courts will play an important but secondary role in protecting the U.S. from further democratic backsliding.
There are many unknowns heading into Tuesday, but one thing that is all but certain is that the election will not end on Election Night. Not only will all of the results not be known, but lawsuits, recount and audit demands and Trump’s vast interference efforts all ensure that the period between Tuesday and January 3 will be as chaotic — if not more — than the lead-up to January 6, 2021.
Let’s hope things turn out differently.
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