The Trump Administration Is Wreaking Havoc on the Electoral System Before the Midterms
So far, Department of Justice-led efforts to sow chaos, even as Americans are already voting, have fallen flat.
The Trump administration has been actively undermining the electoral system in the months leading up to the midterms, according to recent reports. Attorney General Todd Blanche, known for his conspiracy theories regarding widespread noncitizen voting during the 2020 election, has been leading the Department of Justice (DOJ) in this effort.
The DOJ has taken several actions to undermine voters' confidence in the electoral process, including demanding unredacted voter rolls, issuing executive orders to take control of elections from states, raiding election offices, proposing new laws to disenfranchise millions of citizens, and claiming that noncitizens were voting in large numbers across the country.
Despite multiple bipartisan investigations showing that incidents of verified noncitizen voting are extremely rare, the DOJ has pushed ahead with these tactics. Furthermore, the DOJ has been sending threatening letters to election officials in all 50 states, warning them of potential criminal action if they fail to preserve election records for 22 days.
A federal judge had previously admonished the Trump administration for making similar threats in a different case. Experts say that while the DOJ's current legal efforts are failing, they are also intended to lay the groundwork for questioning the results of the upcoming vote. The administration's actions have been met with disdain from local and state officials, with judges ruling against Trump's efforts multiple times.
Overall, the Trump administration's attempts to interfere with the electoral process have been largely unsuccessful, but they continue to try to sow doubt and challenge the results of the vote.
Written by urgent.news from Wired's reporting — not their text. Machine-written — may contain errors; check the original before relying on it.
