Donald Trump Wants to Rig
the Midterms: Count the Ways

NOVEMBER 1 – We are in the final approach to the “Midterm Elections from Hell.” All the polls indicate a shift toward the Democratic Party, possibly a wave. Even in states that have been Republican strongholds for decades, like Texas, or for almost a century, like Kansas, Democratic candidates for senator, representative or governors are competitive, and in many cases leading. But not overwhelmingly so. The Democrat-Republican polarization in the U.S. is so pronounced that most national elections lately have had very narrow margins. Although Donald Trump claims to have a mandate, he actually won with a little over a 1% advantage in the 2024 popular vote. The Republicans have an extremely small majority of four votes in the House of Representatives. Last year Trump’s “Big, Beautiful” budget bill passed with only a one-vote margin in the House and with Vice President JD Vance casting a tie-breaking vote in the Senate.

But with that the administration tripled the budget for ICE and is now requesting $1.5 trillion for the Pentagon for next year, which would be double the Biden military budget. So the Trump regime has pushed through very big changes with a very narrow margin in Congress, and now that is in danger. If the Democrats win the House, the result would be legislative paralysis for the next two years. No significant bill would pass. In the lead-up to the 2028 presidential elections, Republicans would then blame the Democrats for blocking who knows what. If Democrats win both the Senate and the House, the legislative paralysis would be the same, but there would be a lot of investigations. The Democrats would probably impeach Pete Hegseth, who a number of Republican senators think is an idiot. Trump picked him as Pentagon chief because he looks like he came straight out of “central casting” (for a Hollywood movie) and “he loves war.”

So the stage would be set for two years of parliamentary skirmishing, and a showdown in 2028. But meanwhile, Trump has been going all out to try to rig the midterms. This goes back to his call in February on the Republican-led Congress to “nationalize” and “take over” elections, pursuing his bogus claim that the Democrats “stole” the 2020 presidential election from him. He faces a problem with this, since Article I, Section 4, Clause 1 of the U.S. Constitution declares that states determine the “Time, Place and Manner of holding Elections” for federal office, unless Congress alters the regulations. So Trump is trying to do just that with the SAVE Act, which has passed the House several times but is held up in the Senate. Purportedly to ensure that only U.S. citizens can vote, which is already the case, it would create obstacles for many citizens who do not have a U.S. passport or birth certificate in their possession.

In fighting against Trump’s threats and assaults on democratic rights, the Internationalist Group gives no political support to the Democratic Party of imperialist war and racist repression that paved the way for Trump. The Democrats have for decades expanded the powers of the military, fighting endless wars from Korea and Vietnam to Iraq, Afghanistan and Ukraine. Democrat Biden not only provided the bombs for the U.S./Israel genocidal war on Gaza, Democrats took the lead in repressing protests in solidarity with the besieged Palestinians. And Democrat Obama provided the military hardware to police (armored cars, heavy weapons) that was used on protesters against racist police murder in 2014 and 2020. While politically opposing the Republicans, Democrats and all bourgeois parties, we vigorously defend democratic rights, calling for full citizenship rights – including to vote – for all immigrants.

Since Trump continues to propagate the myth about rampant vote fraud and immigrants voting in elections, it is worth enumerating the ways he is trying to rig the midterms, for reference on November 3 and in following days.

(1) First there is the gerrymandering, or altering election districts for partisan advantage, which the Supreme Court’s April 29 ruling in the Louisiana v. Callais case okayed. A 6-3 majority along the usual liberal-conservative divide held that creating a majority-black election district was unconstitutional, but creating districts for purely partisan purposes is not. Potentially that could mean eliminating almost all Southern black Congressional representation by diluting the number of Democratic voters in a district, since black people across the South vote by 85% or more for Democrats. This would recreate the “Solid South,” governed by the “Dixiecrats” in the era of Jim Crow segregation and by Republicans now. The Callais decision was effectively the last nail in the coffin of the 1964 Voting Rights Act. Not all Southern states were able to redistrict in time for this year’s midterms, but Republicans picked up about 17 seats from those that did. The Democrats did the same in California, so the net result was +12 for the Republicans.

(2) Next there are the restrictions on voting by mail. Trump has been pushing for years to end voting by mail, since mail-in votes tend to be heavily Democratic. This has taken several forms, including demanding that no mail ballots received after Election Day be counted. His latest ploy is a U.S. Postal Service “rule” that states must use a specific design of election envelope, and that the USPS only deliver mail ballots to voters checked against a DHS citizenship list. Twenty-three states sued to stop this, 12 Republican-led states supported the administration. On September 14, the Supreme Court refused to let the rule take effect before the midterm elections.

 (3) Third is the Department of Justice (DOJ) demand that states turn over their lists of voters so that the feds can run them against the notoriously inaccurate DHS immigration database called SAVE. At least 18 Republican-led states agreed to turn over the data, while the U.S. sued 30 states that did not. In the 26 cases where there have been rulings, every single judge turned the DOJ down (appeals are pending in several circuit courts). On October 9, a federal judge in Washington ruled that the whole DOJ campaign is unconstitutional. So on October 15, the DOJ sued the state of California again, this time demanding that ballots from 20,000 registered voters not be counted until they can prove citizenship. On October 28 a federal judge denied the demand, and on October 30 a Ninth Circuit Court panel denied the DOJ’s emergency appeal. The same day, a federal district judge issued a temporary restraining order ordering the government not to “threaten, intimidate or coerce state or local elections officials or workers to demand that they halt processing the ballots” on suspicion of the voter being a non-citizen. But as it goes down to the wire, Trump may still take this to the Supreme Court.

(4) Fourth is the threat to seize ballots following the elections. The administration has already done that with election records from the 2020 election in Fulton County Georgia. This was where Trump famously demanded that Georgia’s Republican secretary of state “find 11,780 votes” for him (one more than the margin he lost the state by). The feds also seized the 2020 votes of Maricopa County in Arizona, which includes Phoenix, and have demanded the 2020 votes from Wayne County, Michigan, which includes Detroit. The fact that federal troops seized ballot boxes in elections in New Orleans during the 1870s (to prevent white racists from stealing elections) has been cited as a possible precedent for seizing election records today.

(5) Fifth is the threat to have ICE and Border Patrol Agents present at voting locations, particularly in areas where there are many immigrants (like in Texas, where the ultra-corrupt ultra-rightist Republican Senate candidate Ken Paxton is behind Democrat James Talarico in the polls). Homeland Security secretary Markwayne Mullin has said that ICE agents could attempt to serve warrants at polling places, which could involve sending military or federalized National Guard troops as well. It is illegal under federal law (18 U.S. Code § 592) to put “any troops or armed men at any place where a general or special election is held.” But will that stop Trump?

(6) Sixth is the placing of 2020 “election deniers” in county clerk positions who are responsible for counting votes. The New York Times reported 25 cases of this since 2024, but there may be many more, particularly in states where they have substantial political support, like Arizona where a third of the state legislature refuses to recognize the result of the 2020 election. In any case, MAGA forces could demand recounts or try to stop recounts at the county level, as occurred in Broward County (home of the “hanging chad”)¹ and Palm Beach County, Florida (where Trump resides) in the 2020 election, when the U.S. Supreme Court intervened to award the state (and thus the presidency) to Republican George W. Bush.

(7) Seventh is to elect reliable MAGA people in state secretary of state positions who might refuse to certify the votes, although certification is mandatory, not discretionary. In the midterms, 2020 election deniers are running for secretary of state in seven states. While they wouldn’t affect this vote, if elected they could play a key role in the 2028 presidential election.

(8) Eighth is gaining control of voting machines. In 2020, MAGA operatives accused Dominion Voting Systems of transferring votes from Trump to Biden. This was false and Fox News was forced to pay $787 million for spreading this lie. However, in 2025 a Trump supporter (Scott Leiendecker) bought the company, renaming it Liberty Vote. So the Trump regime is now in a position to try to do what they falsely accused Dominion of doing.

(9) Ninth, there is the possibility of getting the Clerk of the House of Representatives to refuse to certify election results from the states, and instead certify alterative lists. This position is supposed to be apolitical, but the Speaker of the House, currently ultra-rightist Christian nationalist Mike Johnson, could simply fire the current clerk and put in someone else. In 2020 alternative slates were presented to the House from Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Nevada, New Mexico, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin, all states that voted for Democrat Biden.

(10) Tenth is the old standby of flooding the elections with cash from Trump-aligned political action committees, or PACs, to the tune of $2 billion in the midterms. The advocate of technocratic rule Elon Musk, the world’s first trillionaire, dropped over $250 million in favor of Republican candidates in October alone, including some $150 million just for Paxton in Texas, and a total of $446 million overall attempting to buy the election. And they have all sorts of “dark money” from unknown sources. Of course, the Democrats far outspent the Republicans in 2024, but Trump still won. Moreover, a lot of the dark money is for Democrats.

(11) Eleventh is taking control of mass media, like the purchase of Warner Brothers by uber-Zionist David Ellison, which gives him control of CNN, after he already took over CBS, and began purging investigative journalism programs like 60 Minutes. After years of bashing the liberal media, the Trumpers are now trying a new tack: buying it out.

(12) Twelfth, and here we are getting into serious escalation territory, there is the possibility of literally seizing the votes, possibly even before they are counted. Earlier this year, in a wide-ranging interview with the New York Times (11 January) Trump said that he “should have” seized voting machines in the 2020 elections, not only in Fulton County, Georgia but around the country, a plan that was shot down by various departments of the federal government. While Trump doubted that the National Guard was “sophisticated enough” to carry out the order, last October he set up a quick reaction force of 500 National Guard troops per state specialized in “crowd control and civil disturbances,” with 600 troops supposed to be on standby at two bases, one in Alabama and the other in Arizona.  

(13) Thirteenth is the possibility of imposing martial law in the case of protests around the vote. Trump has long wanted to impose military rule. He wanted to invoke the 1807 Insurrection Act to suppress protests over the racist police murder of George Floyd, and was only blocked because his cabinet secretaries refused. There is no one in the current Trump regime of sycophants who would stop him. More recently, he federalized National Guard troops in California, Washington, D.C., Illinois and elsewhere to try to repress protests against ICE raids. Axios (16 October) reported that MAGA operative Tina Powers and her lawyer, Trump childhood friend Peter Ticktin, had recently met with Trump to push for him to impose martial law, or activate other emergency powers, in the case of unrest, for example over the presence of armed federal agents near polling places.

(14) Fourteenth, to top everything off, there are the PEADS, the Presidential Emergency Action Documents, which are classified executive orders by which the president grants himself emergency powers. As of 2018 there were 56 in effect, according to the Brennan Center for Justice, and in 2020 possibly another four. But in reality, no one in the public actually knows how many there are or what they say. When Trump said at the end of his first presidency that “I have the right to do a lot of things that people don’t even know about,” he was telling the truth.

(15) And Fifteenth, here’s a new one: on October 23 the Trump administration filed a suit demanding that the state of Alaska not certify election results if the incumbent Republican senator Daniel S. Sullivan loses, due to the presence of the ballot of a Daniel J. Sullivan, who, it turns out, was recruited by the Democrats as a “spoiler.” The Republican state government opposed the Trump suit, and today (November 1) a federal judge ruled against it. But, again, the administration could try for a last-minute Supreme Court emergency ruling.

All of this amounts to a full-court press by the Trump regime to annul unwanted election results. This is hardly “democracy,” understood as “rule of the people.” But as Marxists have always insisted, there is no such thing as classless, pure “democracy,” and the United States is clearly a very bourgeois pseudo-democracy masking the actual dictatorship of capital. Moreover, as the Dan Sullivan caper demonstrates, the Democrats are far from being above dirty politics themselves. As Marxists, we oppose voting for any and all capitalist parties, coalitions and politicians, calling instead to built a revolutionary workers party that would seek to mobilize the tremendous power of the workers movement to defeat attempts to impose an authoritarian police-state regime.

Various liberals and “progressives” have warned, as journalist Chris Hedges wrote, that “The Next Election May be Our Last” (Chris Hedges Report, 31 August). Certainly Trump’s statement to a Christian nationalist gathering in the last stages of the 2024 campaign that if they voted him into office then, they would “never have to vote again” speaks volumes about his intentions, as do his statements that as president he “can do whatever I want.” More recently, specifically talking about the midterm elections, he told Reuters (16 January) that because his presidency has supposedly been so successful, “when you think of it, we shouldn’t even have an election.” But there are in fact limits on what Trump can do. If there is a tidal wave of Democratic votes, he would be hard-put to carry out some of these measures, but if it is close he very well might.

And when it comes to the most far-reaching, anti-democratic measures of military/police action, Trump would need active support from his backers, and from the military. In 2020, the MAGA ranks were energized and ready for action, but he didn’t have the Pentagon, despite the best efforts of Kash Patel, now FBI director, who he put in as chief of staff of the secretary of defense following the November elections. Today, Trump’s hard-core MAGA support has shrunk considerably, down to 20% of the voters in some polls, due in good part to the Iran war and his economic policies, so it is not clear he could mobilize them in the street. But even if the Democrats manage to pull off a win (big or small), that does not put an end to Trump’s authoritarian drive. The Trumpers would still be preparing for a blowout in 2028. But it’s key to keep in focus what their aims are. They want an armor-plated reactionary regime to keep the liberals out “for 100 years.”

Various left-liberals and leftists refer to Trump as a “fascist,” mainly as an epithet to say very repressive. The Internationalist Group and League for the Fourth International have insisted that, while there are fascistic elements in the MAGA movement, what Trump & Co. are seeking is to erect a “Bonapartist”² regime, a “strong state” that would preserve much of the forms of a bourgeois democracy, while filling them with the content of authoritarian rule. (See “Fascism, Bonapartism and Donald Trump,” The Internationalist No. 75, January-May 2025.) If they wanted an outright military dictatorship, why go to the trouble of stacking the courts, restricting voting rolls and all the complicated legal rigamarole aimed at disguising the fact that behind the screen they are building up a police-state regime? This underscores the importance of a proletarian defense of democratic rights – independent of the bourgeois parties – now before police-state rule is consolidated.  ■

To contact the Internationalist Group and the League for the Fourth International, send e-mail to: internationalistgroup@msn.com

Return to THE INTERNATIONALIST GROUP Home Page