Hi, I'm Ari Berman, Mother Jones' national voting rights correspondent.
It was front-page news last month when Texas Democrats fled the state in an unsuccessful attempt to prevent Republicans from passing a new congressional redistricting map, on Donald Trump’s orders, that would give the GOP five new seats in the House. But that’s just one part of the Trump administration’s multifaceted plan to tilt the midterms in their favor before a single vote is cast.
I detail 10 ways that Trump and his allies are rigging the next election in my new cover story for Mother Jones.
Trump’s mid-decade gerrymandering scheme is continuing in Missouri this week and will soon include other GOP states like Florida and Indiana. The president is threatening to "get rid of MAIL-IN BALLOTS" and "Seriously Controversial VOTING MACHINES" through an executive order. He’s sending federal troops to Democratic cities like Los Angeles and Washington, DC, which voting rights advocates fear could be a prelude to the military policing the polls and ICE demanding citizenship checks at the voting booth.
"The thing I learned on January 6 was that election deniers don’t have to change the laws or the policies," Hannah Fried, executive director of All Voting Is Local, a pro-democracy group, told me. "They will take what they want by any means."
I know that the sheer volume of threats against democracy can feel overwhelming. The good news, according to election experts, is that Trump doesn’t have the power to unilaterally suspend the midterms. And pro-democracy groups are already planning to combat many of the worst-case scenarios Trump floated in 2020 and 2024, making them more prepared to face this current authoritarian moment.
I hope you’ll read my feature story to learn more about the attacks on our election system and how we can combat them.
—Ari Berman
