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Washington, DC \u2013<\/strong> President Donald Trump has long been fixated on how voting in the United States is administered, claiming without evidence that his 2020 presidential election loss was the result of malfeasance.<\/p>\n Fast forward more than five years, and Trump is set to be in office for one of the most consequential midterm races in recent times.<\/p>\n list of 3 items<\/span>end of list<\/span><\/section>\n It is unclear how the US president might involve himself in the midterms, which will determine whether his Republican Party maintains control over both the House of Representatives and the Senate.<\/p>\n The results will decide whether Trump can continue to enact his agenda with relative ease or if he will face congressional pushback at every turn.<\/p>\n The Republican leader\u2019s approach so far appears to be twofold, according to Michael Traugott, a political scientist and professor emeritus at the University of Michigan.<\/p>\n On one hand, Trump has embarked on a messaging campaign to cast doubt on any results that seem unfavourable.<\/p>\n \u201cPart of what the Trump administration is doing is trying to create the impression of fraud and mismanagement in local elections so that they can argue eventually that some outcomes are not legitimate or real or should be discounted,\u201d Traugott told Al Jazeera.<\/p>\n On the other hand, Trump also appears to be conducting a stress test of pre-existing election law, to see how much the federal government can intervene.<\/p>\n \u201cThere are actions that he could take or try to take, which would likely be stopped in the courts,\u201d Traugott said.<\/p>\n \u201cThe behaviour in the Trump administration is to appeal, appeal, appeal, until it gets to the Supreme Court,\u201d he added. \u201cI imagine that would be their strategy.\u201d<\/p>\n Trump has been explicit about his desire to assert more federal control over the election, saying in early February that \u201cRepublicans ought to nationalise the voting\u201d.<\/p>\n He pointed to what he described as \u201chorrible corruption on elections\u201d in some parts of the US.<\/p>\n The US Constitution assigns states the power to determine the \u201ctimes, places and manner\u201d of elections for federal office.<\/p>\n Congress, meanwhile, has the ability to \u201cmake or alter\u201d rules related to voting through legislation or, in extreme cases, constitutional amendments.<\/p>\n \u201cIt\u2019s important to remember that, in the United States, we don\u2019t really have national elections. We have a series of state and local elections that are held more or less on the same day,\u201d Traugott explained.<\/p>\n The president, meanwhile, has no constitutional role in how elections are administered, beyond signing any legislation Congress passes.<\/p>\n Still, it is possible for a president to leverage executive branch agencies that interact with state election administration. Trump too has explicitly blurred the lines between federal and state power.<\/p>\n In the Oval Office on February 3, he told reporters, \u201cA state is an agent for the federal government in elections. I don\u2019t know why the federal government doesn\u2019t do them anyway.\u201d<\/p>\n His statements were swiftly condemned by voting rights groups.<\/p>\n The League of Women Voters, a voting rights group founded in 1920, called Trump\u2019s remarks a \u201ccalculated effort to dismantle the integrity of the electoral system as we know it\u201d.<\/p>\n \u201cTime and again, the President\u2019s claims of widespread fraud have been disproven by nonpartisan election officials, the courts, and the Department of Justice,\u201d it added.<\/p>\n Despite Trump\u2019s claims, voter fraud is exceedingly rare in the US, and any isolated instances typically have little effect on election outcomes.<\/p>\n Even the Heritage Foundation, the conservative think tank behind the Trump-aligned Project 2025, has documented an inconsequential rate of voter fraud in its catalogue of cases running back to 1982.<\/p>\n An analysis from the centre-left Brookings Institution found that fraudulent votes failed to amount to one ten-thousandth of a percentage point of the ballots cast in states where elections tend to be the closest.<\/p>\n For example, Arizona is a perennial battleground in presidential elections, but it has seen just 36 reported cases of voter fraud since 1982, out of more than 42 million ballots cast. That put the percentage of fraud at 0.0000845, according to the analysis.<\/p>\n Nevertheless, the Trump administration has heaped pressure on the Department of Justice to increase its probes into alleged voter fraud.<\/p>\n The attorney general has demanded that 47 states and Washington, DC, a federal district, hand over their complete voter registration lists, according to a tally from the Brennan Center for Justice, a nonpartisan policy group.<\/p>\n Eleven states have complied or agreed to comply. The Trump administration has launched lawsuits against the 20 others that refused.<\/p>\n The Department of Justice has also stepped up its cooperation with the Department of Homeland Security to identify non-citizen voters.<\/p>\n Some critics have even accused the Justice Department of deploying coercive tactics to fulfil its demands for state voter information.<\/p>\n On January 24, for instance, US Attorney General Pam Bondi wrote a letter to Minnesota Governor Tim Walz suggesting three \u201ccommon sense solutions\u201d to \u201crestore the rule of law\u201d in the state.<\/p>\n One of those proposals was to allow the Justice Department to \u201caccess voter rolls\u201d.<\/p>\n Bondi\u2019s remarks came after a federal immigration crackdown in Minnesota had turned deadly, resulting in two on-camera shootings of US citizens.<\/p>\n While her letter did not directly offer a quid pro quo \u2013 access to the rolls in exchange for ending the crackdown \u2013 critics said the message it sent was clear. Arizona Secretary of State Adrian Fontes, for instance, called the letter tantamount to \u201cblackmail\u201d.<\/p>\n But four days later, on January 28, the Justice Department went even further, seizing voting records and ballots in a raid on an election facility in Fulton County, Georgia.<\/p>\n The state has been a sore point for Trump: Georgia voted for a Democratic presidential candidate for the first time in more than two decades during the 2020 race.<\/p>\n At the time, Trump infamously pressured Georgia\u2019s secretary of state to \u201cfind more votes\u201d following his loss. He has spread rumours about fraud in Georgia\u2019s election system ever since.<\/p>\n Local officials condemned the January raid as a \u201cflagrant constitutional violation\u201d, saying in a lawsuit that an affidavit submitted by the FBI to obtain a search warrant relied on hypotheticals.<\/p>\n In other words, it failed to establish probable cause that any crime had occurred, Fulton County officials argued.<\/p>\n That affidavit also revealed the investigation was the direct result of a referral from Kurt Olsen, who was appointed to a White House role as Trump\u2019s head of election security in October.<\/p>\n Before entering the White House, Olsen led unsuccessful legal challenges to the 2020 election results, in what Trump dubbed the \u201cStop the Steal\u201d campaign.<\/p>\n Fulton County officials noted \u201cmultiple courts have sanctioned Olsen for his unsubstantiated, speculative claims about elections\u201d.<\/p>\n The apparent role of Tulsi Gabbard, the director of national intelligence, in the election investigations has also raised questions.<\/p>\n Gabbard was present at the Fulton County raid, with Trump later telling reporters that she was \u201cworking very hard on trying to keep the election safe\u201d.<\/p>\n Who authorised her presence, however, was the subject of contradictory statements from the Trump administration.<\/p>\n Gabbard said she had been sent on behalf of Trump, even though the president attempted to distance himself from the raid. The Justice Department later said Bondi had requested Gabbard\u2019s presence. Gabbard finally said both Trump and Bondi had asked her to attend.<\/p>\n Whatever the case, Traugott, the political scientist, said that her presence at the scene was highly unusual.<\/p>\n \u201cThe director of national intelligence has been associated with observation and information gathering from foreign countries, not from domestic entities,\u201d Traugott explained. \u201cSo historically, this is without precedent\u201d.<\/p>\nRecommended Stories <\/h2>\n
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