Election manipulation in the USA: From “gerrymandering” to theft of voting machines

The US Democrats were able to breathe a sigh of relief for a brief moment last week. The fact that the Supreme Court rejected Donald Trump's attempts to interfere in the postal voting process gave at least a small reason for hope in this tense time before the midterms. Maybe, it seemed, Trump wouldn't get a free pass after all for his well-documented desire to cling to power by any means possible.

But the many Democrats inside and outside the party of the same name, who are concerned about the integrity of the election and democracy, did not give up. On Friday, California Gov. Gavin Newsom signed a package of 13 laws designed to protect California's elections from any interference.

The measures include a ban on confiscating ballot papers, voter lists or voting machines before the election results are certified. The underlying fear is that Trump's Justice Department, for example, could seize documents or technology under some pretext before all the votes are counted. The fear is not unfounded: Last year, a Republican sheriff in California confiscated 650,000 ballots on suspicion of false counting.

Another law prohibits arrests in the immediate vicinity of polling stations unless they are based on suspicion of election manipulation. The law aims to prevent the Department of Homeland Security or ICE immigration police from abducting eligible voters without specific suspicion of a violation of the law before they can cast their vote.

However, Newsom's initiative is just one example of the growing nervousness ahead of November 3rd. “There is a mood of civil war,” said California law professor Justin Levitt. Nobody trusts nobody. The fact that energized Republicans will pose as officials and try to steal voting machines is a concrete fear that election workers across the country are being prepared for.

Uncertainty has been in the air since Trump doubted the 2020 election result and continues to doubt it today. Although both courts and reputable news organizations have consistently upheld the security and legitimacy of the electoral system, Trump has sowed skepticism and confusion with his ongoing attacks on the election.

The mood is constantly fed by actions like Trump's attempt to bureaucratize postal voting. It was neither the first nor the last measure by which the government undermined voters' trust in the electoral process. The Justice Department has tried to force a number of states to disclose their voter lists through a lawsuit.

Federal officials are specifically tasked with combing voter lists for people who are not eligible to vote. The evidence is extremely thin. As the New York Times reports, proven cases of election fraud remain at a negligible level in the USA.

The government's attempts to undermine the midterms so far correspond to a clear strategy that the think tank Center for American Progress has outlined in a detailed dossier. The long-term goal is to consolidate the “imperial presidency” and finally undermine American democracy.

The Center's 15 points of strategy include diminishing voter power through gerrymandering, using the Department of Justice and Homeland Security to intimidate voters, and employing election skeptics in election oversight agencies. The latter has already occurred on a massive scale across the country, according to new research from Atlantic Magazine.

The Center cites the deployment of the military and the declaration of a national emergency as the last possible measures by the government to invalidate the election. Steps that so far seem extreme, but the Trump government can definitely be trusted. Defense Minister Hegseth, for example, avoided questions about whether he would be willing to do so. And Trump has repeatedly expressed regret for not taking action in 2020.

At least the Democrats are now prepared. Last week, the Democratic party organizations in the individual states announced the so-called “New Battlefield Project”. More than 10,000 volunteers are expected to counteract attempted election manipulation or intimidation within the project on election day. At the same time, independent groups like Indivisible, with a network of hundreds of thousands, are preparing to respond to attempts at manipulation on election day.

The tactics they plan to use come in large part from the resistance to ICE in Minnesota earlier this year. If they find themselves confronted by armed troops or government officials in front of the contested polling stations on election day, dangerous situations could arise. The United States is preparing for a midterm election the likes of which this country has never experienced. At least Jane Kleeb, director of the New Battlefield Project, admitted that things could stay quiet. Of course, she didn't want to put her hand in the fire.