The 2026 midterms will be a stress test for whether election outcomes are determined by the will of the voters or by who controls the machinery of elections. President Donald Trump and his allies have pursued a sequence of actions that, taken together, mirror strategies of democratic backsliding elsewhere, reshaping the rules, the referees, and the information environment to tilt the playing field before a single vote is cast.
This playbook is not unique to the United States. I spent more than two decades working on elections in countries where – time and time again – democracy was eroded by those in power and where seizing control of elections was a key feature in the authoritarian playbook. For example, in Hungary, after decades of democratic norms, Viktor Orbán’s government gradually seized control of election administration, the courts, and the media — not in one dramatic move, but step-by-step. Independent election oversight bodies were weakened, the judiciary was stacked with loyalists, media outlets were consolidated under government-friendly ownership, and the rules governing elections were changed to favor the ruling party. Each change alone seemed small, but together they created a system where the playing field was heavily skewed toward the ruling party and voters’ voices were silenced.
The warning from Hungary and other backsliding countries illustrates a consistent pattern: when leaders make their intentions explicit and begin coordinating an election takeover in public view, the window of time to defend democracy rapidly begins to shrink.
That is precisely the moment the United States is facing now. In July 2024, even before he was elected to his second term, President Donald Trump told an audience that “in four years, you don’t have to vote again. We’ll have it fixed so good, you’re not gonna have to vote.” More recently, he said, “We should take over the voting… The Republicans ought to nationalize the voting.” Taken together, these statements indicate a goal of transferring authority over elections, which the Constitution deliberately vests in the states, to the executive branch.
Whether that transfer of authority succeeds will depend in significant part on how effectively the relevant institutional actors — courts, state and local officials, Congress, and civil society — respond to each step as it unfolds.
A Familiar Pattern
The pattern of President Trump’s rhetoric and actions affecting the United States’ election process largely tracks the authoritarian playbook seen in countries undergoing democratic backsliding. While it has at times been a clumsy effort that trips over constitutional limits and is blocked by judicial and political resistance, taken as a whole, the Trump administration’s actions are consistent with an election takeover pattern that consists of five steps:
- Lay the groundwork by spreading false election narratives
- Install loyalists who act on those false narratives
- Rewrite the rules and weaponize the executive branch against the system
- Create an intimidating environment around voting
- Attack the count and certification
The Five-Part Election Takeover Plan
Step 1: Prepare the Ground with False Election Narratives
The first step has been to flood the information space with claims of voter fraud and noncitizen voting — not to win in court, but to create a justification for later intervention. Controlling elections begins by trying to convince the public the system cannot be trusted.
This has been a core part of President Trump’s messaging for over a decade. He claimed fraud after the 2012 election, warned in 2016 that the system would be “rigged,” and, after winning, insisted millions of illegal votes were cast against him. In 2020, those claims escalated into sweeping allegations of a stolen election, forming the basis for the January 6 insurrection. His baseless claims failed from a legal perspective, as Trump and his allies lost all but one of more than 60 cases.
Now, in the past month, Trump has escalated his false election fraud narratives. This has included exaggerated and unsupported claims of widespread foreign interference by China and Iran, which some fear could be used as a pretext to declare a national security emergency and assert greater executive control over elections, which would violate the Constitution.
These false narratives serve a consistent function: to create public justification for later intervention. By trying to convince people to believe the system is broken, the administration lowers the threshold for accepting extraordinary measures to ‘fix’ it.
Step 2: Replace Impartial Officials with Political Loyalists
In 2020, one of the most important guardrails was that public servants and elected leaders — Republicans and Democrats alike — honored their legal obligations. Justice Department leadership refused to legitimize false fraud claims. Cybersecurity officials called the election the most secure in American history. State and federal officials chose the rule of law over political pressure. And on January 6, 2021, Vice President Mike Pence upheld his constitutional duty to certify the Electoral College results after a violent mob stormed the Capitol in an attempt to overturn a lawful election.
This time, instead of relying on impartial professionals, the administration has moved to place individuals who have publicly questioned or sought to overturn the 2020 results into roles that directly influence election policy, voter data litigation, and federal election security coordination.
In the White House, attorney Kurt Olsen has been brought in to oversee “election security” while continuing to push investigations rooted in the 2020 election lies. At the Department of Justice, the Civil Rights Division — the office charged with protecting voting rights — is now led by Harmeet Dhillon, who has a public record of advancing claims that the election was “stolen.” She is joined by lawyers tied to election-denier efforts and post-2020 ballot challenges, including Christopher Gardner and Megan Frederick, now involved in litigation seeking voter records and targeting voter rolls.
Eric Neff, who promoted conspiracy theories about voting machines, has surfaced in DOJ election cases, and Maureen Riordan, who came from a legal group that sued election officials, recently served as acting chief of the Voting Section. At the Department of Homeland Security, which is supposed to defend election infrastructure from real foreign threats, Heather Honey, a leading promoter of false claims about 2020, now serves as Deputy Assistant Secretary for Election Integrity. She works under another election denier, David Harvilicz, who serves as Assistant Secretary Cyber, Infrastructure, Risk, and Resilience.
The effect is to place officials in roles where impartiality has historically been the decisive safeguard at precisely the moment that safeguard is most likely to be tested.
Step 3: Change the Rules Using False Election Narratives Before Votes are Cast
This is where the United States is now. Step 3 is the most consequential phase because it reshapes the electorate, the referees, and the information environment — all before voting begins. And it is all justified by the same false narrative: that the system is riddled with “fraud” and, therefore, extraordinary measures are needed to “secure” it.
To carry out Step 3, there are six main efforts the Trump administration is taking and will likely take:
- Demanding that GOP politicians pick their voters: After direct calls from President Trump for aggressive mid-decade redistricting, gerrymandering has become an explicit strategy to lock in a structural House majority. Rather than waiting for the normal post-census cycle in 2031, the President and his allies in GOP-controlled states have pushed for redrawing congressional maps now to maximize partisan advantage. Mid-decade gerrymandering has happened before, but it is extremely rare and has never before been pursued at this scale or under the direct direction of a sitting president. This push has triggered a broader redistricting arms race, with some Democratic-controlled states pursuing aggressive map changes of their own — deepening a cycle in which both parties use line-drawing to entrench power rather than compete for voters. To complicate matters further, a forthcoming Supreme Court ruling in Louisiana v. Callais could supercharge the gerrymandering wars as mid-term election deadlines rapidly approach.
- Changing who can vote and how to vote: President Trump has pushed false fraud narratives in his pursuit of controlling who can vote, including calling for documentary proof-of-citizenship requirements, executive control over voter registration screening, strict voter ID rules, and ending mail-in and online registration. As now former Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem put it, the administration is trying to make sure they “have the right people voting, electing the right leaders.” At the same time, the Trump administration has used the same fraud narrative in an attempt to control how people vote, pushing for restricting mail-in voting and requiring ballots to be received by election day, cutting back early voting, and limiting drop boxes, which would all make participation harder for working voters, low-income voters, and rural communities who cannot easily vote in person on a single weekday.
Trump first tried to make these sweeping changes through his March 2025 executive order, which has largely been blocked by courts as unconstitutional. Now he and his allies are trying to push these measures through in Congress with the SAVE, SAVE America, and MEGA Acts. While these federal bills have little chance of being signed into law, many GOP-controlled states are advancing similarly restrictive policies. For example, Florida is moving its own version of the SAVE America Act, tightening voter identification and citizenship verification requirements and barring student and retirement center IDs at the polls.
- Interfering with and undermining the referees: President Trump has directed officials to sue, investigate, and in some cases raid the offices of professional election officials. Federal litigation targeting state voter rolls in 29 states and Washington D.C. (based on false claims that there are large numbers of noncitizens on voter roles), the FBI raid of the Fulton County Election Office and FBI and DHS investigations in Maricopa County (both based on debunked claims of fraud in 2020), as well as Tulsi Gabbard’s Office of the Director of National Intelligence’s seizure of vote-counting machines in Puerto Rico (with no clear justification) together signal that election officials themselves can become targets of executive branch power – a dynamic that in other countries has often produced compliance among election administrators.
Layered on top of this is the continuing wave of threats and harassment against election officials and poll workers, which are driven by years of Trump’s false election narratives. The result has been extremely high turnover, difficulty recruiting replacements, and understaffed election offices. Issue One’s recent report found that, since November 2020, 50% of chief election officials in the West have left office, with 76% citing personal reasons, often due to the increased scrutiny, stress, intimidation, and harassment they face.
The effect of these actions is to place election officials under intense federal scrutiny and legal pressure. As the 2020 Georgia call to “find the votes” illustrates, Trump has been willing to directly pressure state officials to alter certified results, and these actions create the conditions for that kind of pressure to work.
- Restricting what voters learn about their electoral choices: We’re already seeing moves to shape what voters see and hear. Federal pressure on the media — including unusual FCC scrutiny of and intervention in broadcast content and helping administration-aligned allies acquire reputable national news outlets — shows a willingness to use government power to influence the narrative about candidates and elections. This kind of tactic, common in authoritarian contexts, is likely to grow without sustained public pushback.
- Limiting voter choice by sidelining the opposition: One of the most common tools used by authoritarians is to use “lawfare” to weaken opponents. Trump has already directed DOJ to investigate and prosecute political opponents. These tactics are likely to escalate in 2026 and expand to targeting candidates in competitive Senate, House, and statewide races. Partisan enforcement of ballot-access rules, campaign regulations, or even criminal statutes could disqualify, harass, or financially drain opposition candidates tilting the playing field long before a single vote is cast.
Step 4: Control the Environment During Voting
Step 4 concerns the election period itself: direct interference with voting as it takes place. There are already signs of the groundwork being laid to do so.
National Guard deployments to Democratic-leaning cities, federal law-enforcement actions on election offices in Fulton County, Maricopa County, and Puerto Rico, and calls for ICE agents to “surround the polls come November,” by former Senior Trump administration officials together indicate that the conditions for direct federal interference during voting are being established. The effect of these moves would be predictable: a heavy federal security presence to create an atmosphere of coercion that intimidates voters and dampens turnout, particularly among voters of color, in targeted areas.
As noted above, exaggerated claims of foreign interference could also serve as a pretext to declare a national emergency and assert presidential authority over election operations while votes are being cast.
While any of the above actions would likely be illegal and unconstitutional, the strategy doesn’t necessarily depend on winning in court in real time. It depends on disruption and intimidation. There is a risk that, by the time the courts step in, the damage to public confidence, willingness to turn out to vote, and pressure on local officials could already be done. Election officials across the country are actively preparing for these scenarios.
Step 5: Attack the Count and Certification
Step 5 follows a pattern already documented in 2020: contesting the count, discrediting the outcome, and pressuring officials to block or delay certification. The same claims — fraud, rigged systems, illegitimate voters — that failed in court in 2020 could be deployed again. But this time with administration officials in place who may be more receptive to them and have a history of pushing false election fraud claims.
It starts with a premature declaration of victory, before millions of valid ballots, particularly mail-in ballots in close races, are counted, so that every subsequent shift in the totals can be labeled suspicious. That is followed by a wave of lawsuits in the closest races, aimed less at winning on the merits than at freezing the process. As The Atlantic’s David Graham has warned, election night could be pushed into crisis mode, with heavy security around counting centers and routine tabulation recast as suspicious.
Certification — a ministerial step that makes results official — is another key pressure point. Local and state officials are required to certify lawful results, not relitigate them. But in recent cycles we’ve seen attempts to delay or refuse certification based on unfounded claims of “irregularities.” The same pressure could extend to Congress, where members could face demands to refuse to seat duly elected winners, as occurred on January 6, 2021. In 2020, some officials refused; the question for 2026 is whether those now in place will do the same.
Why This Strategy Can Fail
Even with these grave threats, there are reasons for optimism. The U.S. has several guardrails that protect elections from the types of democratic backsliding described above. Most importantly, constitutional authority for running elections is vested in the states, not the executive branch — meaning the system is structurally decentralized in ways that make capture significantly harder than in comparative examples. Courts have also largely held, applying a basic evidentiary standard that has blocked repeated attempts to use election fraud claims to undermine legitimate results and weaponize the legal system. And election officials, despite sustained pressure, harassment, lawsuits, and high turnover, have continued to prepare and plan for a range of scenarios, including executive branch interference.
Underlying all of this is a public that has so far remained committed to the legitimacy of elections: polling consistently shows large majorities willing to accept results even if their preferred candidate loses, broad bipartisan confidence that ballots will be counted fairly, and more than nine in ten Americans rejecting political violence as a response to electoral outcomes. This baseline of public trust is what allows the other guardrails to function.
Comparative experience reinforces this point. These guardrails are strongest when they are reinforced by broad, cross-sector coalitions – across civic, legal, media, and institutional actors – they are substantially more likely to hold. For example, in Poland and Senegal, it was the combination of institutional integrity and coordinated civil society mobilization that proved decisive, not any single factor alone.
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In past cycles of U.S. elections, these guardrails held because individuals honored their institutional obligations when it mattered most. But the comparative record is clear: they are far more likely to withstand sustained pressure when supported by broad coalitions rather than relying on a few individuals alone.
The question is not whether elections will be tested – that battle is already underway. The question is whether the guardrails will hold.
