Poll counters like the usually reliable Norman Podhoretz see gains for the Democrats in the forthcoming 2026 House election.  Here’s a consensus count on their current thinking about those races:

  Democrats 205

  Republicans  208  

Further, among the remaining “too close to call” races the numbers lean toward the Democrats.

I’ve seen little commentary about what is omitted from the surveys: legal and illegal theft of votes.  There are three major sources for potential robbery:

1) Trump committed Secretaries of State.  

A March, 2024 CBS TV report by John J. Martin, University of Virginia research assistant professor of law says: 

“They may be the most important government officials you can’t name. Their decisions have the potential to alter election results. Scholars have referred to them as the ‘guardians of the democratic process‘.

“Who are these unknown, but essential, officials? “State secretaries of state [who] serve their individual states, overseeing numerous crucial state functions.”

Experience in 2024 suggests that holders of this office are pretty principled people, and their staffs are even more-so.  They tend not to be cheaters.  But two additional observations are required:

First, strict enforcement of the law can lead to rejection of a legitimately cast ballot.  If I’m registered as “Michael James Miller”, but sign in at a polling place as “Michael J. Miller”, my ballot can be legally rejected. And if I moved since I registered without re-registering, my ballot can be rejected as well.

Second, it only takes a few cheaters among the 50 AGs to change the national outcome of what looks like another tight race.  

Further, the actual counting of votes takes place locally, beginning in a precinct.  Things aren’t as bad as they once were:  Means of Ascent, Robert Caro’s second volume on LBJ, makes it irrefutably clear that Johnson stole his first Senate race.  Things have been cleaned up since those days, but clever cheaters find ways to subvert honest policy makers.

2) What About Voter Registration?  

The process of registering voters is even more complex.  Numerous requirements can prevent a citizen from voting.  A National Conference of State Legislatures (NCSL) report characterizes the U.S. as: 

“a highly decentralized election administration system. County or municipal officials typically do the rubber-meets-the-road functions of running an election, but the state and federal government each have roles, too.” 

The details are dizzying.  If you want to check them out, go to the website.

NCSL’s report continues:

“The result is that no two states administer elections in exactly the same way, and quite a bit of variation exists in election administration even within states. Each state’s election administration structure and procedures grew organically over many decades as times changed and administering an election became an increasingly complex task. 

“The diversity of election administration structures between and within states can be seen as a positive or a negative quality, depending on who is looking, and when. Critics say the level of local control can lead to mismanagement and inconsistent application of the law. This often comes into focus in large federal elections, especially when the media and the public focus on how different the voting experience can be depending on where a voter lives. 

“Even so, the structure of election administration in the states today is still largely decentralized and contains a great deal of variation, although far less so than a century ago.”

We’ve come a long way since the Chicago Daley Machine and its Democratic and Republican counterparts in other major American cities…and we have a long way to go.  As hackers daily remind us, computers make the whole thing more complicated.

3) Don’t Forget Voter Intimidation!

In the recent past, there have been local versions of right wing thugs changing the outcome of Federal elections.  Al Gore was defeated by them in Florida.  A Wikipedia report offers a skeleton account of what happened: 

“The Florida vote was ultimately settled in Bush’s favor by a margin of 537 votes out of 5,825,043 cast when the U.S. Supreme Court, in Bush v. Gore, stopped a recount that had been initiated upon a ruling by the Florida Supreme Court. Bush’s win in Florida gave him a majority of votes in the Electoral College and victory in the presidential election.”  

The Supreme Court’s role in undermining democracy is a long-standing one.

I watched on television Republican intimidators hovering around a Dade County polling place and successfully stopping a hand count of the ballots there.  

This is from a New York Times account of the episode: “Counting the Vote:  Miami-Dade County   –Protest Influenced Miami-Dade’s Decision to Stop Recount.” By Dexter Filkins and Dana Canedy. November 24, 2000:

“The Miami-Dade County Canvassing Board’s decision on Wednesday to shut down its hand recount  of presidential election ballots followed a rapid campaign of public pressure that at least one of the board’s three members says helped persuade him to vote to stop the counting.

“Republican telephone banks had urged Republican voters in Miami to go to the Stephen P. Clark Government Center downtown to protest the recount, which began there on Monday and which Democrats hoped would help swing Florida’s 25 electoral votes to Vice President Al Gore.

“The city’s most influential Spanish-language radio station, Radio Mambi, called on staunchly Republican Cuban-Americans to head downtown to demonstrate. Republican volunteers shouted into megaphones urging protest. A lawyer for the Republican Party helped stir ethnic passions by contending that the recount was biased against Hispanic voters.

“The subsequent demonstrations turned violent on Wednesday after the canvassers had decided to close the recount to the public. Joe Geller, chairman of the Miami-Dade Democratic Party, was escorted to safety by the police after a crowd chased him down and accused him of stealing a ballot. Upstairs in the Clark center, several people were trampled, punched or kicked when protesters tried to rush the doors outside the office of the Miami-Dade supervisor of elections. Sheriff’s deputies restored order.

“When the ruckus was over, the protesters had what they had wanted: a unanimous vote by the board to call off the hand counting.”

Across the country there are Trump-supporting militias that we should have every reason to believe are available for this kind of intimidation—both of people intending to vote who are driven away from polling places by thugs, and of voting officials.

Is There An Adequate Response?

It is clear that the majority Republican, and in some cases Trump-appointed, Supreme Court will not intervene to stop Republican fraud—legal or illegal—with, perhaps, the exception of the most egregious cases.

I wish I had something to propose here to counter this legal theft.  I don’t.  I hope you do.

On its illegal companion, there are things that can be done.  Preparation needs to begin.  NOW!  

• Citizen guardian teams for honest elections should be formed,  in particular in precincts with a high propensity to vote Democratic.  Recruiting can take place in religious congregations, labor union locals, community organizations, athletic teams and other places. While they shouldn’t carry arms, they should be prepared for violence.
• News media should be approached now to get them geared up to cover polling place intimidation.  Where they can’t be persuaded to assign reporters, people with smartphones should gather at these polling places to record what happens there.  Actually, they should gather there in either case.  Think about the difference  their filming made in the George Floyd police-murder case.

Where We Are As A Country  

If you had told me in 1964 when I was a field secretary for the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (“Snick”) that I would be writing these words 60 years later, I would have said something like, “you’re living on other planet.”  

We are in a bleak place.  Elections are one arena for the fight back.  But they are a place where our side is most on the defense.  The inspiring results from the New York City Mayor’s race shouldn’t distract us from this fact. 

Others need to be widely discussed, and the discussion should begin now.  Among them:  boycotts (Tesla’s is exemplary); general strike, or workplace sick-outs, slow-downs, work-to-rule, sit-downs; shop-ins at stores (CORE tied a Berkeley Lucky Store in knots with one) and other nonviolent tactics.  

Don’t underestimate the President.  Opposition to him should not blind us to his cleverness and will to power. As Tom Paine wrote in The Crisis on December 23, 1776, 250 years ago: 

“THESE are the times that try men’s souls. The summer soldier and the sunshine patriot will, in this crisis, shrink from the service of their country; but he that stands by it now, deserves the love and thanks of man and woman. Tyranny, like hell, is not easily conquered; yet we have this consolation with us, that the harder the conflict, the more glorious the triumph. What we obtain too cheap, we esteem too lightly: it is dearness only that gives every thing its value. Heaven knows how to put a proper price upon its goods; and it would be strange indeed if so celestial an article as FREEDOM should not be highly rated.”

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