How to Defend Our Elections

Don't let them get away with this

Be relentless. Be smart. Be non-violent. Above all—be present. And bring a camera.

We are going to have to show up all over America, wherever and whenever we hear about efforts to undermine our elections. The stakes could not be higher.

I’ve got an idea how we here on Substack and in the other new media spaces can work together to help stop what’s happening—or at least get in some “good trouble” trying. More on that in a bit. First, those stakes.

Beginning on Day One, the Trump administration launched a powerful, well-planned, well-organized campaign across the federal government and in many Trump-controlled states and localities. It’s a massive effort to alter how Americans vote, which Americans vote, and which Americans’ votes will be counted, with the clear goal of making it hard, if not impossible, for anyone who opposes Donald Trump to win. Every day, Trump is concentrating more and more power over our elections in his own hands.

The undeniable reality of this project is now apparent. And it is just beginning; this is a top priority for Trump and his movement, so there will likely be many more executive orders, regulatory actions, laws and lawlessness aimed at our elections over the next three-and-a-half years.

Just this week, Trump announced he wants a new census to be conducted “immediately,” and he all-capped a demand that “People who are in our Country illegally WILL NOT BE COUNTED IN THE CENSUS.”

Now, of course this is unlawful under both the Constitution’s census clause, which assigns Congress, not the president, with the authority to determine the time and the manner of the census; and the Fourteenth Amendment, which declares that the number of representatives in Congress that each state gets—and thus the number of presidential electors, plus two for the senators—must be determined by “counting the whole number of persons in each state.” The Supreme Court under Chief Justice John Roberts has shown itself to be supremely subservient to Trump’s power grabs, but even Sam Alito might have a tough job trying to evade the clear commands of the Constitution on this one.

Still, Trump’s census gambit shows exactly where he’s heading when it comes to elections.

The Brennan Center for Justice, which does excellent work on this and other crucial issues, is out with a chilling report cataloguing the Trump administration’s attacks on our elections. As Michael Waldman, the Center’s president and CEO puts it, “For the federal government to intervene this way — for the president to try to personally grab power over our election system so blatantly — is unprecedented. And it is emphatically counter to the law.”

Trump and his allies want to rewrite election rules wholesale. They want to rescind all previous federal certifications of voting equipment, and institute new standards that suit Trump’s aims. (In 2020, Trump actually tried to seize voting machines, but was blocked by a few officials in his own administration.) They want DOGE, DHS, and the Justice Department to have access to obtain state voter files and other records kept by local. They want to amend the standardized national voter registration form to require documentary proof of US citizenship—“show your papers” is how MAGA describes that one.

Under our laws, the president is not supposed to make the rules about our elections. That’s Congress’s job at the national level. But, thank God and the Framers, American elections are run primarily at the local level; it is a vastly decentralized process. In 2020, that decentralization saved the democracy.

Across the country, thousands of local election workers defied pressure and even threats from Trump and some of his supporters, and counted the votes fair and square. They stopped his steal. In my experience both as a voter and as a reporter covering elections for decades, it’s clear to me that most of the responsible local officials in our elections have a genuine commitment to getting the count right; they take pride in affirming the voices of their communities.

Or, at least most did, and their numbers are declining. Since 2020, across the country, MAGA-aligned individuals have gained formal power over many election boards and other election offices. Most of them will do whatever Trump tells them to do; so will his weaponized Justice Department. All in the name of “election security” and preventing “voter fraud.”

Now, I’ve got something to say about “voter fraud.” I think it’s a good argument to use whenever people raise it.

There’s one thing I know for a fact about voter fraud: There is no voter fraud of any consequence anywhere in the US. And the reason I know that is that the Republican Party has proven it to me.

For decades, the Republican Party has been searching high and low, in every corner of our country, for evidence of voter fraud. The GOP has been armed with vast amounts of power and money in this search; it’s one of the most massive efforts to examine voting records in our history. A Presidential Commission under Trump in his first term, well-funded and armed with the power of subpoena, went hunting for voter fraud. The Department of Justice under Trump was given a specific order that every US Attorney in the country look for voter fraud, armed of course with the power of subpoena. Committees of Congress controlled by Republicans, also with subpoena powers, have called witnesses and tried to amass evidence. Republican-controlled state legislatures and regulatory bodies have also looked—also using subpoena powers. Conservative think tanks and academics have trained their analytical tools and joined the search. Fox News and the rest of the Trumpist media have investigated.

The result is hilarious.

In 2017, the Heritage Foundation set up an “Election Fraud Database” to collect all the data from this enormous effort. Heritage looked at elections going back to the 1970s—that’s billions of American votes. To be fair, they did not look at every single election or every single precinct or every single vote. But they scoured the records in search of “proven cases of election fraud,” and to this day they continue the search.

The tally to date: 1600 cases.

All that money. All that power. All that time and effort across the country, for decades. And that’s what they’ve got? Yeah, they’ll tell you this paltry number proves their case. That tiny number—among billions of America votes cast—that’s the tip of the iceberg! But that ain’t no iceberg. It’s not even an ice cube. The water isn’t even cold.

So I thank the Republican Party for achieving the impossible: They have proved a negative. There is no voter fraud of any consequence anywhere in the United States.

You’re welcome.

Of course, facts are not what the Trump GOP hunt for voter fraud is about today. It’s about power; it’s an excuse to bring down the hammer of MAGA power on the sacred right of Americans, especially Americans who oppose MAGA, to vote and to have their votes counted. It’s about seizing power for Trump, not affirming the rightful power of the voters. All the voters.

So here’s where we come in.

We are going to have to work together across the country to expose and obstruct Trump’s and MAGA’s efforts to twist our elections to their advantage—permanently.

If your county council tries to purge eligible voters from the voting rolls, show up. If your state lawmakers try to pass a bill making registering new voters harder, go to their offices and demand answers. If you hear that officials from Trump’s Department of Justice or DOGE are in town to mess with voting data or election machines—find them and expose them. Bring a camera. Document all of it.

And then let’s start a little movement here on Substack to publish those stories. I volunteer this account as one place we can get some of this material out, and I’m sure others—all kinds of journalists, activists, publications and organizations here—will be happy to join in. So, if you’ve got a story about MAGA or the Trump administration working to undermine elections where you live, send it along to me at this email: tmoranrp@gmail.com. I’ll see what we can do. And then let’s get the word out to others here and on YouTube, Insta, TikTok etc. Let’s work to make the effort to steal our elections go viral.

We aren’t alone. And we have before us right now the splendid example and inspiration of so many citizen-journalists who are non-violently intervening and exercising their rights to document ICE arrests across the country. Their work is changing minds and changing hearts.

We can do the same when it comes to safeguarding our elections. Don’t let them get away with this.