Comment:   Sloppy audit laws leave the door wide open for the Democracy Docket  scenario: 5. Republican refusal to seat Democratic winners.  If there are questions about the results, current election laws are inadequate to ensure a speedy hand count audit to verify  the computer count. The ensuing chaos will send an election to the Mike Johnson Congress. 

This week  there was yet another cyberattack, this time  targeting more than 30 Minnesota water systems.  In this environment it is foolish to ignore  the sixth way Trump could interfere: Breakdown or hacking, by foreign governments or insiders, of the voting computers.   Ballots are counted on computerized voting machines owned by secretive private corporations. 

This document outlines a strategic framework for civil society to defend democracy and counter election sabotage efforts by coordinated, multi-sector actions ahead of the 2026 elections.
This important grassroots guide from Organizing Lab, https://www.organizinglab.com/. is for activist-leaders who are determined to protect against MAGA election disruption

The Hartmann Report “...now we learn that the billionaire oligarch in the White House has gutted every one of the federal agencies designed to protect this fall’s election in 102 days, as if embracing the mentality of the old Confederate oligarchs who’d essentially outlawed voting by anybody who may have opposed them….Trump’s been having hour-plus-long phone conversations with Putin on average every two weeks since his inauguration; and FBI director Ka$h Patel is planning a trip to Russia a month before the election….Russia, of course, intervened massively in the 2016 election, Trump’s “Russia, Russia, Russia” attempts at minimizing their role notwithstanding.

“..Reporter and statistician Greg Palast has documented — using nothing but official government figures — that the 2024 Republican voter suppression efforts prevented around 4 million American citizens from either voting or having their votes counted; had that GOP effort been unsuccessful, Kamala Harris would today be president and Democrats would control the House and probably the Senate.This time, it appears, they’re trying to disenfranchise millions more, and given the flaccidity of Democratic leadership’s response it appears they’ll pull much of it off. Those same Dem leaders, after all, allowed all that suppression to happen in 2024 — over loud objections by people like Stacy Abrams who were documenting it in real time — with nary a peep in the press."

Ari Berman. “...the speech makes it more likely that the president will ultimately take drastic action to interfere in the 2026 midterms….“Tonight’s speech is intended to add the predicate that he needs to declare an emergency at or about the time of the elections,” former White House attorney Ty Cobb told PBS prior to the speech. "

Comment: These are all good actions, pick any one to do your part.  But number one on this list was omitted:  protect the vote count!  The dominant voting machine companies (Dominion/Liberty and ES&S) are owned and programmed by Republican supporters with inside access. 

The MAGAs are saying elections are stolen by voter fraud, so anyone who questions election results is lumped in with them.  But election fraud is a separate issue and Dem operatives (including influential opinion leaders like Robert Reich himself) must not lump this in with the voter fraud outcry from the far right.  

US President Donald Trump late Thursday forced out the remaining three members of an independent, bipartisan commission that assists state election officials across the country, a move that critics condemned as a “pathetic power grab” ahead of the 2026 midterms.

The two Democratic members of the Election Assistance Commission (EAC), Benjamin Hovland and Thomas Hicks, were fired, and Republican Commissioner Christy McCormick resigned at the White House’s request, according to ProPublica. The agency, established by Congress more than two decades ago, now lacks leadership and any ability to make decisions, just months before the 2026 elections.

"Researchers at New York University Abu Dhabi created hundreds of “sock puppet” TikTok accounts in New York, Texas, and Georgia (via VPN), uploaded to them either pro-Democratic or pro-Republican videos to show their political leanings, and then watched what TikTok’s algorithm fed back to them every day over the 27 weeks leading up to Election Day….Call your senators today through the Capitol switchboard at (202) 224-3121 and tell them you want algorithmic transparency legislation and Section 230 reform. Make sure your voter registration is current at vote.org and start telling everyone you know that science has now proven that the 2024 election wasn’t a free and fair contest of ideas."

Even though a federal judge ruled against Trump's executive order aimed to give the USPS authority over which ballots to mail to which constituents, the Postal Service is STILL PLANNING TO IMPLEMENT TRUMP'S ORDER.

EVERY COMMENT ON THE USPS' proposed rules must, legally, be considered before the agency implements these blatantly illegal and unconstitutional rules for blatant voter suppression, for collecting all American's addresses and party affiliations .

VIDEO: Political analyst and commentator Nathan Taylor joins Wajahat Ali to examine claims, allegations, and unanswered questions surrounding the 2024 election and the role that billionaires, technology platforms, and political influence may have played. Waj and Nathan discuss election integrity, political power, social media influence, campaign spending, technology, data operations, and the growing public debate over how modern elections are shaped by wealthy individuals and powerful institutions. 

A poll worker said two federal officers visited her at a voting location during New York’s primaries to confront her about a social media post she’d written criticizing the ICE officer who fatally shot Renee Good in Minneapolis. Two officers gave Gonyea a written notice stating that she might be in violation of federal laws that prevent publicly posting personal information about federal officers, she said.

The Atlantic: 'The recorder’s critics fear that the fight could be used as pretext to cancel results MAGA doesn’t like in elections that could tip the balance in Congress...The conflict has already chilled participation among poll workers who are declining to work the election because “they fear the Recorder’s threats of retribution,” the attorney who represents most of the board has said."

Noble warned: “Trump’s executive order requiring the Department of Homeland Security to compile a list of verified US citizens eligible to vote and the Postal Service to limit mail-in voting, could very well disenfranchise millions of voters while doing nothing to eliminate virtually non-existent voter fraud.”

From a last-minute switch to precinct-based assigned polls in Dallas County to a sudden FBI raid of the Fulton County election office, it’s clear that the Trump administration and republican officials are gearing up for some serious shenanigans this election. Our democracy depends on every voter having an equal chance to cast a ballot and have their vote fairly counted. That’s why Indivisible is launching the Election Defense Corps.

CALL TODAY:

GOVERNOR KATHY HOCHUL. (518) 474-8390

ASSEMBLY SPEAKER HEASTIE: 888-997-5380

LATRICE WALKER, CHAIR,ASSEMBLY ELECTION LAW COMMITTEE 518-455-4466

Salon: "The president is pushing states to create citizenship lists to prevent non-citizens from voting...As the New York Times reported, “only about 54 percent of Americans have passports. Social Security cards, which are generally issued to Americans at birth, can also be possessed by noncitizens. Naturalized citizens do not have U.S. birth certificates, which prove citizenship by birthright. And no central index exists for naturalization records, according to the National Archives.” We don’t have a national ID card in America, but you can imagine that if this order is cleared by the Supreme Court, there would be no choice but to issue them, which would be a bureaucratic nightmare of epic proportions.

 Anthropic’s Claude Mythos Preview is the most capable AI model ever built. Anthropic engineers with no special security training asked Mythos Preview to find security flaws and overnight it found thousands. With a simple prompt, it found vulnerabilities in every major operating system and every major web browser. All by itself.  No human guidance needed. A hacker’s dream.

AI is coming for our votes.

I don’t know how closely you follow the drama around Elon Musk’s energetic romantic life or his various baby mamas, but a new wrinkle may in particular be worth our scrutiny.

One mama, former conservative influencer Ashley St. Clair, went on TikTok to mention, almost in passing and while applying her cosmetics on-camera, that Elon told her things on election night 2024 that made her believe he had helped rig Trump’s victory.

At about minute 33 of this excellent analysis of the reasons the Dems lost the 2024 presidential election (if they actually did), the Left Hook's Wajahat Ali suggests that Elon Musk may have thrown the 2024 election for Trump using electronic means - citing the same admissions we all noticed:

COMMENT::  Looking through this flawed report, I saw nothing related to the tactics used to suppress or disenfranchise voters or the threats posed to the vote count or .  There is a section on "ELECTION INTEGRITY” that relates to the vulnerability of the DNC databases, without referencing the current daily attempts by the Trump loyalists to seize control of voter databases in key states.  It is silent on the many threats to the vote count laid out in the Mueller report.  In this atmosphere of obliviousness,  New York State Democrats, specifically the Assembly Election law Committee chaired by Latrice Walker, have not advanced key legislation passed by the NY State to protect votes and voters this November in New York.  ALLEGRA DENGLER

Truthout: Whether or not they read Yarvin or Land or Thiel, they intuitively know that absolute power corrupts absolutely. The real goal is to give that clear vision to the masses of people, who may still mistake Republican tactics as politics as usual, rather than an existential threat to our way of life. …Fear is not enough. Beyond clearly seeing the danger, we also have to remember why democracy is worth everything."