This Will Hold "Somewhere along the way, questioning the integrity of our elections became more controversial than the vulnerabilities within the election system itself.  And that should terrify every American, regardless of political affiliation.

...We have privately owned voting technology companies, proprietary software, election management systems, third-party reporting vendors, and layers of technology that the average voter couldn’t begin to identify, much less scrutinize. And it’s housed, for the most part, in the far-right ecosystem....We need overwhelming turnout, vigilant citizens, transparent reporting, and candidates prepared to challenge genuine irregularities through the appropriate legal channels.”

“NYTimes: “Good people of both parties and independents are going to have to say, ‘No, we’re not going to allow this to take place,’” Senator Mark Warner, Democrat of Virginia, said of the possibility that President Trump might challenge the midterm results”

With virtually no mention or reporting in the corporate press, Republican-run states are again running the voter purge of millions that gave Donald Trump the White House in 2024. Yesterday morning, Reuters published a special report on the ways the Trump administration could “interfere” with the midterms, noting that a lawyer in Idaho’s Republican attorney general’s office bragged that his state had “taken a leading role in ensuring its voter registration list is purged….” Yep, they used the word “purged.” They’re not even bothering with the polite terms anymore.

Help wanted! What happens after the polls close is going to be especially significant this year. This article describes in detail what should happen when the processes are followed and there is no interference with or undermining of the steps watchers are  entitled to observe. Watchers from each political party, representatives of the candidates, and independent bodies are allowed to be present. Volunteer watchers are needed to observe several steps in the process of counting and certifying the vote, starting with observing the start of the canvass after the closing of the polls on Election Day.  Watchers are also needed to observe curing of mail-in ballots within 5 days, the mandatory 3% audit and any mandatory hand count.  

Comment: Marc Elias didn’t give a complete list of things Trump said, as usual leaving off the issue of the vote-counting computers. Trump also said this, which we can also take literally.

What Trump Said (Verbatim):

“He (Elon Musk) knows those computers better than anybody, all those computers, those vote-counting computers. And we ended up winning Pennsylvania like, in a landslide, so it was pretty good, it was pretty good. So, thank you to Elon.”

Help Recruit Poll Observers!

Tuesdays & Thursdays, 6-7:30pm - Zoom

We need hundreds of volunteers across the state to ensure every eligible New Yorker casts their ballot without barrier or intimidation. 

Common Dreams  “...we are learning that Trump allies have been focusing on filling the ranks of election monitors and poll watchers. In the past volunteers in these positions are stationed at polls simply to observe and to assist if called upon to help solve issues that may occur. These new GOP recruits, however, have been weaponized to see their mission to make, not solve, problems. ...All of these disruptive tactics appear to be directed toward preparing a case that will pressure the Republican Speaker of the House to refuse to certify the results of the election—something like a replay of January 2021. It goes without saying that nothing like this has ever happened before. But like so much of what President Trump has already done during his time in office “nothing like this has ever happened before” doesn’t mean it won’t be tried now.”

Several of the nation's largest left-leaning voter engagement and racial justice organizations are facing steep funding shortfalls and staffing cutbacks just as voting is getting underway in an election that will determine control of Congress for the final two years of President Donald Trump's term.

AP. “...the bottom line is that those who believe that democracy matters should make sure they fund the work.”

Democratic state parties announced Monday that they are launching an operation for the midterm elections they’re calling the “New Battlefield Project,” intended to recruit 10,000 volunteers to guard polling places in case armed federal officers show up.

The US Supreme Court on Monday night rejected a bid by the Trump administration to keep onerous US Postal Service rules for mail-in ballots in place, which voting-rights defenders said risked depriving millions of people of the franchise in this year’s midterm elections.

Luttig: “..Mike Johnson and his House Republicans would claim fraud in the upcoming elections and refuse to seat Democrat Members-elect who are elected to Congress by the American People….America’s time of testing has finally come."

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.