With Trump’s help, Republicans across the country are sowing doubt about next year’s congressional elections—and gearing up for 2028.

Special elections in Florida and Wisconsin have suggested that voters are already fed up with the Trump administration and point to the possibility that the 2026 midterms could be a blue wave. As Trump’s failures continue to mount, Republicans have good reason to fear a backlash.

Perhaps this explains why Trump is intent on bolstering the election denial movement, which has lately notched a number of key victories. On March 25, the president signed Executive Order #14248, “Preserving and Protecting the Integrity of American Elections,” which neither preserves nor protects our elections but rather undermines them.

It is a clarion call to Republicans throughout the nation, who are being encouraged to question the legitimacy of any election loss and ultimately establish a permanent electoral advantage by challenging and removing eligible voters from the rolls. Now, with Trump’s executive order, they have insurance: a way of tipping elections in their favor by choosing the voters rather than having the voters choose them.

  • opus86@lemmy.today
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    17 hours ago

    After Elon and DOGE, I doubt there will be a fair election until the whole voting system is rebuilt.

  • rational_lib@lemmy.world
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    17 hours ago

    I mean obviously, they tried in 2020. But they’re also very, very dumb. That being said, with the four years in-between, they may have figured out how to book a hotel room by now.

  • notgivingmynametoamachine@lemmy.world
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    1 day ago

    Of course they are.

    Nobody bothered to investigate how Donald Trump stole the 2024 presidential election, despite multiple prominent Computer Scientists and statisticians begging them to investigate bullet ballots in swing counties that usually total under .5% suddenly jumping to 9-12% with literally no earthly explanation that wasn’t ‘foul play’.

    Why wouldn’t they steal the Mid-terms? Especially after fucking over so many republicans to the point where it wouldn’t be a blue wave, it would be a goddamn apocalyptic tidal wave for the GOP.

    • 50MYT@lemmy.world
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      1 day ago

      It’s not like they have a member of the doge team who deleted all his previous work, some of which was voting software verification - including a program to create bullet ballot votes.

      Or the database of swing voters gained from a fake lottery…

    • monotremata@lemmy.ca
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      24 hours ago

      So, when I search on this, I can only find reference to a single guy, Stephen Spoonamore, making this claim. You said “multiple prominent Computer Scientists and Statisticians”; do you have a link for that?

        • Septimaeus@infosec.pub
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          20 hours ago

          I remember this. The petition was more about security assurance than a specific accusation, and the letter from Spoonamore was sus because he is a known attention-seeking alarmist (and sole-proprietor of a cybersecurity consulting company that he pumps a lot).

          Spoonamore cried wolf too many times to be taken very seriously, but also his “analysis” is weirdly unspecific just like his deflection in interviews. It honestly felt like those “security alert!” popups from fake antivirus software, if that makes sense, like the point isn’t security just the alert.

          Ultimately the gold standard for verification is random sample hand counts, and several rounds of these confirmed software tallies within very small margins. That basically closes the case, because if they “hacked” the hand counts, it would mean the conspiracy went well beyond tampering with voting software.

        • monotremata@lemmy.ca
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          19 hours ago

          That has nothing to do with the claims about bullet ballots though. You made it sound like there were a bunch of people all united behind a single, specific claim about a statistical anomaly, and as far as I know that’s simply not accurate.

    • FreedomAdvocate@lemmy.net.au
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      19 hours ago

      Nobody bothered to investigate how Donald Trump stole the 2024 presidential election

      This sounds like election denial. I thought democrats didn’t do that?

      • andros_rex@lemmy.world
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        17 hours ago

        Republicans have mandated it be taught in schools. What’s good for the geese certainly should be good for the gander.

  • Ledericas@lemm.ee
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    16 hours ago

    assuming if republicans even vote D , and the republicans rigged it anyways, would they accept the results.

  • JohnnyFlapHoleSeed@lemmy.world
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    1 day ago

    So let me get this straight, Trump supposedly won the last election, and their response is that our elections can’t be trusted because they are rigged. So they’re basically saying the result of our last election wasn’t legitimate

    • conditional_soup@lemm.ee
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      1 day ago

      Do not make the mistake of taking fascists at their word. They’re lying to you; like when they talk about being very concerned about the budget, but then turn around and blow money out of their ass to all of their pals and donors and on special vanity projects that benefit nobody. They’re bullshitters, almost all of them; you can tell the true believers, like Lindell, because they’re the ones that get thrown under the bus. They know the election wasn’t stolen, they just hope that you’ll take their bullshit in good faith.

      • Smoogs@lemmy.world
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        1 day ago

        Agreed. I’ve resolved to just call them liars to their face now. No sense in wasting the energy to reason with someone who doesn’t value reason. If there’s an audience, yes, I’ll reason for the face to reveal the lying but I owe a liar themselves nothing for the ground they stand on.

    • RedPostItNote@lemmy.world
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      24 hours ago

      States should use new machines and not allow starlink connections if they want to have legit future elections

    • ilinamorato@lemmy.world
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      1 day ago

      Trump said the 2016 election was rigged, and he won that one. He claimed that the 2024 election was rigged before it had even occurred. This is just the playbook. It doesn’t make sense. It doesn’t have to in order to work.

    • Zenith@lemm.ee
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      1 day ago

      He has openly admitted the election was rigged several times, they’re saying they can’t be trusted because they can’t be trusted there’s just nothing we will be allowed to do about past rigged elections

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      They’ve been claiming it since 2016, repeating it over enough time and it just becomes normal to the public, even if it’s a lie. So when it actually happens, it just sounds like business as usual.

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    19 hours ago

    And the dem voters will wait for their reps to do something about it, or wait for the system/ party to present the perfect candidate before getting off their fat asses to the poll stations.

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    1 day ago

    Be suspicious of anyone who tells you that voting is going to solve this problem. They aren’t going to let you vote them out of power.

    By all means, vote if you can! But if the only thing you do is vote, you will lose.

      • queermunist she/her@lemmy.ml
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        If they let us vote again then we might as well do it, but at the rate things are going they might just rig the election if they don’t cancel it.

        • Zenith@lemm.ee
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          Or use it to keep track of who isn’t supporting the new regime and come after you. I’ve always been very pro-voting but it doesn’t feel safe to be voting anymore and I’m not going to risk my safety for a rigged election

    • rational_lib@lemmy.world
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      Voting caused the problem, it can solve it too. But here’s the thing: for voting to solve the problem, you have to actually do it and play the game.

      Every 20-25 years some rightwing psycho wins and inflicts some horror on us because new voters don’t remember what happened the last time people said “both sides are the same”. You kids know that whole Iraq war and torture thing was avoidable, right? So was Reagan’s annihilation of the middle class.

      • eldavi@lemmy.ml
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        16 hours ago

        this overly simplistic and completely ignores the impact of things like voter suppression or propaganda or narrative control

        • rational_lib@lemmy.world
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          3 hours ago

          Well yeah, but part of the voter propaganda is telling people both sides are the same. I get that there’s pro capitalist media bias which at its root is caused by extreme financial inequality. But fixing that financial inequality requires government action, and that requires voting. For the people who will do the inadequate version over the people who want to make it worse. Incremental change through pressure + time, just like everything else on earth.

      • queermunist she/her@lemmy.ml
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        15 hours ago

        Bush was forced onto us by the Supreme Court in a judicial coup that basically set us on our current trajectory. Trump has never won more than 50% of the vote, even this time around he only got 49.9%

        In a democratic country this shit wouldn’t happen. Elections have always been dubiously free and fair in this shithole.

        I’m in my 30s, hardly a kid. I’ve watched this shithole country get worse and worse my whole life, and I am beyond convinced that we will only stop it with political actions that go far beyond the ballot box. You’re going to have to get your hands dirty.

        If we’re allowed to vote for the next president you might as well, I know I will, but stop pretending it is nearly good enough.

        • rational_lib@lemmy.world
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          3 hours ago

          There’s definitely giant inadequacies in American democracy, but still I fail to see how voting isn’t good enough. If people voted for Gore instead of Nader, American history would be very different. We’d have avoided a giant tax cut for the rich l, withdrawing from Kyoto, and a trillion dollar unnecessary war. Wealth inequality wouldn’t be as bad, there would definitely be earlier progress against global warming, and we could probably afford real universal health care by now.

          Ideally after voting in the right people, we’d fix all the democracy problems. But still I’d say voting alone would make a huge difference. Anything else meanwhile - protests (BLM, Gaza), violence (Matthew crooks, Luigi) has at best accomplished zero, and in reality seems to have done serious damage to the causes they were seeking. The one exception I’d give is boycotts - like the Tesla boycotts that have destroyed their sales numbers.

          • queermunist she/her@lemmy.ml
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            If people voted for Gore instead of Nader, American history would be very different.

            People did vote for Gore. Their votes were invalidated by the Supreme Court. The election was stolen.

            Playing with historical counterfactuals is pointless anyway. Voting is over. They aren’t going to let us vote them out of power anymore. The elections will either be canceled or rigged.

            It’s time to do something else.

            protests (BLM, Gaza), violence (Matthew crooks, Luigi) has at best accomplished zero,

            We need organized labor actions. We run this country and we can shut it down. That’s how we got the New Deal.

            The one exception I’d give is boycotts - like the Tesla boycotts that have destroyed their sales numbers.

            Don’t forget the vandalism and arsons. There’s more than one way to hurt a business.

    • Binky@lemmy.sdf.org
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      My hope is that congress gets huge wins (despite the very expected interference from the GOP.) A Dem congress should absolutely clog the system and start the battles that this FUCKING inept GOP congress should be doing.

      Trump is overreaching for power that belongs to congress and is ignoring the judicial branch. Someone has got to rein him in or we won’t make it to 2029.

      • OutlierBlue@lemmy.ca
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        1 day ago

        Look at the Dem voting pattern in the past few months. They’re part of the problem. They won’t save you.

        • Binky@lemmy.sdf.org
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          If that’s true, nothing will. We need not only Dems, but independents and GOP voters that realize they’ve been swindled.

          • OutlierBlue@lemmy.ca
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            24 hours ago

            Exactly. The public needs to be in support of this. Relying on Dems will not help. They are not on your side either.

              • queermunist she/her@lemmy.ml
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                17 hours ago

                You forgot the jury box i.e. jury nullification

                “Eyy what murders? I didn’t see no murder. Brian Thompson just fell on some bullets.”

            • vaultdweller013@sh.itjust.works
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              19 hours ago

              There’s a saying about the western front of WW2, “The war was won with Soviet blood, British intelligence, and American steel” though over simplifying the whole affair and the contribution of the Czechs, Poles, Norwegians, Danes, Belgian, etcetera the point is still broadly true. I say this to point out that the destruction of fascists is a multifaceted operation and that decrying the use of a tool no matter how small is foolish.

              Ideally we will be able to vote them out and then get to lynching the sons of bitches, but only using two tools is unlikely. But well as Cincinnatus once said “Hope for peace, Prepare for war”.

              • queermunist she/her@lemmy.ml
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                17 hours ago

                I think that saying is just the British patting themselves on the back. It was mostly just Soviet blood that liberated the camps.

                • vaultdweller013@sh.itjust.works
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                  16 hours ago

                  It ain’t British Intelligence was fucking nuts and after awhile just devolved into trolling the Axis because they were that far ahead. Same thing with American war materials it gave both the Soviets and British enough slack to focus on what was wanted rather than what was needed, without M3 Lees the British may not have had enough tanks for North Africa and without the M3 Trucks the Soviets would’ve wasted materials building trucks rather than tanks.

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    Of course they are. That’s what they do. What do you think all the election denialism is about? Every accusation is a confession.