Trump Is Trying to Steal the Election Again

How the fight over voter rolls could shape this fall's elections.

Donald Trump can’t pass a voter suppression bill (the “SAVE Act”), so now he’s trying to withhold natural disaster and other federal funding from the Department of Homeland Security (which includes FEMA) if states don’t “voluntarily” implement what the SAVE Act calls for.

In case you missed it, the President announced that his DHS would be withholding over $1 billion in federal funding – your tax dollars – if states didn’t voluntarily start phasing out certain electronic voting systems, moving to hand-marked paper ballots (that can be tampered with without a paper trail) and most importantly, run state voter rolls through DHS’ citizenship verification database. Now, the last part is designed to purge voter rolls of people that the President doesn’t think will vote for him. And from all indications, this will continue to be a focus of his as his approvals slide, gas prices stay up, bad news cycles pile up, redistricting fails to yield the kinds of results he wants, and he keeps catching Ls in Congress.

If you recall, the Trump Department of Justice has consistently sought unredacted voter files from state voting administrators. And, they’re asking for this information because they are seeking to purge voting rolls – presumably under the guise of ensuring that undocumented individuals don’t vote (something that doesn’t actually happen). What’s actually happening is that the Trump Administration DOJ is seeking to purge voting rolls of people most likely to vote Democrat based on a combination of data points that the federal government has on all of us – e.g. race, age, voting history, geography. Because this is clearly illegal, the Trump Administration has been sued 8 times it has sought these records from states, they’re 0-8. The Supreme Court could very well ultimately allow these illegal vote purges, but for now, they’re illegal.

So, how does Trump respond? The SAVE Act. The President has sought to include the SAVE Act in must-pass bills, and Senate Republicans have told him he doesn’t have the votes. Now, he’s trying to withhold money for first responders, relief from natural disasters from states who don’t “voluntarily” comply with the SAVE Act because he knows he can’t get it passed.

Ultimately, he’ll be sued about this, and he’ll lose. But, what concerns me is certain states with Republican governors that will host close elections – e.g. Georgia – or who have hotly contested elections that could swing this cycle – e.g. Texas – cooperating with the Administration to purge voter rolls ahead of fall elections. Voters often don’t know they have an issue until they vote, and when that happens, it’s too late. So, for my lawyers, we need to make sure that our Republican governors don’t “volunteer” for this, particularly in states that we know will shape the balance of Congress for the next two years and the balance of power in our states.

We already know they have a few tricks up their sleeves this election season around intimidation around polling sites, potential National Guard and ICE deployments and the like – systematic voter purges can’t also be on the menu.