Many pundits are predicting that the Democrats will enjoy huge successes in the November mid-term elections, retaking the U.S. House and maybe – just maybe – gain control of the U.S. Senate. This is hardly surprising.
The party occupying the White House typically loses seats in the mid-terms. The Democrats are hoping that concerns about gasoline prices and inflation will bolster their momentum. But Democrats also are hedging their bets by drumming up apocalyptic warnings that the Trump Administration is trying to interfere with the election.
The Brennan Center was quick out of the gates, dropping a podcast last September, “The Campaign to Undermine the Midterms,” warning about Trump’s plan to hijack the elections. Its claims were covered by several news outlets such as The New York Times and National Public Radio.
WBUR, a Boston public radio station, recently aired a report, “New England Democrats fear Trump will meddle in midterm elections,” while Protectdemocracy.org recently published “Executive Override: How the Trump Administration plans to interfere with the 2026 elections, and what you can do about it.” The latter claimed that “For the first time in modern American history, the machinery of the federal government — which is meant to serve our democracy — is being turned against our elections.”
If all this sounds familiar, it’s because it is. All this echoes much of what has been said claiming that President Trump is bent on undermining “Our Democracy” since he came down the golden elevator almost 11 years ago.
They profess to fear that the Trump administration has plans to rig the midterms in favor of the GOP. I’m guessing that their real fear is that Trump’s cabinet secretaries might take a page from the Biden Administration’s election playbook from 2022.
I was the program manager for Executive Orders at the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs from February 2021 through February 2023. When President Biden issued Executive Order 14019—Promoting Access to Voting (March 7, 2021)—I recommended that VA’s General Counsel review it for Hatch Act implications. That is, for improper politicization of government employees. The Senior Advisor agreed, and the General Counsel indeed found this order to be outside the scope of VA’s mission.
So, we stopped tracking EO 14019 at our bi-weekly Program Management Review (PMR). And that, we thought, was that. And it was until the spring of 2022 when a senior official announced, on a TEAMS call with more than 100 participants, “I’m working with Susan Rice in the White House. And we’re targeting conservative states like Montana, Oklahoma, and Georgia. Because, after all, you know there’s lots of stuff happening in Georgia.”
The official provided a slide that outlined the strategic plan being developed for the agency to enhance voter access. They said the White House was working on voter outreach with Dēmos—a left-wing non-profit organization.
In subsequent briefings, the official implied the White House was developing “pilot projects” to implement after the 2022 primary elections, but before the general elections. After the primary elections, they shifted their resources from South Carolina to Pennsylvania. Then, at our October 2022 PMR, the official announced they (presumably Susan Rice and the White House) had hired 100,000 election workers.
The predicted Red Wave became the Red Ripple, with surprising results in places like Georgia and Pennsylvania, states that were targeted using federal resources.
During the 2024 Presidential Election, we received sotto voce reports from VA facilities in Michigan and Wisconsin that they were being used for get-out-the-vote activities. Senior executives moved quickly, not to stop such activities, but instead quash such talk. After, no investigation took place. Given that senior official’s boasts about using federal resources in this regard had the imprimatur of the White House, I’m not terribly surprised.
Right now, Democratic-supporting groups are breathlessly warning that the Trump Administration has nefarious plans for the coming mid-terms. And that’s a laughably transparent attempt to get out the vote. Protectdemocracy.org even goes so far as to claim that this alleged plan “has roots in the election subversion efforts of 2022 and 2024.” Well, maybe if the Trump Administration was actually hellbent on tampering with this year’s election, they could do worse than to copy what the Biden Administration did to Republicans.
Michael Collins retired with 34 years of federal and military service.
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