This thread can start with discussion of whether my link captures what is likely, and can continue when we see how close any GOP election cheating actually is to the picture below:
Critical Conditions Podcast, Oct. 19, 2026
P.S. This is from a never-Trump center-right podcast. I believe everything quoted above was said by Claire Berlinkski, who is talking with Dan Perry.
For a hotline, can’t voters call 888-OUR-VOTE? I know it’s non partisan but that’s what I’ve sometimes contacted.
U.S. officials privately advise states fearing Trump election meddling
Their private efforts have reached governors, election stewards and lawmakers from both parties who are increasingly alarmed that the administration may interfere in the midterms.
A small group of U.S. national security officials has been discreetly advising state governments and congressional lawmakers on how to prepare for the possibility that the Trump administration will attempt to interfere in November’s midterm elections, according to people involved in the effort.
The group includes about 10 current and former officials with experience in the Defense Department, some of whom have previously focused on countering authoritarianism abroad.
Their efforts are motivated not by political bias, they say, but a growing sense of alarm that President Donald Trump will harm American democracy by undermining the integrity of the vote to keep the Republican Party in power.
…
My bold.
Some of the people Petey fired due to their testosterone deficiencies? Or maybe the had too much and he didn’t like coming up short?
What a sad and pathetic commentary this is on our country. Former gov’t officials advising states secretly in advance on protecting themselves from crimes that might be ordered by the president.
Isn’t it getting late to affect the election? Studies show that some people don’t make up their minds until they are in the voting booth, but they are a small minority. Most already know.
Additionally, early voting is far more widespread and popular than in the past. The primaries saw record numbers of early and mail-in balloting.
The Republicans have been pouring in hundreds of millions already and the polls keep dropping for them.
Sending out fake election times and places is an ancient ploy, and is easier today. Possibly an extremely close election could be decided by a very few dissuaded voters, but that’s unlikely to be a broad occurrence.
And they’ll do what about it? Send out an email? A mass text? Such fakes are difficult to combat, especially at the last moment.
I feel like saying “Republicans are going to steal the election” would just have the effect of making people stay home.
Shenanigans can run right through the counting of the votes, and beyond.
And is much more likely post-election than trying to affect how people actually vote. (Although there will be some of that, too.)
Just as with January 6th, Trump will try to undermine confidence in the integrity of the election process, attempt to strong arm election officials into changing vote tallies (think Georgia 2020) and work to keep the actual votes certified by Congress, if they don’t go his way.
I’m much more concerned about these efforts at cheating than in efforts made to mess with what voters do in the voting booth. That said, it will be much harder for him to do if voters’ preferences are made clear by a strong vote for Dems.
That’s what happened in 2020/2021. The fake elecrors’ scheme, the Jan 6 insurrection, the extortion call to Georgia, all after the election.
Yup.
We need a high turnout, to make conclusions as definite as possible. I doubt that will stop them from trying, but it should help stop them from succeeding.
Early voting in Texas has just started a short time ago, and someone is Astroturfing a “the trans people are coming for your children” campaign.
The organization in question denies involvement with the mailers, which are being sent directly to the students of families and include information on how to obtain gender-affirming care by going behind their parents’ backs.
I’m not up on the history of the period but in the 1850s the sudden collapse of the Whig party was what made room for the Republican party in our all but legislated two-party system. Having been radicalized in the past decade the best scenario I’m hoping for is an equally sudden collapse of the Republican party after a massive repudiation at the polls and its replacement by a radical left party.
Then the two choices become – by European standards – centrist and leftist instead of radical right and centrist. The current-day MAGAts can then either vote for the corporate Democrats as the lesser of two evils, form an ineffective alternate party like the Libertarians or Greens, or stay home.
So this is a secret organization trying to trans kids behind their parents’ backs and they are doing outreach by (checks notes) mailing flyers to the parents homes? Do I have that right?
That doesn’t look like Astroturfing, that looks like a false flag operation to me.
Astroturfing is a situation where some large, well-funded organization puts together something that is pretending to be a grassroots organization. So then, fake grass, hence “Astroturfing”.
In this case, it’s someone doing something despicable and pretending that it’s coming from a group it isn’t in order to defame that group. By pretending to be another group, they are effectively “waving a false flag”.
I’m sure things will get cleared up though as authorities investigate this…
State Rep. Jeff Leach (R-District 67) called on Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton (R) on October 13 to investigate organizations and individuals he alleged were helping Texans circumvent Senate Bill 12, The Dallas Express previously reported.
Uh, never mind.
Also, I wonder why the news article kept putting “transgender” in scare quotes. It’s not like those quotes are part of the organization’s branding (I checked). Is it because that’s how the texts and flyers wrote it? (I hope that’s why.)
Right; false flag is the term I was looking for.
Yeah, I already voted. But I guess they could seize ballots or something.
And a lot of people do still vote on the day.
Early voters in Tennessee, Texas, Florida, and Ohio are finding that the machines default their votes to Republican even when they vote Democrat, and they have to persist, and oftentimes get poll workers involved.
So much for Republicans wanting election integrity. Every accusation is a confession.
Are there places in Florida that use electronic-only ballots? Wikipedia says that the entire state uses electronically tabulated paper ballots (i.e. scantron), and furthermore it’s my experience that the machine that scans it does not tell you how it scanned your vote. Wikipedia of course could be wrong.
So if my experience is valid statewide then it doesn’t seem like there would be a chance to notice your vote was flipped. Since you mark it down physically and then the machine reads it without any feedback. Furthermore, if there is a paper ballot, if the ballot is saved, then any flips that happen that egregiously often should be caught when you compare the paper ballots to the result.
I can’t speak to other states since I have no experience voting in them and Wikipedia says that their systems are county by county, so it’s possible that some of those counties use electronic-only voting.
I mean, sending Trump to campaign in Texas and Mississippi sure doesn’t sound like the acts of people who think they’re going to be able to make sure Republicans win no matter what.
Since Trump literally had supporters pledge, last month, to “cheat like hell”, I am quite open such reports.
But it is in the nature of such that not every report will be correct. And this sounds a lot like reports from Trump’s 2016 run that turned out to be rather innocent and not necessarily favor one party. See:
NPR - Oct. 2016 - Some Machines Are Flipping Votes, But That Doesn’t Mean They’re Rigged
Maybe the 2016 problems were all with a machine type that is now out of service. I’m not drawing conclusions, just wanting to avoid a rush to judgment.