The Executive Branch of the U.S. Government is now almost completely controlled by a major crime sydicate. The Legislative Branch, as of now, has largely refused to challenge the criminals. We hope that the coming elections will help change that, but even if successful, Trump will still have veto power and the MAGGOTs will retain enough power to prevent any super-majority needed to over-ride or impeach.
That leaves the Judicial Branch. But Trump and his thugs have consistently refused to obey court orders. It is very rare for judges to hold a lawyer in contempt, but Glenn Kirschner points out that a few judges have held DoJ lawyers in contempt and the DoJ thugs have then obeyed judicial orders to “purge the contempt.” This remedy should be used more.
I wonder what the mechanics of contempt are if the DoJ sends lawyers who don’t care about disbarment, or doesn’t respond to mandatory appearances at all. Can the court bailiff handcuff a lawyer found in contempt?
The political and judicial situations MIGHT deteriorate further if Americans regain control of one or both House of Congress, but we still hope for that. We all hope that the fears of “conspiracy theorists” do not come to pass.
Here are the recent worries of another Conspiracy Theorist. Any of you naysayers want to guess what fringe YouTube channel I pulled this from?
Sending thugs to the polling places is interference with the election, not theft. Theft involves secretively manipulating election results without being caught, which is a massive conspiracy theory (especially as it requires coordination with state governments). What the person you quoted was saying is scary and possible, and very different than what you proposed in the OP which is paranoia.
I don’t think there’s any way they could “steal” the election or nullify the results without it being blindingly obvious that they were doing so. Therefore, this just reduces to the general question of “what if Trump staged a coup and crowned himself Emperor?”. Either the Congress and Courts would stop him, or the military would, or nobody would. I’m pretty sure it would be one of those first two, but I’m afraid we may have to find out.
Yeah; the threat of fascists just saying “fuck it” to law and democracy and just trying to take over by force is a real threat and has been becoming more and more credible as time goes on and the Republican Party gets bolder and Trump seems to just get away with shit.
But there’s a difference between that and stealing an election, where people think it’s legitimate and go along because the cheaters are too sneaky to get caught. We seem to have too many safeguards in place for anyone to cheat like that on such a scale as to actually steal whole elections. We know that attempts to steal the election happen at a smaller scale, especially from folks on the right, because they keep getting caught. Whether that’s voting illegally, trying to put in fake electors, or any other half-baked scheme, they don’t work.
The people who cry the most about elections being stolen are folks on the right throwing temper tantrums when they don’t get their way. But they have zero credible evidence of it, because it’s just not happening. The conspiracy theorists are of course saying that the lack of evidence is just evidence of how sneaky the conspirators are, but that’s just lizard people CIA mind control ray bullshit paranoia. And these same politicians who thump a podium and yell into a microphone about how the election is stolen are suddenly much more reserved when they end up in court and have to swear under oath, and instead nitpick about procedural issues (and overwhelmingly lose their cases anyway).
It doesn’t behoove us to jump into the tin foil hat army and declare that Republicans must be working behind the scenes to rig things and therefore determine any victory they have to be illegitimate. That is just MAGA thinking, and that’s exactly what is leading to the erosion of democracy. Democracy only works when people can trust that the election system is secure, and can trust that if there isn’t any evidence of cheating that it isn’t happening. If you start pushing theories that undermine democracy, all that you are ultimately doing is furthering the cause of fascism, regardless of your intentions.
And if the election system really isn’t working because someone is able to somehow successfully rig everything and make elections meaningless then we’ve already lost democracy and it’s too late anyway.
I feel you’re being too cavalier in dismissing the possibility.
Here’s what we know as facts:
The Republican party has engaged in a decades-long program of manipulating elections by “legal” means such as disenfranchising targeted voters and controlling voting locations. So the Republican party has no concerns about democracy as a principle.
The Republican party has condoned criminal activity by Republican office holders. So the Republican party has no concerns about the rule of law as a principle.
So your argument seems to be that while we know that the Republicans are willing to undermine democracy and we know that the Republicans are willing to commit illegal acts, we should believe that the Republicans won’t illegally undermine democracy. And I don’t see any reason to believe that.
I just wrote a pretty lengthy post in this thread about how Republicans have been illegally undermining democracy, so that’s a really bizarre take.
I’m specifically talking about stealing elections. If you want to get loose about what that means, then we can plausibly say that Democrats have stolen elections for generations through gerrymandering (as have Republicans, of course).
I think that the generic “steal” term is probably meaningless. I’ve been using it the way the public has used it in recent years; specifically the bullshit that MAGA claims is happening via “stop the steal”. If there are specific tactics to talk about, then that’s worthwhile. Disenfranchisement is indeed a problem and a documented one. I’ve previously shared on this forum about Project REDMAP, which is a real, documented and large coordinated effort by Republicans to subvert democracy. Here is a web site:
Jeffrey Wright talked about redistricting and other forms of disenfranchisement in an excellent PBS documentary I recommend everyone watch if they can (the site currently says it’s not playable here at least):
I’m well aware of these efforts. I’m concerned about them. It’s actually my biggest political concern, more than inflation, or ICE, or climate change, or any of that stuff. Because when we lose our democracy we lose everything. I’ve had pollsters call me and given that as my biggest concern in multiple elections.
What I’m pushing back on is the idea of secretive election rigging. We know that Republicans are trying to undermine the election process by arbitrarily knocking folks off of the voter rolls, by redistricting, by closing polling locations in Democrat-heavy areas, by trying to pass laws to make it harder for certain people to vote (such as unnecessary ID requirements, resisting mail-in vote options, and so on). Those are documented. They’re a concern but they’re not being done in secret. And blatant efforts to disrupt democracy (like January 6 or sending out National Guard troops or whatever) are possible but aren’t secretive. It’s the conspiracy theories about secretive stuff that massively sway major elections that I call BS.
Elections are being legitimately harmed by legal erosion over time by corrupt politicians, and can be disrupted all at once by someone deciding to flip the board and knock off all of the chess pieces. But I don’t consider that “stealing” an election.
When I say stealing an election, I mean when what you’re doing is a felony. Not just influencing the outcome of the results but actually changing the results after voting has occurred.
Look at Trump’s unexpected gains among black and hispanic voters in 2024 after running an openly racist administrations in his first term. People have tried to come up with various explanations about why minority voters would switch to Trump. One possible explanation is that they didn’t switch to Trump; they voted for Harris and then the voting machines switched their votes to Trump. After all if you’re going to rig the system, you get the most effect by doing it among voters who are least likely to vote for you.
Or as Trump himself said, “Elon Mush knows those vote counting computers better than anybody.”
I invite you to consider the possibility that Donald Trump is full of shit, as evidenced by the fact that he thinks Elon is some sort of computer genius and not just a finance bro who got lucky.
This is the MAGA-level BS I was talking about. This is absolutely no different than Trump and Giuliani insisting that the election was stolen for Biden. There’s no evidence and you are stooping to their level.
The difference is that Trump is a serial liar as Smapti pointed out. You’re basing an election conspiracy on things Trump has claimed? Do you realize how that sounds?
I think the key is to name the specific mechanism you fear—certification refusals, gerrymandering, voter suppression, or court intervention—because each calls for a different response. Which of those seems most plausible to you in 2026?
I fear all of the things you’ve listed, and they’ve all already happened to some degree. That makes them legitimate fears IMHO. It’s one thing to worry about what might happen, it’s another to know what has already happened and worry about it continuing to happen.
Ever played Whack-A-Mole? Which “mole” are we supposed to be concentrating on? Tell you what-Why don’t you tell us what we should be concentrating on the most when it comes the next election?
Yes. Thugs working for USPS may be discarding mail. Supreme Court – mere days before The Tuesday – has outlawed student IDs for voting. ICE or amateurs are already intimidating non-whites from presenting at polls. MAGGATS, acting on Trump’s public requests, may be trashing votes. Et cetera.
The chaos will become an excuse for lawsuits and worse. Court orders will be defied. Seating may be denied for some new Congresspeople.
Even if most of the threats are overcome, faith in The Great American Democracy will evaporate permanently.
I am dismayed by the deniers in this thread. Surely the blatant criminality of this regime should be quite apparent by now.
So if I’m following you here, you agree that if Trump had been telling the truth when he made this statement, then he would be admitting to stealing votes.
Now can you come up with any plausible reason why Trump would have not stolen those votes and then chosen to lie and confess to stealing them? Why would he brag about committing a crime that he was innocent of?
I know anecdote does not equal data but here you go:
There have been stories about the Trump administration trying to figure out how to hack or reverse engineer voting machines. While I understand and acknowledge that evidence of this is sparse (at this moment), it is certainly an idea that has occurred to them and that they have spent at least some time and effort investigating.