I Paper columnist Simon Marks writes that European leaders are already convinced President Donald Trump will try to rig the U.S. midterms and probably the subsequent national election.“There is invariably a ‘tell’ that reveals unannounced ideas percolating away inside his mind,” said Marks. “His daily, stream-of-consciousness engagements with White House visitors and members of the press corps often include throw-away lines that turn out to contain the germ of a notion taking root within his grey cells.”Trump recently mused that he had accomplished so much that “there shouldn’t even be an election” in November, Marks notes. And while White House media and Trump whisperers dismissed that little comment as “facetious,” Marks said observers couldn’t help but wonder how serious he was.“[W]hen Trump made two separate references in the past fortnight to the possibility of cancelling the US’s midterm elections, … eyebrows were raised,” said Marks, pointing out that the midterms would be a referendum on Trump’s second term and that polls indicate his party is likely to lose its slim majority in the House and possibly control of the Senate.“Were Republicans to lose control of both, under normal circumstances, Trump would be considered a lame duck, increasingly unable to push through his agenda,” Marks said. “… Democrats would have the power to begin impeachment proceedings against him and a host of senior cabinet members, and majorities in both chambers would set the stage for across-the-board investigations into the administration’s actions.”This is a scenario Trump will fight to avoid by any means. And while the president can’t outright scrap the vote, he can “work to pre-game the outcome to boost the prospects of Republican candidates.”Redistricting is one of Trump’s more obvious attempts at gaming the system, but Marks said Trump is also using his administration to try to control who gets to vote in November.“White House lawyers are demanding that 44 of America’s 50 states hand over un-redacted voter rolls, including not just the names and addresses of registered voters but also their driving license details and several digits from their social security numbers,” Marks said, adding that it’s even suing twenty-four states that have refused to surrender the info.More than 20 Republican-governed states are cooperating, however, which Marks said lays the foundation “for potential vote-suppressing skullduggery” that could challenge the votes of thousands of Democratic Party supporters.“Republican ‘election monitors’ [also] plan to sift through the data they’ve already received, vowing to crack down on ‘irregularities’ that Trump falsely claims have sullied successive US elections – except, of course, for those he won,” Marks said, adding that Trump could be planning to “suppress voter turnout” with the help of federal uniformed officers to stoke “a sense of insecurity on the streets of Democratic stronghold cities” in the run-up to November.Read the I Paper report at this link.
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