Convicted Felon/Adjudicated Sexual Abuser/President Trump used his national address last week (video, 26 minutes) to distract Americans from the single most dire threat to free and fair elections that the country has ever faced: Trump himself.
Non-citizens voting is actually vanishingly rare in U.S. elections, and laws already prohibit non-citizens from voting. Many cases that were construed as voter fraud have actually been found to be due to mistakes by people who did not intend to commit voter fraud, but rather thought they were eligible to vote. Examples include formerly incarcerated people with felony convictions, since rules pertaining to convicted felons voting vary from state to state.
Despite the reality that voter fraud is incredibly rare, Trump has been working for years to erode Americans’ trust in elections and make changes that disproportionately advantage Republicans in the 2026 midterm elections. He has greatly accelerated his efforts since becoming president a second time. Nothing else even comes close to the all-encompassing, multi-faceted and years-long effort Trump has put into undermining U.S. elections. He has been working to sow doubt about elections because he knows that if Democrats win the House and the Senate in the midterm elections, the American people will finally be able to hold him accountable for the illegal acts he has committed while in office. Trump is also aware that the only reason he is not in prison right now is because he became president for a second time, and the U.S. Supreme Court has conferred some immunity on presidents from being prosecuted for crimes while they are in office.
Here is a partial list of things Trump has done to erode confidence in our electoral system:
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- He put in place a Supreme Court majority that invalidated Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act and opened the door to the creation of racially discriminatory Congressional districts.
- He was the first president in U.S. history to try to overturn the results of a presidential election.
- In his first term, Trump tried to direct his Attorney General, as well as the Departments of Defense and Homeland Security to seize voting machines.
- Trump has recently been doubling down on his claims that massive election fraud occurred in the 2020 election and caused him to lose, without providing any proof of it.
Trump is aware he is in peril of being jailed for committing crimes:
- Trump pardoned or commuted the sentences of over 1,500 violent, convicted January 6 criminals who tried to help him overturn the results of the 2020 election by rioting at the U.S. Capitol and assaulting Capitol Police in Trump’s name in 2021.
- Trump pushed Republican states to redraw their Congressional District voter maps long before redistricting is normally due to occur, in order to eliminate Congressional seats held by Black members of Congress and disproportionately advantage Republicans in the 2026 midterms.
- Trump has illegally demanded states turn over their sensitive voter information to him.
- Trump created a federal list of voters from state voter information that he obtained illicitly, and then ordered the Post Office to use this info to restrict who can get a mail-in ballot in the midterm elections. So far, fifteen different courts have ruled Trump’s seizure of sensitive voter information from the states is illegal.
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The Brookings Institution notes that, based on data from the Heritage Foundation, voter fraud in the U.S. is “miniscule.” In a March 14, 2025, speech, Trump threatened election workers, saying, “What a difference a rigged and crooked election had on our country. And the people who did this to us should go to jail. They should go to jail.”
- On July 17, 2026, Trump had Markwayne Mullen, his Secretary of Homeland Security, threaten election officials with prison time if they don’t comply with Trump’s demands about elections and voter rolls.
- Through executive orders, federal agency directives and bills like the SAVE Act (“the most restrictive voting bill ever approved,“) Trump has been trying to rewrite election rules and place obstacles and extra burdens upon people voting.
- Trump fired members of the federal Election Assistance Commission (EAC), an independent, bipartisan commission that was created to help states improve their election administration procedures and help Americans vote.
- Trump threatened to cut funds for election assistance and prosecute election officials and election workers who are dedicated to keeping elections free and fair.
- Trump revoked the federal security clearances of six law firms that brought litigation to protect voting rights, and he prohibited the federal government from contracting with the firms.
- Trump has undermined the prosecution of election-subversion efforts by supporting former Mesa County Clerk, convicted felon and election denier Tina Peters, who participated in an illegal election tampering-plot on his behalf, and who was let out of prison years early as a result of Colorado Gov. Jared Polis commuting her sentence despite being advised not to do so. Even members of his own Clemency Board twice voted unanimously against granting Peters a commutation of her sentence, and Polis commuted her sentence anyway. Peters is now out of prison and once again working to undermine confidence in elections nationally.
On Friday, July 3, 2026, Trump openly acknowledged he was attempting to rig future elections while speaking at an Independence Day address at Mount Rushmore when said Republicans would “not lose an election for the next 100 years” if Congress passed the SAVE America Act, which essentially is a voter suppression bill that Trump believes would advantage Republicans in future elections: