by Neil H. Buchanan
On November 3, 2026, United States citizens are expected to go to the ballot and vote in the “midterms.” As the country faces an unprecedented authoritarian threat, this year’s elections might be the most consequential in its history. Yet even if the American people vote for democracy, their voices might remain ineffective. In the 21st century, elections and authoritarianism often work well together. In two op-eds, Neil H. Buchanan analyzes different reasons why the threat of the Republican Party undermining the people’s democratic choice should be taken seriously. This first part focuses on the potential of citizens being prevented from registering and registered citizens being stopped from voting.
The United States has a predictable election calendar. Unlike in some other countries, elections in the US are not “called” without advance notice. U.S. cities, counties, and states all hold elections on schedules set by their own laws. Federal elections are held every two years, with the even-numbered years in which there is no presidential election known as Midterm Elections, or simply “the midterms.” In November 2026, all 435 seats in the House of Representatives, as well as one-third of the Senate’s seats, will be contested as usual (plus two special elections to fill Senate seats vacated by early resignations).
All of that might sound obvious to the point of being banal, which is what we all hope it should be. But will there, in fact, be elections this year? If so, will the elections be fairly administered? Will the results of any elections be respected? Will the winners be seated and serve in a Congress able to wield the powers conferred upon it by the U.S. Constitution? Most importantly, why would anyone even think to ask such questions?
The answer to that last question, of course, boils down to Donald Trump. The U.S.’s current President is obsessed with the possibility of being impeached (again) if Republicans lose control of Congress this Fall. Trump himself has spoken many times about not holding the midterms at all, with the usual “he was just joking” defense sure to follow from his new, radicalized version of the Republican Party.
But nothing is certain anymore. It is shocking but true that we need to take seriously the question of whether there will be elections at all. More to the point, even if the U.S. holds elections this November, they will likely be even less free and fair than U.S. elections usually are. This could very well allow the Republican Party to steal the win.
For what it might be worth, I have very little doubt that there will be midterm elections in the U.S., and that they will occur on the legally mandated schedule in November. That does not give me any confidence in the process, however, because “holding elections” is easy as a matter of mechanics. Print some ballots, open some polling places, collect the ballots, go behind a curtain, and announce the results. This is not quantum physics. Any corrupt autocrat can do it.
In fact, many of them do. Just last month, North Korea’s Kim Jong Un won what his government described as an election with 99.93 percent of the vote. In 2024, Vladimir Putin survived a comparative nail-biter with a mere 87 percent of the vote in his reelection in Russia.
Dictators believe that there is something to be gained by holding sham elections. And, indeed, autocrats who regularly hold “elections” generally remain in power longer than those who do not. And because Donald Trump loves to call himself a winner (even when he loses), it is nearly impossible to imagine him being willing to pass up a chance to boast about having won big (or, as he would say, bigly).
Trump’s second stint as president, however, has been hugely unpopular in the U.S. As a result, the people who follow electoral politics for a living are almost universally predicting that 2026 will see an epic blowout by Democrats, with even a very unfavorable Senate map not enough to stop Trump’s opponents from taking control of not just one but both houses of Congress.
Even short of canceling the elections, however, Trump and his enablers have plenty of ways to hold onto power.
Stop Citizens From Registering
The U.S. has been justly criticized for as long as I can remember for having low voter turnout, especially in midterm elections. This year could bring a change, given that so many people oppose the Republicans’ agenda. How might the Republicans respond? Rather than changing in ways that would make more people want to vote for Republicans, their choice is again to keep those unhappy Americans away from the polls.
Trump has announced repeatedly that he will only agree to end the current partial shutdown of the U.S. government if Congress passes the so-called SAVE Act, which is a voter suppression bill pure and simple. As Vote.org (a nongovernmental advocacy group) explains:
“[The proposed law’s] stated goal is to make sure only U.S. citizens vote in federal elections. That is already the law, and it is already being enforced. Noncitizen voting has been a federal crime since 1996, carrying serious penalties including fines, imprisonment, and deportation. What the SAVE Act would do is add a new layer of documentation requirements on top of a verification system that is already in place and working.”
Meeting those new documentation requirements would cost money. The people most likely to lack the required documents (especially passports and birth certificates) are the least likely to be able to afford the cost of obtaining them. These groups, not at all coincidentally, tend to support Democrats, which is why the Republicans have been pushing similar efforts for years. Not only at the federal level, but Republican-led states such as Florida are also busy creating onerous registration requirements (although the new Florida law will not take effect until next year), indicating that one party and only one party sees an advantage in reducing the number of voters.
Stop Registered Citizens From Voting
Even the people who manage to register to vote are not safe. There is a long, ugly history of voter suppression efforts in the US in which partisans have spread disinformation in neighborhoods with large numbers of non-White voters. Sometimes, for example, people will receive “election updates” with the wrong voting date listed. Independent of the specific tactic, the idea has always been the same: Find areas where Democratic Party supporters are most likely to live, and then do everything possible to stop people in those areas from casting their votes.
In 2026, this shameful old practice has a new, and very frightening, variation: direct voter intimidation. Will Trump’s people send ICE agents to the polls to scare away potential voters? ICE can now enter houses of worship and arrest people – indeed, that policy change was announced on Trump’s second day in office last year – which is especially notable in a country that is still more religious than most of the world’s wealthiest countries (and in which White evangelical Christians constitute the core of Trump’s base). If that guardrail is gone, why not polling places too? One of the U.S.’s prominent far-right bigots, Steve Bannon, was more than eager to let the world know: “You’re damn right we’re gonna have ICE surround the polls come November.” And even if ICE itself is not there, Bannon and his ilk will surely call out their far-right paramilitaries to menace potential voters. Trump’s recent obsession with ending mail-in voting can be understood as part of this. After all, if citizens can vote without showing up at a polling place, how can neo-Nazis and Klansmen terrorize them into not voting?
This would not even require a nationwide crackdown. Indeed, using threats of violence to turn only a few elections in a few places might make enough difference to swing the overall outcome. Moreover, the very threat of agents possibly being deployed to harass and potentially arrest voters could be more than enough to stop people from showing up to try to vote. Recall that the conservative majority of the U.S. Supreme Court allowed ICE agents to stop people based on “apparent race or ethnicity,” speaking a language other than English (or merely speaking English with an accent), or even simply based on where they happen to work. This perverse ruling applies not only to immigrants but to US citizens, all of whom have the right to vote (at least for now).
If you fit the profile of what ICE is looking for, knowing what ICE agents have been doing to citizens and non-citizens alike, would you show up at a polling place on Election Day? Neither would I.
Neil H. Buchanan, Emeritus James J. Freeland Eminent Scholar Chair in Taxation and Emeritus Professor of Law at the University of Florida, is a Senior Research Fellow at the Institute for Austrian and International Tax Law, WU Vienna. Prof. Buchanan is an economist and legal scholar whose writing has increasingly focused on threats to the rule of law in the United States and around the world. He writes at Dorf on Law and Verdict.
This article is published under the sole responsibility of the author, with editorial oversight. The views expressed do not necessarily reflect those of the editorial team or the CEU Democracy Institute.
