Category: Election

By Nicholas Riccardi and Matt Brown / AP / September 14, 2026

Democratic state parties announced Monday that they are launching an operation for the midterm elections they’re calling the “New Battlefield Project,” intended to recruit 10,000 volunteers to guard polling places in case armed federal officers show up.

Activists are planning mass protests if the Trump administration tries to interfere with voting or ballot counting. And legal scholars are distributing white papers advising judges what they should do if the government tries to seize ballots.

The unprecedented efforts are in response to President Donald Trump’s equally unprecedented moves to interfere in this year’s midterm elections, which include attempts to impose proof-of-citizenship requirements to register to vote and directing the Postal Service to play a central role in deciding which voters should get a mail ballot.

The anxious contingency planning as voting gets underway has become a marker for how fraught democracy has become in the country that once stood as an example to the world.

“We have never prepared for an election sabotage event like we have now,” said Ezra Levin of the left-leaning group Indivisible.

Project will prepare volunteers across US to monitor polls, encourage early voting and respond to disinformation

From the Guardian / September 14, 2026

The Democrats intend to train tens of thousands of volunteers to monitor the polls and counter possible voter intimidation under a new plan to protect November’s US midterm elections from anticipated interference from Donald Trump and his allies.

The nationwide initiative, dubbed the New Battlefield Project, will help state Democratic committees build up a vast coalition of volunteers to monitor the polls, push voters to cast their ballots early and create a network to respond to disinformation.

The Association of State Democratic Committees (ASDC), an arm of the Democratic National Committee (DNC), plans to train volunteers across 57 states and territories. It hopes to train volunteers for 25% of the nation’s 95,000 election day polling places, focusing on districts with competitive races.

These volunteers will wear blue vests to provide a visible presence intended to counter any voter intimidation, including by federal agents. Thirty state parties have a trained election protection director, with the goal of all states having one in place.

By Alexandra Hutzler / Democracy Docket / September 14, 2026

In a major win for voters, the Supreme Court Monday rejected the Trump administration’s attempt to reinstate its mail voting restrictions ahead of November’s pivotal midterm elections.

The justices declined to lift a block on the measure that a lower court judge has said is likely unconstitutional.

“The Government is unlikely to succeed on the merits of its challenge to the District Court’s preliminary injunction,” the court said in a brief, unsigned order. “And the equitable factors applicable for obtaining emergency relief from this Court do not favor a stay.”

The ruling* was 6-1-2, with Justice Brett Kavanaugh writing a concurring opinion and Justices Samuel Alito and Clarence Thomas dissenting.

NY Times Editorial Board – RSN / Sept. 9–11, 2026

President Trump has a long record of threatening rather than protecting the integrity of American elections. At his worst, he sought to overturn the 2020 results. Now he is menacing the midterms, with an executive order that would throw voting by mail into chaos if it went into effect.

It is up to the Supreme Court to prevent that. Nearly one in three voters now vote by mail. Mr. Trump’s order has already sowed doubt about whether Americans can continue to trust the Postal Service to deliver their ballots and prompted bipartisan alarm from states and local election officials. The sooner the court puts Mr. Trump’s ill-advised directive to rest, the better.

Mr. Trump’s order is illegal. He does not have the authority to set the rules for election administration. The Constitution gives that role to the states, with Congress providing oversight. “The times, places and manner of holding elections for senators and representatives shall be prescribed in each state by the legislature thereof; but the Congress may at any time by law make or alter such regulations,” Article I states.

As a bipartisan task force said in 2021 in response to a relatively minor executive order from President Joe Biden, “Presidents don’t have much of a role in how elections are run — and that’s a good thing.” Nevertheless, Mr. Trump ordered the Postal Service in March to decide which voters would receive mail-in ballots, a decision that states have always made for themselves.

By Marc Elias / Democracy Docket / September 8, 2026

We are less than two months until Election Day for the most important midterms of our lifetime. Ballots have already started to be sent out. The threats to free and fair elections are real and growing more serious by the day.

What once seemed like an abstract threat has now become concrete. The risk of a rigged election is no longer unthinkable. The need for action can no longer be delayed or denied.

I have often said that Donald Trump’s plan is to make it harder for you to vote and easier for him to cheat. Now we know what that will look like in 2026.

Donald Trump issued an executive order claiming powers over federal elections that he does not have. In response, the U.S. Postal Service is trying to ram through a rule that will make voting by mail more difficult while requiring states to turn over sensitive voter data.

The Postal Service has not been shy in making clear that it is taking these steps to allow federal law enforcement to conduct criminal investigations of alleged voter fraud.

That is not all the USPS has done to make voting more difficult. A series of smaller changes have resulted in slower mail service and delayed postmarks on envelopes. While these are not limited to returned ballots, the results have been devastating for those trying to vote by mail.

Claiming Democrats are “communists” is another fantasy crisis.

Bill Eddy / Substack / Aug 17, 2026

Remember the 2016 election campaign when Donald Trump repeatedly called Hillary Clinton “Crooked Hillary” and the entire Republican Convention chanted “Lock Her Up”? Yes, she improperly used a personal server for her emails sometimes for government business—just like many Republicans in government did without consequence. She was not prosecuted for this, but less than two weeks before the election, the Director of the FBI, James Comey, notified Congress that they were investigating an unrelated laptop that suddenly showed up with some of her emails. This gave the bogus claim extra credibility at the worst time. Trump won the election and the issue promptly vanished. Trump’s con was highly effective and may have won him the Presidency.

Now It’s Communism?

In August, 2024, at a press conference while gearing up for the Presidential Election against Kamala Harris, Trump explained his strategy: “All we have to do is define our opponent as being a communist or a socialist or somebody who is going to destroy our country.” He then branded her “comrade Kamala” as his favorite label throughout the campaign. Reports indicate that he used this term somewhere between 30 and 80 times in his speeches in the fall of 2024. And he won the election.

By Point Loma Observer

Last week, Voice of San Diego updated readers on Awaken Church and its “out there” pastor, Jurgen Matthesius, including a link to a recently posted supercut of clips from Matthesius’ sermons. The clips include his claims that he shrank a child’s inoperable tumor through prayer and that God called on him to pray for the tanks to stop during the Tiananmen Square massacre, prompting him to spontaneously speak in what the article characterizes as “Asian-tinged tongues.”

“Out there” is putting it mildly.

But Matthesius and Awaken Church are not simply a religious curiosity. As many Rag readers know, their influence extends into San Diego’s political arena.

In 2024, the San Diego Union-Tribune reported that Richard Bailey, now a candidate for San Diego City Council District 2, assisted members of the Awaken Church’s political arm, RMNNT, in their efforts to get elected to local office.

Contact Governor Newsom Immediately to Veto SB 344 -the Midway Rising Gut-and-Amend Bill

By Donna Frye

[Here’s Part 1]

If you’ve been following the Midway Rising development project for the past many years, you know how complicated it has become. The project being proposed includes a new sports arena and housing development in the Midway area that “was once part of the river bottom and alluvial flood plain area of the San Diego River.”

Most recently, state legislation (SB 344) was introduced at the very last minute and passed via a shameful gut-and-amend political maneuver by the state legislators.

It’s been difficult to watch this process play out and not feel disconnected from the elected officials who are supposed to represent us. But it’s no wonder especially when our representatives work so hard to shut us out of the process.

That being said, we still have to do something to try and stop SB 344 from being signed into law.

By Nicole Crosby, Candidate for San Diego City Council District 2

It’s no secret that many of us feel left behind by City Hall. It’s a sentiment I hear from and share with my neighbors every day. With costs on the rise, our infrastructure crumbling, and City leaders pushing half-baked solutions to complex issues, it’s easy to see why.

These were the issues on my mind when I decided to launch my campaign for City Council District 2, which covers the neighborhoods of Ocean Beach, Mission Beach, Point Loma, Clairemont, Midway, Old Town, and North Bay. These are the neighborhoods where I started my family, served as the President of the PTA and Clairemont Town Council, and am proud to be raising my daughter.

And as a working mom, I know this race isn’t about abstract ideas or numbers on a spreadsheet; it’s about real problems that impact real people’s lives. I have served the City Attorney’s office for over a decade, where I’ve stood up for victims of elder abuse, hate crimes, and gun crimes. Every day, I work to help ordinary people secure justice and dignity against those who try to exploit them. Now, I’m running to take that fight to City Hall on behalf of our neighborhoods and stand up against the corporate special interests that want us to stay quiet.

While serving in the community, I have seen firsthand the ways that the system is rigged against working San Diegans: whether it’s corporate short term vacation rentals turning affordable homes in our communities into unregulated hotels, a recreational airfield spreading pollution directly into our backyards, or a stunning lack of investment in basic infrastructure and services. What would fixing these issues and making City Hall actually work for us mean in our everyday lives?

‘It’s Not the Time to Panic; It’s the Time to Get Ready’

By Mona Charen / The Bulwark – Reader Supported News / September 4, 2026

THE SUPREME COURT GAVE US A START this week with what looked, at first glance, like a win for Donald Trump’s efforts to suppress mail-in ballots. But, as Andrew Egger explained, that isn’t quite what happened. In broad outline, the Court stayed a lower court injunction while the legality of Trump’s attempted interference will be decided later. It was a temporary procedural win for Trump, but not a permission slip.

Not yet, anyway. After the 2024 immunity ruling, you’d be ill advised to assume anything about this Court. Until three years ago, it was axiomatic that the president was not above the law. The Roberts Court undermined that key principle. And here too, it seems an open-and-shut case that the Constitution grants power over elections to Congress and the states, not to the executive branch. But we’ll see.

Still, the Court’s little summer fright is a good reminder that early voting will begin in some places in as little as four weeks, and while the polls and projections look good for Democrats, this is not an ordinary election year. Trump is weakened and flailing, yes, but he remains determined to prevent a free and fair election in November if he possibly can. And he does not lack for lackeys.

The Supreme Court touched on just one of his efforts to subvert the election: his executive order directing the Postal Service to work with states to determine whether voters requesting mail-in ballots were citizens.

There have been other below-the-radar efforts to subvert election security.

By Zachary Roth, Jim Saksa / Democracy Docket / September 1, 2026

A whistleblower claims in a new report that the U.S. Postal Service (USPS) defied a court order by moving forward with a “secretive, rushed” effort to implement President Donald Trump’s mail voting order, which is now mostly blocked.

The report, published Tuesday by Sen. Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.), along with a letter sent by Blumenthal to Postmaster General David Steiner, warns that the hurried development of a data portal for states to upload the new mail ballot envelope designs and mail voter lists required by USPS’s rule carrying out Trump’s order risks disenfranchising millions this November.

“According to the whistleblower, USPS’s effort to develop and deploy the Portal has been ‘rushed,’ ‘risky and haphazard’ because leadership has demanded an impossible timeframe,” Blumenthal wrote. “In an effort to meet impossible deadlines, USPS has eliminated standard and needed testing, thereby creating substantial risk of a ‘catastrophic failure’ of the system that could ‘derail the midterm elections.’”