President Donald Trump’s most dangerous shot at meddling in the midterm elections hasn’t arrived yet, according to a voting rights expert.
Ari Berman, the national voting rights correspondent at Mother Jones, joined hosts David Corn and Garrison Hayes for the debut episode of the “Stress Test” podcast and warned that the stage of the election that matters most comes after ballots are cast.
“We’re in the pre-election phase of the election. There’s the voting period of the election. There’s the vote counting period of the election. Then there’s the election certification period of the election,” Berman said. “What we saw in 2020 is all hell broke loose after voting ended.”
He said that is where the administration would likely focus its firepower.
“That’s likely where they would try to do the most targeted interference because they’ll know this is how close the races are,” Berman said. “This is where the margins are critical.”
He warned the Justice Department, the Department of Homeland Security and other federal agencies could “mobilize to try to manipulate the result if they feel like there’s a close enough election and some kind of pretext for them to do so.”
The warning came even as Berman argued Trump has so far struggled to bend the election his way.
“The Justice Department is 0 and 25 in federal court trying to get states to hand over their voter rolls,” he said. Berman earlier noted that Trump “has been largely unsuccessful in his effort to try to rig the midterms.”
Berman said Trump is being pitched on declaring a national emergency or martial law to stop mail voting or seize ballots and voting machines, but called that “a huge stretch.”
The episode comes after Trump led a crowd at last month’s Republican midterm convention in a jokey pledge to “cheat like hell,” a moment Berman called “all projection.”
“Don’t give Trump any more power than he actually has,” Berman said. “When it comes to elections he has very little power.”
Ultimately, he predicted the fight ends with a whimper. “I think at the end of the day, Trump’s going to see his party losing, blame someone else, and decide to fight the next fight, and go golfing,” Berman said.
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