The Court Case That May Destroy U.S. Democracy

By Alec Pruchnicki

Anyone who has been paying attention knows that Trump has wanted to cheat on election results. This goes from asking for the Georgia Secretary of State to “find” about 11,000 more votes to asking if the military could seize ballot boxes. I was worried about him putting masked, armed, ICE agents around voting sites to intimidate voters, even though that would spark widespread public opposition. His administration recently found another way of interfering with elections that uses the court system rather than ICE agents.

They obtained a court order issued by a Trump-friendly judge in Missouri to seize the original ballots in Fulton County Georgia, which includes heavily Democratic Atlanta. Kurt Olsen, a long-time election denier, was appointed by Trump to be the director of election security and integrity. Using this status, he obtained the sealed (meaning secret) court order despite no substantial evidence of election fraud in Atlanta but probably with re-hashed accusations that had been litigated and rejected years ago. FBI agents went to Atlanta and obtained the paper ballots whose present location is not known. Trump added a few comments about how Republicans and the federal government should run all elections despite the Constitution giving this authority to the states. As extreme and frightening as this action is, it could be much worse.

If a court order from the other side of the country based on non-existing evidence could be used to seize actual ballots five years after the election is over, why can’t one be used to seize ballots five minutes after the election is over? An experienced and well-trained FBI agent appears by surprise at city, county, or state election headquarters and presents what appears to be a valid court order seizing ballots immediately after the polls close. If this occurs before the local officials have a chance to count or copy ballot results then those results would be counted by the federal government ─ this federal government, loaded with election deniers and Trump-supporting sycophants. Could anyone be sure of an honest count, or even a proclamation without any count at all? Would all ballots be counted or would some, like mailed in ballots, be labeled as questionable and not included in the final count before results are certified?

To steal an election, you might not need to undermine every voting site in every state. Although projections are that Democrats will win big in House elections, making multiple seizures at multiple sites difficult, Senate races are much closer. Republicans have an excellent chance of retaining control of the Senate because of the large number of Republican states undergoing those elections, but the few toss up elections might be very vulnerable to interference. If votes are seized, suppressed, or just stolen in heavily Democratic Atlanta and Detroit then Republican victories in those states are almost guaranteed. If a few House votes here or there are similarly effected then that just adds to the federal ability to undermine, if not steal, the whole election. And if you think this is just paranoia, think how many times since 2016 have we told ourselves “it can’t be happening here” to only be proven wrong.

What can be done to prevent this? One method used in the past was to have lawyers defending voting sites available on election day so that any malfeasance can be identified and immediately combated with a countervailing court order. This would give election officials the legal justification for ignoring or at least delaying the implementation of the seizure orders. Although it might put them in legal jeopardy, elections officials themselves would refuse to accept seizure orders and simply state that the order must be verified by the election lawyers. That would delay seizures and delay might be all that is needed. Elections officials who are Democrats, independents, or even honest Republicans like Brad Raffensperger in Georgia in 2020, would have to be willing to face down FBI agents.

The mechanics of the elections might be altered. Instead of a single source of ballots, whether paper or computer, there might be a way of making copies of ballots so that every computer ballot has an immediate paper copy made, or vice versa. If this is done quickly then even if one set of ballots is seized there is the possibility of the duplicates serving as a limit on federal miscounts. Local election officials might be able to quickly certify the results and so federal results and certification might be moot, or at least more difficult to justify.

The media might also play a role. Very often news outlets call elections immediately after polls close based on exit interviews. These are always unofficial but if the result is clear enough and that gets publicity, miscounts later might be hard to justify or at least open to challenge.

But the biggest deterrent to election fraud may have to come from the voters themselves. The more massive the turnout, the less likely the election will be stolen or undermined. In 2016, poor Democratic turnout in the swing states gave Trump an electoral college victory but not a popular vote victory. By 2020, the abuses of Trump’s first term were fresh in people’s minds and they were angry. Anger sometimes brings out voters more than the actual issues themselves. In 2024, what happened? Were Trump’s previous actions forgotten, were immigration and inflation the real issues, was a Black woman with a foreign first name unelectable, or were people just apathetic and thought, once again, “it can’t be happening?” Whatever the reason, fewer voters turned out and Trump narrowly won. We cannot keep saying “it can’t be happening.” Unless we stop it, it’s happening.