Good morning from London, where people are streaming into the British Museum to see the Bayeux Tapestry, over 220 feet of embroidery illustrating William the Conqueror’s invasion of England. It is on display to the public here for the first time since its creation nearly 1,000 years ago. Folks are stoked. In a speech last night at an unusual Republican midterm convention, President Trump told voters to “pretend that I am running.” He also promised to give every adult American $5,000 if Republicans win the House and Senate. (That would cost the government more than $1.3 trillion.) The convention continues today in Dallas. The midterms are looking like a mess. My colleague Evan Gorelick explains.
What could go wrong?The midterm elections are already uncommonly chaotic. Several states have redrawn their congressional maps. President Trump and his allies want to change how America handles mail-in ballots. Democrats accuse them of trying to cheat. And this week brought dueling legal opinions about which map Missouri can use on Election Day. Voters have already nominated candidates based on boundaries redrawn, at Trump’s insistence, to benefit Republicans. But the state’s Supreme Court later said those gerrymandered districts were invalid unless Missourians explicitly approved them, and a justice from the U.S. Supreme Court agreed. (No such vote has taken place.) Then a federal judge said Missouri could use Trump’s preferred map anyway. What is happening?? The answer lies partly in our increasingly polarized approach to elections. Trump claims elections are rigged against Republicans — both to rationalize his own defeat by Joe Biden in 2020 and now to impose new rules before midterm contests that may not go his way. And there are some reasons for suspicion. Russia and China have tried to influence our elections. Polls keep missing the mark. And screw-ups aren’t totally unheard-of: Many Americans remember 2000, when Florida’s voting machines failed to tabulate tens of thousands of ballots. Yet widespread cheating is a fiction. After multiple investigations, officials have found no evidence that fraud has affected any outcome. Trump’s false claims of cheating, however, are having an impact. Here’s how November 3 could be different this year. Voting by mailNearly a third of voters cast mail-in ballots. Trump wants to control that process by patching together a huge list of U.S. citizens and then refusing to mail ballots to voters whose names aren’t on it. (The Constitution grants states and Congress the authority to administer elections, but the president controls the Postal Service, which would maintain the relevant screening system, my colleague Eileen Sullivan reports.) The U.S.P.S. has proposed not to deliver mail ballots in states that don’t turn over their voter rolls for the master list. That would make voting much more difficult, if not impossible, for tens of millions of Americans — especially Democrats, who vote by mail in higher numbers than Republicans. The Trump administration already said it would toss ballots that arrive after the deadline, and more ballots are coming in late this year. A whistle-blower alleged last week that the verification process could reject thousands of ballots that arrive in a batch if “even one bar code on one single ballot” fails to scan properly. The plan, including printing bespoke new ballot envelopes, would be virtually impossible for states to implement in time. A judge has blocked it, warning of chaos and “major disenfranchisement.” But the president has asked the Supreme Court to bless the idea for this cycle while challenges work their way through the legal system. Contested results
Trump is the only president in U.S. history to try overturning an election. His ongoing assertion that elections are “rigged” creates a potential pretext for officials — a growing number of whom back the president’s election denialism, my colleagues Nick Corasaniti and Alexandra Berzon report — to question the outcome of this year’s midterms. If Democrats win enough seats to retake one or both chambers of Congress, then officials could: Claim they saw polling-site irregularities. The Justice Department has been deploying election monitors this primary season. It could do the same in November. (Trump has claimed that loads of undocumented immigrants vote, for instance, even though a database managed by the conservative Heritage Foundation identifies only about 100 cases of noncitizen voting over the last quarter century, or roughly two instances per U.S. state.) Claim voting machines lie. The president says they are “extremely exposed to attack” and has spread baseless allegations that they once “deleted” millions of votes. Trump told The Times he regretted not seizing voting machines after the 2020 election, and his administration has explored bringing criminal charges against election officials whom it believes did not sufficiently safeguard their computer systems. (Cyber experts have identified security flaws, but there’s no evidence they have ever been exploited to flip election results.) Claim there was foreign interference. Trump often complains, falsely, that China sabotaged him in 2020. This summer, he made a prime-time speech resurfacing that exaggerated narrative. There’s a grain of truth: Beijing collected American voter data. But such data is publicly available and often purchased by domestic political campaigns. On the other hand, Russian meddling might have helped Trump in 2016. Refuse to certify the results, or sue to challenge them. The Justice Department could unleash a torrent of post-election litigation. The agency has already demanded that states turn over voters’ confidential Social Security and drivers’ license data. Dozens of states have resisted, and the Justice Department sued them. It has lost every case so far. Still, election officials and Democrats worry the battle over voting records may be used to discredit or spread disinformation about midterm results. (Read The Times’s profile of the gladiatorial Trump official leading these efforts.) More on the midterms
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Trump is abusing the Patriot Act, additional authority granted after Sept. 11, 2001, to target political enemies and violently crack down on protesters, an investigative journalist writes. New York Fashion Week kicks off today. It’s time for governments to limit the industry’s enormous waste, one writer argues. The Anniversary Sale is on: Morning readers, enjoy our best offer. Celebrate 175 years of The Times with savings on unlimited news, puzzles, recipes, sports and more. $1/week for your first year. Save now.
We’ve made these links free for you. You just need to log in. Cloud seeding: Wildfire smoke in Malaysia is so bad that firefighters are trying to make rain. Stoned Age: Humans were getting high on betel nuts at least 16,000 years ago, according to evidence found in ancient teeth. It’s the earliest known use of a mind-altering substance. Rebranding: So long, Eurail. The flexible train ticket changed its name. (Gen X is sad.) Your pick: The most clicked link in The Morning yesterday was about a giant sinkhole at Nicolas Cage’s home.
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