Gov. Ron DeSantis and his family attend a high school football game in Niceville in February 2020. (Photo via Governor’s Office)
“A free election is one where those in power have enough doubt about the outcome to make it worth rigging.” — Sen. Eugene McCarthy.
There was a time, not long ago, when most politicians did all they could to ensure the public was kept blind to immoral, illegal, or questionable behavior. They closed their deals in smoke-filled rooms, collected their bribes, stuffed their pockets with cash, all out of the public eye.
Those days are a distant memory, replaced by politicians who flaunt their criminality, boast openly, lie, cheat, and demand that no one holds them accountable. Gov. Ron DeSantis and President Donald Trump lead a party that has spent decades spreading lies, misinformation, disinformation, and half-truths to advance their agenda around voter suppression, voter subversion, and the outright theft of certain Americans’ constitutional rights.
Republicans continue to argue they have had to impose tough voter-ID measures to prevent what they describe as widespread voter fraud. But the real reason is that they would be beaten around the head and face if they ran solely on the issues.
Trump said as much in 2020, when during a Fox & Friends interview he observed: “The things they had in there were crazy,” referring to voter protection and expansion proposals in a bill under consideration. “They had things — levels of voting that, if you ever agreed to it, you’d never have a Republican elected in this country again.”
This is larceny dressed up as concern about nefarious characters meddling with America’s elections. But the MAGA Republican fixation on election malfeasance has no basis in reality. Republicans have created a solution in search of a problem.
Barrage of pressure
Last year, Florida found 198 “likely noncitizens who illegally registered and/or voted” in the state out of the more than 13 million people on its voter rolls, according to a report from the state’s Office of Election Crimes and Security. The office referred 170 of them to law enforcement.
However, the Brennan Center for Justice cites a Loyola University School of Law study of voting patterns between 2000 and 2014 that found only 31 credible instances of voter fraud out of 1 billion votes cast. But the 24 states with voter ID and other restrictive laws are realizing their desired result of diminishing African American turnout.
Which is why DeSantis, Trump, and MAGA influencers have ratcheted up their well-oiled voter suppression and election interference apparatus with the 2026 midterms on the horizon. The SAVE America Act working its way through Congress is a Republican Trojan horse designed to engineer an election power grab and critically undermine voting rights.
“For months, we have warned of a drive by President Trump and his administration to undermine the 2026 election. It is unprecedented, outlandish. Now Trump himself is blaring his intent — and over the past week, the public issue has exploded,” Brennan analysts reported on Feb. 10.
“Make no mistake: The SAVE Act would stop millions of American citizens from voting. It would be the most restrictive voting bill ever passed by Congress. It is Trump’s power grab in legislative garb.”
In Congress, U.S. Sen John Thune has weathered what is described as “a barrage of pressure to change the rules and install a ‘talking filibuster’” but has so far resisted.
“It’s time for Thune to grow a set of balls,” Rep. Andy Ogles, R-Tennessee, said in response. “Nuke the filibuster, pass all this stuff and pass Trump’s executive orders.”
SAVE Florida
Trump has mused openly about seizing states’ control of elections and nationalizing the process to ensure that he and his MAGA cronies can game the process. But this type of barefaced ambush must bear the imprimatur of law. For his part, DeSantis and the Republican-dominated Legislature have acceded to Trump’s wishes and have brought Florida onboard with more legislative legerdemain.
During the recently concluded legislative session, Florida Republicans passed the state’s version of the SAVE America Act. In Congress, the Senate on March 17 began “a marathon” debate. Despite mounting pressure from MAGA supporters, it is unclear whether the bill reconciling differences between the House and Senate versions will pass.
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The Florida bill, which DeSantis signed Wednesday, could disenfranchise millions of voters by putting in place a new set of barriers. Voters would be required to prove their citizenship, while the bill would disqualify student IDs as acceptable forms of voter identification.
Meanwhile, the voter registration applicants’ citizenship status must be verified by the Florida Department of Highway Safety and Motor Vehicles. Until that happens, applicants will be registered as unverified voters and must cast provisional ballots. Those votes would not be counted unless the voters’ legal status as citizens can be verified through the department’s records.
Elsewhere, in 2025, MAGA Republicans were trying to cement their positions. According to the Brennan Center, lawmakers in at least 47 states were considering about 486 restrictive voting bills. And state legislatures enacted at least 31 restrictive voting laws, the second highest total since the center began tracking this legislation in 2011. In addition, lawmakers in at least 31 states considered 129 election interference bills last year.
Impending purge
Marc Elias of Democracy Docket, other elections experts, and legal authorities like Elie Mystal agree about the danger the SAVE Act poses. Mystal cites The Economic Times, which estimates that at least 21 million eligible voters may not be able to provide birth certificates and passports.
“The people most likely to struggle with the new requirements are the usual suspects — people of color, young people, and poor people — but there’s an additional group that could easily be prevented from voting should this bill become a law: married women who have changed their name,” Mystal writes.
“Those women likely do not have a birth certificate with their new marital name, and if they also don’t have an updated passport with their married name, they could be denied their right to vote.”
The federal legislation would require regular purges of voting rolls, so people who don’t vote every election cycle “might suddenly find that they’ve been de-registered.” The bill authorizes prosecution and imprisonment of election workers who help people who lack proof of citizenship to register.
The consensus of critics across the political spectrum is that the Save Act and similar bills “are part of a broader federal agenda to sow distrust in our elections, undermine election administration, and discourage Americans from making their voices heard.”
Connecticut U.S. Sen. Chris Murphy told MS Now’s Chris Hayes that the SAVE Act has significant Democratic opposition. “I don’t think this is going to succeed, because not one Democrat believes that the biggest problem facing this country is fake voter fraud,” he said.
Murphy believes Trump’s motivation stems from a desire to distract Americans from the burgeoning disaster in Iran.
“This war is wildly unpopular. Gas prices are going up and food prices are sure to follow. He has run out of traditional paths for his party to win this in November. So the only thing he has left to do is to try to rig the electorate. … This will allow Stephen Miller and others to create some kind of pretext to try to throw out some portion of the results.”
This fear of losing control is what drives the GOP’s political strategy. They will never make voting easier because Republicans would never win another election if they did.
Retaining the levers of power by any means is the mission.
They’re deploying a mind-boggling mélange of strategies — purging voter rolls; truncating early voting; eliminating same-day registration; outlawing the counting of out-of-precinct provisional ballots; moving or closing down precincts without notice; eliminating pre-registration programs for 16- and 17-year-olds; shuttering early voting locations, especially in Black and brown communities; outlawing ‘Soul to the Polls’ campaigns; and making it easier to challenge voter eligibility.
Democrats in the Florida Legislature have been trying to fight the onslaught but are hopelessly outnumbered. Still, Mystal is encouraging Democrats nationally to coalesce around beating back Republicans.
Mystal, justice correspondent at The Nation, argues the single best response is overwhelming turnout. Until the midterms, though, he cautions that Americans would be wise to not ignore the considerable danger to the country Trump and his party presents.
“To ignore the threat posed by Trump, to pretend like everything is going to be okay, to assume that upstanding members of the courts will rise to prevent the theft of the election, is to stick your head in the sand,” he wrote in February.
“Trump and the Republicans have no intention of letting the upcoming midterms (in which Republicans are predicted to lose control of the House) proceed fairly. They’re attacking the election through legislative, law-enforcement, and political means.”
He adds: “They’re also putting in place the legal ability to steal the votes that get through these gauntlets.”
Mystal, a former litigator, laments the feeble opposition from Democrats. While Rome burns, the opposition wrings its hands and procrastinates, he writes.
A muscular response begins with a nationalized response from the opposition party and appointment of a shadow elections czar who would serve as the Democratic party’s designated spokesperson for the cause in the run-up up the midterms.
At the grassroots level, Mystal continues, people need to build “the street-level infrastructure to monitor or confront ICE or any other goons Trump unleashes on Election Day,” he writes.
“But, we need more, and we need it now. They are coming for the election. That is obvious. What we are doing to stop them needs to be just as obvious. And that’s how you fight despair. That’s how you counteract doom. The threats to the upcoming election are real. They cannot be and should not be understated. But you can’t help people defend their rights by ignoring the obvious. You help people, and our democracy, by joining the battle.”