President Donald Trump doesn’t seem content to put his thumb on the election scale this year. He’s jumping on it with both feet. The commander in chief told soldiers at Fort Bragg, “You have to vote for us” — a breach in long-standing protocol that respected a Defense Department prohibitio n on partisan political activity by active-duty service members. Kristi Noem, Trump’s secretary of homeland security, caused a firestorm recently by saying, “When it gets to Election Day, we’ve been proactive to make sure that we have the right people voting, electing the right leaders to lead this country.” Tulsi Gabbard, the director of national intelligence, observed FBI agents collecting 2020 voting records in Fulton County, Ga., using subpoenas based on debunked claims. As if a possible precursor of things to come, Trump himself said he regrets not seizing voting machines after he lost that election. At his behest, Republicans in Congress are trying to jam through legislation that would dramatically change the way elections are run and make it more difficult to vote. Then there’s the redistricting derby triggered by Trump and his comments about nationalizing the elections and Republicans taking them over. The examples go on and on. It’s not subtle. All this is based on relentless falsehoods by Trump and others claiming widespread voting fraud by noncitizen immigrants. Such lies have not just been disputed over the years but disproved by numerous studies, analyses and election recounts. Some of the most recent reports proving this is nonsense come from interesting sources. The Heritage Foundation, which produced the Project 2025 guide for Trump, found only 24 instances of noncitizens voting from 2003 to 2023, Reuters noted. The libertarian Cato Institute conducted in-depth research and concluded: “Trump’s Claims About Noncitizens Voting Are False. We Can Prove It.” Then there was the report just before Election Day 2024 that says, “Voting has never been more secure than it is right now” from Scientific American, which doesn’t get distracted by the hot air and takes, well, a scientific look at things. It’s always worth a reminder that Trump’s own panel looking into election fraud disbanded in 2018 after finding pretty much nothing — certainly not the millions of fraudulent votes Trump said were cast in 2016. The country should always be vigilant about election security, but drastic changes shouldn’t be made based on falsehoods. The evil old saw that if you repeat a lie often enough, people will start to believe it rings true here. A national survey from UC San Diego’s Center for Transparent and Trusted Elections released last week shows a decline in trust of elections — and it’s across party lines. Sixty percent of respondents said they are confident votes will be counted accurately in the 2026 midterms, according to the poll. Just after the 2024 presidential election, that figure stood at 77 percent. That’s a big change since Trump started his second term and further ramped up his fraud claims. According to the United States Democracy Center, Americans expressed a modest increase in confidence in the integrity of U.S. elections following the 2024 vote. “After Trump’s victory, Democrats became somewhat less confident about the integrity of our elections, while Republicans became substantially more confident,” the organization said. The UC San Diego poll authors wrote that the “large partisan divide over trust in elections that was present before President Trump’s victory closed just after it, and now trust among all political groups has been declining in parallel.” Respondents registered skepticism about the redistricting taking place across many states. More than a third (37 percent) expect Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents to show up at polling places. That concern was several percentage points higher among Latinos, Blacks and Asian Americans, and a few points lower among White respondents. More people in every racial and ethnic group responded that the presence of ICE would make them less confident rather than more confident in the election. Just over 30 percent of Latinos and Asian Americans and 20 percent of Blacks agreed with the statement: “I worry that going to the polls could put me at risk of being questioned by federal immigration officers, despite being a US citizen.” Just 8 percent of White people felt that way. The survey was conducted in conjunction with UC San Diego’s Yankelovich Center for Social Science Research. Against that backdrop, Republicans are pushing hard for more restrictions on voting as they face an apparent uphill battle to retain their slim House majority. The House GOP recently passed the SAVE Act, which requires proof of citizenship to register to vote, gives Homeland Security access to voter rolls and overhauls other election laws. Democrats are looking to block the bill in the Senate. Another bill pending in the House, the “Make Elections Great Again Act,” would do a lot more, according to The New York Times. It would ban universal voting by mail and the counting of ballots received after Election Day. The measure would ban ranked-choice voting for federal elections and prohibit voters from giving sealed mail ballot packets to someone else for delivery, a practice currently allowed in 18 states. The bill would bolster the SAVE Act’s voter ID provisions, specifically requiring proof of citizenship via passport or birth certificate — things a lot of people can’t readily get their hands on. Under current California law, people have to declare under penalty of perjury that they are U.S. citizens when registering to vote. Regardless, polls show Americans overwhelmingly support some form of photo voter identification or proof of citizenship law. That’s also reflected in California surveys. Meanwhile, opponents’ claim that ID laws lead to voter suppression have been undermined by some studies. One of them, in 2019 from Harvard Business School Professor Vincent Pons, found that between 2008 and 2018 state voter ID laws had “no negative effect on registration or turnout, overall or for any group defined by race, gender, age, or party affiliation.” The Brookings Institution, citing Heritage Foundation data, concluded last year that no U.S. election outcome has ever been altered by ballot fraud. Late last year, columnist Joe Matthews argued there’s a lack of common sense in the push for voter ID laws. If you’re trying to steal an election, he wrote, sending individuals out one by one to impersonate voters would be an inefficient, massive and very costly operation that likely would be easy to uncover. Best to go after election infrastructure like voting rolls and machines, and limit how ballots can be cast and counted. Which is what Trump and the GOP are trying to do. What they said Shane Goldmacher (@ShaneGoldmacher), New York Times national political correspondent. “Inbox: ‘(Texas U.S. Senate candidate) James Talarico Raised $2.5 Million in a 24-Hour Period Following Censored Late Show Appearance’” ...read more read less