Elections are in process of being rigged

Let's be honest about what's happening to the 2026 election: it's being rigged in plain sight. Not by Democrats — but by the president, his administration and the Republican Party.

Start with access. State legislators have introduced over 300 restrictive voting bills this year alone, several already law. Proposals like the SAVE Act would demand proof-of-citizenship documents — passports, birth certificates — that millions of eligible voters simply don't have handy. Mail ballots are under attack too: ending universal mail voting, banning ballot collection and imposing a strict Election Day receipt deadline that would toss out ballots postmarked on time but delivered a day late.

Then there's the power grab. Election administration has always belonged to the states — that's in our Constitution. But Trump's Executive Order 14248 tries to seize pieces of it anyway, ordering federal agencies to share voter data, pressuring states to purge voter rolls, dictating voting-machine standards and threatening to withhold funding from states that don't comply. A federal judge already struck down part of it. That a court had to intervene tells you how far this reaches.

And Republicans aren't stopping at 2026. The SAVE America Act, still alive in Congress, would nationalize photo-ID and citizenship requirements for every federal election — a blueprint clearly aimed at 2028.

The most immediate damage, though, is the unprecedented mid-decade redistricting. Texas redrew its map to hand Republicans up to five more House seats. Missouri, North Carolina and Ohio followed suit. That's not a subtle thumb on the scale — it's a fist. Combined with new registration hurdles hitting rural, elderly, low-income and newly registered voters hardest, these changes are engineered to decide House control before a single vote is counted.

Use your vote in November to strike a blow for democracy by turning out spineless incumbents who won’t stand up for the Constitution.

Lynn Jensen, Lake Zurich