Trump and His Allies Are Still Trying to Change Election Rules

This month, a small group of Nebraska state senators found themselves in a position to potentially shape the outcome of the 2024 election.

In one of multiple last-ditch efforts to shore up a Trump victory, leaders in the national GOP attempted to change the way that Nebraska allocates its Electoral College votes. Currently, the state is a rare example of a “hybrid” system, where different parts of the state can award electoral votes to a candidate based on how locals vote. The state reliably votes Republican, but the Omaha area represents a “blue dot” that sometimes gives an electoral vote to Democrats—a vote that may prove decisive for Kamala Harris in a close race.

Trump’s allies tried to foreclose this option. In Nebraska last week, Senator Lindsey Graham spoke with lawmakers and advocated changing the process so the state would give all of its electoral votes to a single candidate—most likely Trump, considering the makeup of the state. Yesterday, Republican State Senator Mike McDonnell, on whom the future of the change hinged, announced that he would not support the measure: “After deep consideration, it is clear to me that right now, 43 days from Election Day, is not the moment to make this change,” he said in a statement.McDonnell’s decision, which he suggested was final, effectively halts the initiative. Had it not been for this lawmaker breaking with the wishes of fellow Republicans both in and out of state, Trump and his allies could have succeeded in rolling out a substantive change at this late point in the race.

Such Republican machinations in this cycle are not isolated to Nebraska—and Trump’s allies are finding more traction altering election rules in other states. The “sheer volume of litigation we’re seeing just two months before Election Day … is far from the norm,” Megan Bellamy, the vice president of law and policy for Voting Rights Lab, a nonpartisan voting organization, told me via email, citing examples of Republican-led litigation related to voting lists in Arizona and North Carolina and mail ballots in Pennsylvania (all swing states). Last Friday, a controversial rule was passed in Georgia—the state in which Trump is facing an indictment for alleged attempts to overturn the 2020 election—that would require election workers to hand-count ballots after the polls close, a process usually reserved for a recount. As my colleague Elaine Godfrey explained last week, Donald Trump sees the “new far-right majority” on Georgia’s state board as an extension of his own campaign, referring to them as his “pitbulls” for victory.

States generally have the authority to administer federal elections as they wish, and officials tinkering with state election law for a variety of reasons is nothing new. In the months leading up to the 2020 election, many states made quick-turn changes to voting rules in an attempt to adapt to pandemic restrictions. The current election season has seen a series of changes from both parties: States whose legislatures are led by Democrats have, by and large, altered rules to make registering and voting easier, and those led by Republicans in various states have added restrictions, including ID laws.

Some of the GOP’s latest attempts to change rules in swing states may face legal action. But even for those lawmakers whose efforts prove legal, the reasons not to make last-minute changes to the voting process are both obvious and persuasive: Such moves can make a political party look cynical, confuse voters, and undermine trust. Even rules intended to make the process of voting easier can create uncertainty for voters unfamiliar with the new steps, Jacob Neiheisel, a political-science professor at the University at Buffalo, told me. But “winning” has become more important for Trump’s “core constituency than any kind of appearance of fairness,” Neiheisel said. And much of Trump’s base is already primed to distrust elections: Polling from 2023 showed that nearly 70 percent of surveyed Republicans believed that Joe Biden’s 2020 win was fraudulent. If there’s a chance that changing the rules leads to victory, then the way MAGA Republicans see it, these gambits are worthwhile, Neiheisel suggested.

Last-minute changes could also introduce errors or confusion that give pretext to Republicans already setting the stage to cast doubt on the legitimacy of the race if it doesn’t go their way. The new hand-counting policy in Georgia, for example, is “absolutely inducing more potential failure points,” Neiheisel told me. If, say, overtired election workers make minor errors in their hand-counts on Election Night, this could give ammunition to those who seek to deny the results of the election (even if such errors had no bearing on the final outcome).

Some election workers and local politicians have attempted to serve as a guardrail against late-stage alterations to the law. But their efforts are not always enough. Trump and his motivated allies are trying to squeeze in changes even as, for many Americans, the election has already begun. Voters abroad and in the military were sent ballots last week, and early in-person voting started in certain states this month. The weeks ahead are a crucial time for candidates to make their most persuasive appeals to voters—but also, it seems, for those determined to bend the outcome to their will.

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Isabel Fattal contributed to this newsletter.

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