12 new york | august 5–18, 2019
doing so now that Trump has crushed all
resistance within the party.
The president may be the most infa-
mous proponent of voter-fraud fever
dreams, but he is hardly alone in his delu-
sions. It is a fantasy he has imbibed from
years of consuming right-wing news,
where systematic urban Democratic fraud
is an article of faith. During Bill Clinton’s
second term, I sat in on an off-the-record
lunch with a high-ranking Republican
congressional leader. One colleague asked
a question predicated on the public’s hav-
ing reelected Clinton by a comfortable
margin. The Republican replied that he
didn’t accept the premise: He believed
massive fraud had padded the Democratic
totals and so could not be confident Clin-
ton had won legitimately. (Clinton won in
1996 by more than 8.5 percent, a margin
of more than 8 million votes.)
Moreover, it was George W. Bush’s
administration, not Trump’s, that ordered
U.S. Attorneys to find and prosecute voter
fraud and then fired several after they failed
to locate any. It was mainstream Republi-
can congressional leaders who whipped up
such a fervor against acorn—a progressive
grassroots organization they accused of reg-
istering fraudulent voters—that the group
had to disband. And it has been ordinary
Republican governors and legislators who
have imposed a variety of voter- suppression
laws over the past decade.
Conveniently for Putin, this deep vein of
Republican paranoia has been focused on
the softest target: the voting system. TheSenate Intelligence Committee’s report
concludes that while vote- tabulating
machinery would be difficult (though not
necessarily impossible) to hack into
remotely, the easiest way for Russia to
undermine the election would be to tam-
per with the voting rolls so eligible voters
disappear or, at a minimum, key precincts
are bogged down in chaos.
And so imagining a Trumpian succes-
sion crisis does not require us to summon
visions of tank columns rolling down
Pennsylvania Avenue. It would simply be
a souped-up version of the 2000 recount.
During that crisis, the Florida state gov-
ernment, run by the Republican candi-
date’s brother, repeatedly blocked the
manual recounts that Democrats were
permitted to ask for. At one point, when
officials in Miami started recounting bal-
lots, Republican staffers stormed their
office and shut them down. No Republi-
cans or conservatives condemned the use
of mob tactics to stop a sanctioned gov-
ernment process. Eventually, Republi-
cans succeeded in delaying it, with a
major assist from the Supreme Court, and
preventing the statewide recount.
The Republican Party that won the
recount through sheer ruthlessness is
fondly remembered today for its respect
for liberal norms, which is sort of true, in
the limited sense that the party has grown
far more illiberal since. The 2020 version
of the Republican Party is more extreme
in both its ideology and its methods, and
it will have a key advantage it lacked in
2000: a sitting president.
Suppose the election produces a
Florida-style deadlock and the decisive
electoral votes belong to Pennsylvania, or
Wisconsin, or ( just because history has a
sense of humor) Florida. Key cities report
irregularities in their vote totals, seem-
ingly caused by as-yet-undetermined
problems with their voter-registration
lists or ballot counts. Some intelligence
officials suspect Russian hackers, but
federal-government agencies, now con-
trolled by Trump loyalists, refuse to con-
firm any such finding, and Trump dis-
misses such accusations as more “deep
state” sabotage. Fox News is aflame with
reports of fraudulent Democratic votes
cast by the millions.
Trump insists he is the legitimate vic-
tor. No do-overs! CNN is consumed with
inscrutable arguments about alleged
irregularities. Angry demonstrators
scream at each other on the street. And
while chaos erupts everywhere, the man
in the Oval Office follows a well-known
principle of real-estate disputes: Posses-
sion is nine-tenths of the law. ■voting machines almost anywhere and
needs to succeed with only a handful of
them in order to change the outcome.
Every swing state has one or more large
cities with a massive concentration of
Democratic votes. Tampering with or dis-
abling the vote count in Philadelphia,
Detroit, and Milwaukee, for instance,
could throw the election to Trump out-
right or create the conditions for a dis-
puted result. Either outcome would dove-
tail with Moscow’s goals of discrediting
the democratic process as a sham and
keeping Trump in office. This is the
dynamic that has preoccupied most cov-
erage of and commentary about the issue.
Far more revealingly, Republican indif-
ference to the Russian threat gives an
indication of how the party would
respond in the event of a compromised
election. Their support for Trump pre-
views how a disputed vote tally caused by
Russian hacking would metastasize into
a systemic constitutional crisis.
McConnell defended his obstruction of
election-security measures by pointing to
his long record of hawkishness on Russia.
The problem is not McConnell’s loyalty to
Russia but his loyalty to the Republican
Party. If China or Saudi Arabia or North
Korea were trying to help the head of the
Republican ticket, McConnell wouldn’t
get in its way, either.
He has already proved that he would
prefer for his party to win with Russian
help than to lose without it. In the weeks
leading up to the 2016 election, then–CIA
Director John Brennan privately warned
congressional leaders that Putin was per-
sonally overseeing a sweeping election
intervention on Trump’s behalf, which
might include hacking emails as well as
voting machines. McConnell greeted this
dire warning icily. Not only would he
refuse to sign a bipartisan statement
warning Russia not to interfere with the
election, as Joe Biden claimed in 2018,
but he told Brennan that if the CIA direc-
tor went public with his warning, McCon-
nell would accuse Brennan of interfering
in the election against Trump. McConnell
even resisted signing a letter warning
state election officials to beware of Rus-
sian hacking, eventually agreeing to a
softer version that did not mention Rus-
sia by name.
And this episode took place at a time
when the cost of offending Trump was
low. Republican leaders widely expected
that their nominee would lose and that
within weeks they would be busily wash-
ing off his stink. If McConnell wouldn’t
cooperate with a bipartisan stand against
a hack then, it is impossible to imagine hisMcConnell
has alreadyproved that hewould prefer towin with Russianhelp than tolose without it.TRANSMITTED________ COPY ___ DD ___ AD ___ PD ___ EIC1619INT_COL1_lay [Print]_35555773.indd 12 8/2/19 6:11 PM12 newyork| august5–18, 2019
doing so now that Trump has crushed all
resistance within the party.
The president may be the most infa-
mous proponent of voter-fraud fever
dreams, but he is hardly alone in his delu-
sions. It is a fantasy he has imbibed from
years of consuming right-wing news,
where systematic urban Democratic fraud
is an article of faith. During Bill Clinton’s
second term, I sat in on an off-the-record
lunch with a high-ranking Republican
congressional leader. One colleague asked
a question predicated on the public’s hav-
ingreelectedClintonbya comfortable
margin. The Republican replied that he
didn’t accept the premise: He believed
massive fraud had padded the Democratic
totals and so could not be confident Clin-
ton had won legitimately. (Clinton won in
1996 by more than 8.5 percent, a margin
of more than 8 million votes.)
Moreover, it was George W. Bush’s
administration, not Trump’s, that ordered
U.S. Attorneys to find and prosecute voter
fraud and then fired several after they failed
to locate any. It was mainstream Republi-
can congressional leaders who whipped up
such a fervor against acorn—a progressive
grassroots organization they accused of reg-
istering fraudulent voters—that the group
had to disband. And it has been ordinary
Republican governors and legislators who
have imposed a variety of voter- suppression
laws over the past decade.
Conveniently for Putin, this deep vein of
Republican paranoia has been focused on
the softest target: the voting system. TheSenate Intelligence Committee’s report
concludes that while vote- tabulating
machinery would be difficult (though not
necessarily impossible) to hack into
remotely, the easiest way for Russia to
undermine the election would be to tam-
per with the voting rolls so eligible voters
disappear or, at a minimum, key precincts
are bogged down in chaos.
And so imagining a Trumpian succes-
sion crisis does not require us to summon
visions of tank columns rolling down
Pennsylvania Avenue. It would simply be
a souped-upversionofthe2000 recount.
During that crisis, the Florida state gov-
ernment, run by the Republican candi-
date’s brother, repeatedly blocked the
manual recounts that Democrats were
permitted to ask for. At one point, when
officials in Miami started recounting bal-
lots, Republican staffers stormed their
office and shut them down. No Republi-
cans or conservatives condemned the use
of mob tactics to stop a sanctioned gov-
ernment process. Eventually, Republi-
cans succeeded in delaying it, with a
major assist from the Supreme Court, and
preventing the statewide recount.
The Republican Party that won the
recount through sheer ruthlessness is
fondly remembered today for its respect
for liberal norms, which is sort of true, in
the limited sense that the party has grown
far more illiberal since. The 2020 version
of the Republican Party is more extreme
in both its ideology and its methods, and
it will have a key advantage it lacked in
2000: a sitting president.
Suppose the election produces a
Florida-style deadlock and the decisive
electoral votes belong to Pennsylvania, or
Wisconsin, or ( just because history has a
sense of humor) Florida. Key cities report
irregularities in their vote totals, seem-
ingly caused by as-yet-undetermined
problems with their voter-registration
lists or ballot counts. Some intelligence
officials suspect Russian hackers, but
federal-government agencies, now con-
trolled by Trump loyalists, refuse to con-
firm any such finding, and Trump dis-
misses such accusations as more “deep
state” sabotage. Fox News is aflame with
reports of fraudulent Democratic votes
cast by the millions.
Trump insists he is the legitimate vic-
tor. No do-overs! CNN is consumed with
inscrutable arguments about alleged
irregularities. Angry demonstrators
scream at each other on the street. And
while chaos erupts everywhere, the man
in the Oval Office follows a well-known
principle of real-estate disputes: Posses-
sion is nine-tenths of the law. ■voting machines almost anywhere and
needs to succeed with only a handful of
them in order to change the outcome.
Every swing state has one or more large
cities with a massive concentration of
Democratic votes. Tampering with or dis-
abling the vote count in Philadelphia,
Detroit, and Milwaukee, for instance,
could throw the election to Trump out-
right or create the conditions for a dis-
puted result. Either outcome would dove-
tail with Moscow’s goals of discrediting
the democratic process as a sham and
keepingTrump in office. This isthe
dynamic that has preoccupied most cov-
erage of and commentary about the issue.
Far more revealingly, Republican indif-
ference to the Russian threat gives an
indication of how the party would
respond in the event of a compromised
election. Their support for Trump pre-
views how a disputed vote tally caused by
Russian hacking would metastasize into
a systemic constitutional crisis.
McConnell defended his obstruction of
election-security measures by pointing to
his long record of hawkishness on Russia.
The problem is not McConnell’s loyalty to
Russia but his loyalty to the Republican
Party. If China or Saudi Arabia or North
Korea were trying to help the head of the
Republican ticket, McConnell wouldn’t
get in its way, either.
He has already proved that he would
prefer for his party to win with Russian
help than to lose without it. In the weeks
leading up to the 2016 election, then–CIA
Director John Brennan privately warned
congressional leaders that Putin was per-
sonally overseeing a sweeping election
intervention on Trump’s behalf, which
might include hacking emails as well as
voting machines. McConnell greeted this
dire warning icily. Not only would he
refuse to sign a bipartisan statement
warning Russia not to interfere with the
election, as Joe Biden claimed in 2018,
but he told Brennan that if the CIA direc-
tor went public with his warning, McCon-
nell would accuse Brennan of interfering
in the election against Trump. McConnell
even resisted signing a letter warning
state election officials to bewareofRus-
sian hacking, eventually agreeingtoa
softer version that did not mentionRus-
sia by name.
And this episode took place ata time
when the cost of offending Trumpwas
low. Republican leaders widely expected
that their nominee would lose andthat
within weeks they would be busilywash-
ing off his stink. If McConnell wouldn’t
cooperate with a bipartisan standagainst
a hack then, it is impossible to imaginehis
McConnellhas alreadyproved that hewould prefer towin with Russianhelp than tolose without it.