{"id":382,"date":"2026-07-18T11:07:26","date_gmt":"2026-07-18T11:07:26","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/longdistancemoversusas.com\/?p=382"},"modified":"2026-07-18T11:07:26","modified_gmt":"2026-07-18T11:07:26","slug":"trump-revived-his-election-lies-the-people-who-run-elections-are-bracing-for-the-midterms","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/longdistancemoversusas.com\/?p=382","title":{"rendered":"Trump revived his election lies. The people who run elections are bracing for the midterms."},"content":{"rendered":"
\n

RAPID CITY, S.D. \u2014 On the night President Donald Trump walked into the East Room of the White House and once more undermined faith in elections, many of the people responsible for running those contests were standing at Mount Rushmore, waiting for four famous faces to light up against the dark.<\/p>\n

Read more Trump\u2019s Thursday speech should be recognized for what it truly was<\/a><\/p>\n

Few offices in the Trump era have proved as consequential, or as politically exposed, as that of a state\u2019s chief election official. And it was by chance that most of the nation\u2019s secretaries of state were in South Dakota for a long-planned conference on the same day Trump spoke \u2014 trading notes on their work, then scrambling to navigate the latest turn from the man who has fundamentally remade it.<\/p>\n

Faces of former presidents offered them a brief distraction in granite, after the current one threatened to upend their work all over again.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere\u2019s a disconnect between the White House\u2019s obsession with old grievances and the real facts and reality on the ground among those who actually oversee elections,\u201d said Steve Simon, Minnesota\u2019s Democratic secretary of state. \u201cThat\u2019s the bottom line to me. There\u2019s a real disconnect. It\u2019s unfortunate. It\u2019s ugly. It\u2019s political.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

In a naked political sense, whatever Trump had said would be derided by Democrats and navigated with differing amounts of unease and acquiescence within Republican circles.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n

Election officials don\u2019t have that luxury. Once the rhetoric comes down from on high, they are the ones left trying to convince voters that their ballots still count \u2014 a case each of them is eager to make in their own state, about their own system.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere\u2019s no third world country that has elections like we have,\u201d Trump said in his speech.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019ve got the best elections anywhere in the world. People come to the U.S. and marvel at how we carry off our elections,\u201d Kris Warner, West Virginia\u2019s Republican secretary of state, said the morning after the president spoke.\u00a0<\/p>\n

It\u2019s a strange time to be responsible for the levers of democracy. And it may get stranger yet.\u00a0<\/p>\n

A decade after he upended American politics by winning the White House, Trump\u2019s habit of spreading falsehoods about elections has become a bedrock feature of his presidency. His first term began with him as a sore electoral college winner, insisting he would have taken the popular vote, too, if the millions of people he baselessly claimed voted illegally were subtracted from the count.<\/p>\n

Even before Trump lost in 2020, he\u2019d laid the groundwork to claim the election had been taken from him. The ensuing fallout, and his lies of a rigged contest that carried a mob of his supporters to storm the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021 and attempted to overturn the outcome of a free and fair election, were rooted in what he\u2019d started saying long before.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Read more Ethics concerns swirl around Paramount merger as court hearing kicks off<\/a><\/p>\n

Which is why, to some of the officials gathered here, this week\u2019s speech reads less like a grievance about the past than a preview of things to come.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhat is the reason for this? Is it because he sees his party as having a big loss at the midterms, and so he is sowing doubt in the American public, like he did leading up to the 2020 election,\u201d said Steve Hobbs, Washington\u2019s Democratic secretary of state. \u201cAnd that\u2019s what I\u2019m worried about.\u201d<\/p>\n

Republicans are at risk of losing the House this fall, and possibly the Senate. The ambitions of Trump\u2019s final years in office hinge on the outcome.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe have very important elections coming up. We want those elections to be honest,\u201d Trump told the country hours before.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n

America\u2019s system of elections does not emanate from Washington. The system is decentralized by design, left to the states \u2014 and there\u2019s a sense among those involved that this is for the better.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Few Republican elected officials, if any, are rushing to pick a fight with the president. And against that backdrop, his allies saw the logic in what he was trying to do, even as some GOP-led states have pushed back against his administration\u2019s wishes.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe president basically said out loud what many of us think, that hey there are some things that we could do better and President Trump definitely has a louder voice than any individual secretary of state,\u201d said Denny Hoskins, Missouri\u2019s chief election official.\u00a0<\/p>\n

The afternoon before Trump spoke, a group of outgoing secretaries of state took the stage together at the conference \u2014 a valedictory panel for officials whose time managing elections is nearly up. Among them was Monae L. Johnson, whose re-election run was derailed by another Republican earlier this year.\u00a0<\/p>\n

She joked to the luncheon crowd about her reputation as an election denier. Then she offered a piece of advice to whoever fills roles like hers next, while chiding the MyPillow man \u2014 a leading 2020 conspiracy theorist still enjoying Trump\u2019s favor.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Read more How 3 documents show Trump is on a path to reject the midterm results<\/a><\/p>\n

\u201cRemember that you<\/em> are the election expert,\u201d Johnson said. \u201cNot Mike Lindell.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Gathered in South Dakota the night of the president\u2019s address, the nation\u2019s secretaries of state heard something familiar \u2014 and, some of them thought, a preview of what\u2019s coming this fall.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":381,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-382","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-us"],"yoast_head":"\nTrump revived his election lies. 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