At this point, we just have to tune out the noise.

For the vast majority of voters, the mechanics of the 2026 elections will feel very familiar.  Eligible, registered voters will make their choices—some at the polls on election day, some early, some by mail or drop box—and those choices will be reliably tallied to yield accurate winners, as in 2024 and 2022 and so on.

On the ground, the mechanics will be normal.  That’s not to say that it couldn’t be better.  Our election procedures are robust and resistant to manipulation, but there are a lot of ways we could improve, including systems that foster more equitable representation, structures that provide deeper and broader customer service, and budgets that better support the elections we expect and deserve.  Still, the process we’ve got will work as designed. 

That sentiment may seem surprising, because the President is doing his level best to try to convince the public otherwise.  And much of our media ecosystem can’t help but magnify every misbegotten germ of a new scheme.  The next six weeks will be a nonstop barrage of headlines about the latest crazy idea, followed by headlines about people freaking out about that idea. Rinse and repeat. 

But voters will find stability in the electoral reality outside of their screen time.  Although federally inspired frenzy around the election system has reached unprecedented levels this cycle, very little has worked to the detriment of voters.  (The impact on the mental health of election officials is another matter, and a serious one.)

The most meaningful change has been in redistricting.  Despite an attitudinal shift apparent in recent Supreme Court rulings, excessive partisan gerrymandering is still unconstitutional.  Federal courts won’t hear the cases, but that doesn’t change the legality of the underlying conduct.  Shoplifting is still illegal even when police aren’t watching the store.

You wouldn’t know it.  The President’s demand that Texas redraw its congressional lines for maximum partisan impact started a mid-decade gerrymandering war.  The Supreme Court’s Voting Rights Act opinion in April—and some subsequent pretextual state opportunism—fanned the flames further.  Now that the dust has settled, voters in ten states will cast ballots in different congressional districts than they used two years ago.

Still, there are limits. State courts have cut back on two attempts to change the lines; state legislatures held the line on three others.  The lines that were redrawn for political gain reflect assumptions about the likely electorate; a different electorate (or an electorate with different preferences) changes the impact fairly substantially. Partisan gerrymanders are seawalls that limit  normal partisan tides, but a tsunami of turnout comes right over the top. Districts aren’t destiny.

And those district lines are the most meaningful change that’s stuck.  The President issued two executive orders attempting—not just without congressional authorization but contrary to existing statutes—to radically rewrite the way federal elections are conducted.  The most significant bits of both were dead on arrival.  The first, in March 2025, attempted by presidential fiat to redo the voter registration process, override local election machinery purchases, and nullify state laws concerning ballot return.  All three efforts were blocked.  The second, in March 2026, instructed the USPS to reject some mail ballots and deliver others, distorting a mandate older than the country itself.  The USPS rule has also been enjoined.  The Supreme Court has been behaving badly enough that the Administration believed it had a path, but the Postal Service’s “plan” — quite predictably — was beyond the pale even for this Supreme Court.  It was blocked and will stay blocked.

Other agencies aren’t faring better. The Department of Justice does most of its work through the courts, but the courts aren’t generally buying what DOJ is selling.  (Hence DOJ’s 0-25 record in the unlawful attempt to harvest voter files.)  Agencies with the capacity to exert even greater coercive force face an even greater constraint: we are a country of stunning geographic spread, and multiple modes of casting ballots make the sheer logistical prospect of disrupting the elections by physical imposition unworkable in practice even if the will were present.

The President is running out of tools.  In other policy arenas, the President has operational control of agencies with the ability to effectuate an order and worry about judicial review later.  In the elections sphere, the President just doesn’t control most of the relevant levers.  State and local officials do.  When the President purports to order a change to the process, the people who actually run the elections … don’t have to listen. 

(Quick reality check: if the President declared a national emergency and demanded that you rename your first-born child—would you do it? Right. Same idea.)

So the President is turning back to the skill on which he built his career: marketing.  With real process change stymied, he looks to communication.  With one hand, he has restoked tired and debunked narratives of fraud, principally (and without factual basis) demonizing noncitizens.  With the other, he has threatened or teased further procedural disruption, projecting power he simply does not have.  The goal—to the extent this reflects strategy and not simply reflex—appears to be to create a semblance of chaos that encourages voters to stay home.  It’s an attempt to convince the electorate it has no agency.  It’s an attempt to get us to do to ourselves what he can’t impose on his own.

None of this is OK.  The repurposing of federal agencies—DOJ, DHS, the Census Bureau—to become personalist propaganda engines is an assault on the credibility of institutions that could take decades to repair.  The constant barrage of election integrity misinformation degrades broader public confidence in a system that has earned our trust.  All of this exerts tremendous pressure on local officials, who are as prepared for as wide a range of activity as I’ve ever seen, but whose plates are overfull.

But also, I don’t think it’s working to change the electorate’s intent to participate, in their own communities, where they know the process the best.  The rules are now essentially set.  The President is not a magical wizard. Moreover, “The Boy Who Cries Wolf, Cries Wolf Again” is a narrative losing its ability to grab attention.  And 90 to 92 percent of American voters repeatedly say that they trust their local elections to be run well—in part because local elections are run well.  Local officials of all partisan stripes (and none), backed by trial and appellate courts of all partisan stripes (and none), are holding the line.

There will be further messaging storms ahead.  There may well be another executive order, purporting to tell Americans that the blue sky is green.  There may be a limited local paramilitary deployment, staged for media cameras and social media feeds to make a minimal incursion seem pervasive.  There may be “leaks” of Rube Goldberg plans too complex and far-fetched to function.

Voters have a superpower to deploy in response: decide not to attend to the nonsense.  Get information from local election officials.  Check your voter registration.  Make a plan to vote.  With three easy steps, we ensure that the 2026 elections are firmly in our hands.