If Trump Steals an Election, Here’s What to Do

Nonviolent rebellion has proven again and again to be the most effective way of ousting even a determined autocrat.

It is January 3, 2027. The Democrats, fresh off their sweeping victory in the November elections, are set to take the majority in the House of Representatives.

All that remains is for the House clerk to compile a list of new members from the certified winners of the November races. It is an administrative technicality, a rote task that has gone off largely without incident every two years since 1789.

At least it did before Donald Trump turned the Republican Party into an election-denying cult. Now it has become the latest tool in the GOP arsenal to overturn election losses. Following the Democrats’ triumph in November, House Speaker Mike Johnson replaced the nonpartisan House clerk with a MAGA loyalist. Citing allegations of election fraud, the new clerk announces that he will not accept the documents certifying Democratic wins in key races. As a result, the members-elect cannot take their seats. 

The Democratic National Committee unleashes an army of lawyers to challenge the move. But when the matter arrives before the Supreme Court, the Roberts majority, invoking the “political question doctrine,” rules that it cannot interfere in the internal operations of another branch.

And just like that, the Republicans have stolen the midterms.

According to election experts, this scenario, though unlikely, is entirely feasible. Worse, such a scheme might prove to be a dress rehearsal for the main event: a GOP gambit to overturn the 2028 presidential election. In 2020, Trump lost the election but tried to hang onto power regardless. Why would 2028 be any different?

Sure, Trump is barred from running for another term, but the Roberts majority might not see it that way. In any case, one would scarcely expect a different nominee to show more respect for the democratic process. That includes JD Vance. “If I had been vice president” in 2020, he once mused, “I would have told the states … that we needed to have multiple slates of electors”—a reference to an illegal scheme to........

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