Opinion | Why Is Trump So Afraid of American Voters?

A lot happened this week. “Democrats dominating the first major election.” “Nancy Pelosi will retire.” “A surge in air traffic controller callouts.” Here’s one thing you shouldn’t miss. On Tuesday, California voted on —— “Prop 50.” “Prop 50.” “Democrats think they will get five additional seats.” But let’s not get too wrapped up in the details there. What is of real concern is President Trump’s reaction to this vote. Before the polls even closed, the president was raging about how the election was rigged. That it was unconstitutional. “A giant scam.” “It’s absolutely true that there’s fraud in California’s elections. It’s just a fact.” Spoiler: There’s no indication that either of these things are true. He got even more mad when he saw Democrats win in Virginia, New Jersey and New York. “So Donald Trump, since I know you’re watching, turn the volume up.” And now the president is flailing. He wants to hold on to his majority in Congress in the midterms next year. So he’s calling on lawmakers to take action to outlaw mail-in ballots, to make voter-ID laws more strict, to do more gerrymandering. And it’s not hard to picture what else the president might consider doing. Sending in troops into American cities around elections to intimidate voters or cover the country with ICE agents who have already wrongfully detained almost 200 U.S. citizens this year. If you think any of this is far-fetched, let’s review a few other times in American history where our leaders have tried to deny voting rights. For Black voters in the Jim Crow South, for female voters before women’s suffrage and for Native Americans for much of the country’s history. And just by continuing to cast doubt on the legitimacy of American elections, Trump is telling his followers to believe that losing an election means it’s stolen. We know where that ends. “Stop the steal!” In a democracy, a president’s job should be to get as many eligible citizens as possible to the ballot box. This country has never done that perfectly, but we’ve made important progress. If Trump has his way, large swaths of citizens could lose their vote and American democracy itself would lose much, much more.