Like almost all would-be dictators, Trump thrives off of chaos. He took another step in creating it at his “Trumpapalooza” convention in Dallas, where he had his cult followers swear the following oath:

“I pledge to the greatest president that ever lived… I don’t care if I’m registered or not. I’m going to try to cheat like hell” to keep the Republicans in control of congress this November. Trump is not even trying to hide his plans to steal November’s election anymore.

To recap: On March 31 of this year, Trump issued an executive order mandating that states must send send their voting rolls plus additional data to the United States Postal Service (USPS). The additional data would include drivers license numbers and social security numbers. The postal service would then compose a unique bar code for every voter. Then, when states send out mail-in ballots, the envelopes would have to contain the matching bar code. USPS would then conduct random checks to see if the name and the bar code match up and if not then all the mail-ballots would be rejected. If a voter changed their name due to marriage or divorce, or if in one place they used a middle initial and in another place they did not, these would be causes for rejection of the entire batch sent to the postal service.

As of January of this year, according to the Ohiocapitaljournal only twelve states have fully complied. These states are Alaska, Arkansas, Indiana, Louisiana, Mississippi, Nebraska, Ohio, Oklahoma, South Dakota, Tennessee, Texas and Wyoming.

Here is a timeline of what happened next:

• June 25, Appeals court judge Indira Talwani finds the executive order to be unconstitutional and orders USPS to stop work on it.
• July 25 (approximately), USPS resumes work on the plan. This violates Talwani’s injunction but it’s ignored. (See Sen. Richard Blumenthal’s letter) 
• August 24, Supreme Court rejects Talwani injunction on the grounds that the USPS rules had not yet beein issued.
• August 26: USPS issues final rules for mail in voting, with Aug. 21 as the effective date.
• September 4: Judge Talwani issues second injunction.
• Sept. 10: Supreme Court hears DOJ appeal of second Talwani injunction.

That is where the legal case stands right now. A Supreme Court ruling can be expected within the next week, although you never know with the court’s six Trump (in)Justices.

One concern is that there simply isn’t time for the states to comply with Trump’s executive order. That’s because states mail out the ballots a minimum of several weeks in advance of the election, if not longer, and the states must prepare the envelopes weeks if not months in advance of mailing them out. For example, according to the NY Times North Carolina, Delaware and Alabama had already mailed out their ballots before the Supreme Court even considered the second injunction.

The situation in Missouri is even more chaotic. On September 8, (in)Justice Kavenaugh blocked the state from using their newly redrawn gerrymandered voting district maps for the November election. But the state had already held its primaries based on that new map. So which candidate will run in which district is up in the air.

The entire situation is creating chaos in November’s elections. That is why there is something of a division among Republican officials at the sate level. Many Republican officials who are responsible for administering the elections oppose Trump’s plans.

The NY Times reported that “On Wednesday, the chief election officials in seven G.O.P.-controlled states filed a brief to the Supreme Court, arguing that it was too close to the midterms to make any major changes to how elections are conducted.

The brief, which was signed by the Republican secretaries of state in Kentucky, North Dakota, South Dakota, Georgia, New Hampshire and Kansas, as well as the lieutenant governor of Utah, broke with the Trump administration’s effort to significantly restrict mail voting ahead of the 2026 elections. They were joined by 26 current county and local election officials and five former election officials.”

This is why it is very possible that at least some of the Trump Supreme Court (in)Justices may rule against Trump’s executive order.

Trump is creating chaos in the vote-by-mail system.That is far from the end of the story.

Democracydocket reports that Republicans are organizing “poll watchers” who will be harassing voters who vote in person. Democracydocket also reports that there are are 132 election deniers running for office this year. Among them are Jim Marchant, candidate for Nevada secretary of state, TimFleming candidate for Georgia secretary of state and KenPaxton candidate for senator from Texas.

According to Wired.com, “Since Trump took office in 2025, ICE has more than doubled in size. DHS claims the agency now has 22,000 officers and agents stationed around the country and is still in the process of hiring more. The agency received nearly $80 billion in funding as part of Trump’s One Big Beautiful Bill Act, giving it virtually unlimited resources.” If they can get away with it, Trump and company will use these forces to disrupt the election and enforce their dictatorial rule afterwards. Minneapolis was a test run.

There is also another avenue to steal the elections. According to CNN Department of Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick is “working quietly behind the scenes” to develop plans to seize certain voting machines on the grounds that they are fixed because some of their parts are made in China. The irony of the fct tht Trump is the most pro-China president since the Chinese revolution is apparently lost on people.

All these measures might not be sufficient to stop the Democrats from gaining a majority in the House of Representatives. That won’t necessarily be the end of the story. Last July the NY Times explained the procedure for seating members of the House of Representatives following an election. It should be straightforward. On Jan. 3 the clerk of the House calls the newly elected Representatives who then elect a speaker. The whole process is predicated on the assumption that the clerk is a non-partisan technocrat, which they have always been. The entire process becomes very complex, though, if present House Speaker Mike Johnson subverts the process by appointing a Trump toady as clerk prior to Jan.3.

J. Michael Luttig. He represents the majority of the U.S. capitalist class.

On September 10, coservative Republican former federal judge J. Michael Luttig laid out the legal precedent for intervention by the Supreme Court to intervene if a partisan clerk subverts the procedure. Given the present alignment of forces, there is little reason to think Luttig’s reasoning will be adopted by the Trump majority on the Supreme Court.

Overall, the capitalist class is divided on this Trump initiative. A wing of the tech billionaires, led by Elon Musk, supports every repressive measure Trump chooses to take. The majority, though, as represented by Luttig, CNN, the NY Times etc. see no advantage to Trump becoming a formal dictator. They think U.S. capitalism will be better served if it continues to rule in the old way through capitalist democracy.

If he is able to carry though his plans, he will create chaos in the courts, chaos in congress and chaos among the US population. Out of this chaos will arise a dictatorship whose closest precedent will be the former slave states in the late 19^th century after Reconstruction was ended. Then racist gangs roamed the South, terrorizing not only black people. They established a dictatorship that repressed all working class and poor people.

This time, the closest equivalent to those forces will be ICE and Customs and Border Patrol (CBP). They have proven they are above the law. As the USPS proved when it violated Judge Talwani’s injunction, the entire Trump administration has proved that it considers itself to be above the law.

In the end, the outcome will be determined in the streets. If sufficient forces are mobilized to shut down the country in order to stop Trump from stealing the elections, that will sway the Republicans in congress and/or the Supreme Court (in)Justices.

The liberals like No Kings will organize protests that disrupt nothing. Trump will ignore them.

Counterpunch can find space for paid Putin/Xi shill Vijay Prashad, but not to cover the looming election chaos.

The silence on this issue by the union leadership and by DSA and left journals like Jacobin, Counterpunch and even smaller journals like Tempest is a disgrace. The reasons for their silence and how pro-Nazi forces like those around Tucker Carlson will benefit will be discussed in a follow up article. If you don’t want to miss it, take out a free subscription to our blog.