Will November’s elections in the United States be free and fair?

America’s midterm elections have always been a principal check on presidential power. Time and again, they have allowed voters to send a course-correcting message. But the elections on November 3 are different. For millions of Americans, they may be one of the last opportunities to place meaningful democratic limits on a president who has spent the past eighteen months weakening the very institutions meant to constrain him.

The courts still hold the line, at times. The states retain important spheres of autonomy. Civil society is increasingly mobilized. But the most powerful restraint remains the vote itself.

November’s elections could deprive Donald Trump of unified control of Washington, revive congressional oversight, and restore some of the balance the American constitutional system has lost. That is precisely why Trump is increasingly focused on targeting the elections themselves.

On June 11, more than a hundred FBI agents raided the offices of the Ohio Organizing Collaborative in Cleveland, along with the homes of its leaders. The group’s work includes registering voters in disadvantaged neighborhoods. Agents seized computers, served subpoenas, and questioned volunteers. It was not an isolated incident. It was part of a broader campaign whose purpose is less to uncover wrongdoing than to spread fear — to remind those who register voters, and those who vote, that political participation now carries risks.

Midterms usually punish the party that controls the White House. Trump knows this. In 2018, Democrats picked up 40 seats and retook the House of Representatives. Today, with his approval ratings in the basement, inflation rising and a deeply unpopular war in Iran, the prospect of another electoral setback is real. That helps explain his determination to tilt the playing field before a single ballot is cast.

One way is through partisan gerrymandering. After Trump pressed Republican-controlled states to redraw district lines to entrench their structural advantage, Democrats responded where they could, notably California. Then in April, the conservative Supreme Court gutted what remained of the historic Voting Rights Act, freeing Republican legislatures to dismantle majority-Black districts — districts likely to elect Democrats — across the South. Florida redrew its map within hours of the ruling; Tennessee followed within days, as did Louisiana. The result is an increasingly uncompetitive electoral map, and a built-in Republican head start of about ten House seats.

The administration is also trying to suppress minority voting by rewriting the rules. In February, Trump unsuccessfully urged congressional Republicans to “nationalize” elections, even though the Constitution leaves their administration to the states. The House nevertheless passed the SAVE Act he has championed, which would require documentary proof of citizenship to register to vote — birth certificates or passports that millions of Americans do not possess. The bill is now stalled in the Senate. But Trump has kept raising the stakes, sabotaging unrelated legislation and pressuring Congress relentlessly, arguing falsely that Democrats only win elections because of noncitizen voting. He has turned suspicion of the vote itself into an instrument of political power.

I have spent my career helping pursue dictators and documenting how democracies erode. One lesson stands out: democratic breakdown rarely comes all at once. It advances incrementally, until the irreversible begins to feel normal. What is happening in my own country follows a pattern I have seen before.

It is worth remembering what happened in 2020. After losing the election, Trump tried to cling to power through political pressure, fake electors and disinformation campaigns that culminated in the assault on the Capitol on January 6, 2021. That effort failed because America’s institutional guardrails held. But many of the officials, prosecutors and election-security personnel who played decisive roles then have since been forced out or replaced by loyalists.

The script is repeating itself. In Atlanta, the FBI seized the 2020 ballots from Democratic-leaning Fulton County and has now assigned 260 analysts to what it calls a “priority” investigation. The strategy serves two purposes: to keep alive the animating myth of a stolen election and, in doing so, to undermine confidence in the next one. In Michigan, the Justice Department has multiplied its demands for election records. At the same time, the administration is suing 30 states and the District of Columbia to obtain their voter rolls — a first step toward creating a national voter database that could determine who has the right to vote.

Trump has already warned that he will accept November’s results only if he believes the election was “honest.” He specifically singled out Detroit, Philadelphia and Atlanta — Democratic bastions in swing states that now find themselves in the federal government’s crosshairs.

What comes next? No dramatic constitutional rupture is required. The greater danger is more incremental: baseless fraud allegations used to justify federal intervention; armed civilians “monitoring” polling places; Russian AI disinformation spreading unchecked by an intentionally disarmed federal bureaucracy; Steve Bannon’s promise to “surround the polls with ICE” becoming reality; Justice Department investigations delaying or blocking certification of closely contested races.

American elections are decided state by state and district by district. All it takes is enough confusion to challenge unfavorable results after the fact. The danger is not massive voter fraud. It is an organized fog of doubt.

Yet nothing is settled. Every court to rule so far on the administration’s demands for state voter rolls has sided with the states. America’s decentralized election system still provides important protections. Thousands of local officials administer elections, many — at least in states where they have not been purged by MAGA ideologues — are already preparing for possible interference. Civil society remains vigilant. And a press under siege — but still free — continues to document what is happening.

The question is not simply whether Donald Trump will accept an adverse result. It is whether Americans will still be able to produce one. The answer will determine more than the composition of the next Congress. It will determine whether our democracy can still right itself — and whether it is still “self-evident,” as the Founding Fathers declared 250 years ago, that governments derive “their just powers from the consent of the governed.”