Republicans are hard at work making the midterms unfair.
Their mid-decade redistricting in the South has diminished Black political power. They’ve pushed a dodgy non-citizen-voting narrative to scare away voters and stoke mistrust in elections. They’re attacking Alaska’s Senate election before a single vote is counted. And while their assault on mail-in voting has largely failed, it undoubtedly made people less confident in that option, so in that sense it succeeded.
This behavior is on-brand for Republicans. In the last six decades, there’s compelling evidence that they’ve tried to rig national elections at least five other times – in 1968, 1972, 1980, 2000, and 2020. Most of these plots you know about; some you may not. Four times, they were declared the winner, so we can’t say cheaters never prosper.
Here’s a look back.
1968: The Chennault Affair
Lame-duck President Lyndon Johnson tried to get Vietnam peace talks going, but Republicans secretly persuaded South Vietnamese leaders to stall the effort by assuring them that GOP nominee Richard Nixon would get them a better deal if he won. LBJ may have been playing politics, too, seeking a peace breakthrough to help the Democratic nominee, Hubert Humphrey.
A key emissary between the Republicans and South Vietnam was Chinese-born GOP fundraiser Anna Chennault. Her mission was successful: South Vietnam boycotted peace talks, and Nixon was elected.
Information about this plot was kept secret for decades, but now there’s no doubt. Republicans sabotaged a sitting president’s peace efforts for political gain while American troops kept dying. It was traitorous, but they got away with it.
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1972: Watergate
This Republican conspiracy went beyond the break-in at the Democratic National Committee’s offices. It was a far-flung effort to boost Nixon’s reelection with a campaign of dirty tricks.
One particular target was Democratic frontrunner Edmund Muskie. New Hampshire primary voters got phone calls late at night from callers with Black dialects claiming to be from a “Harlem for Muskie Committee.” A letter on “Citizens for Muskie” stationery sowed Democratic division by spreading false rumors that one of Muskie’s primary rivals had been arrested for homosexual acts and another had gotten into a drunk-driving accident with “a well-known call girl.”
The right-wing Manchester (NH) Union Leader published something called the “Canuck letter,” which was signed by a “Paul Morrison” but actually written by a White House staffer. It accused Muskie of prejudice against Americans of French-Canadian descent. The newspaper also insulted his wife. These smears so upset Muskie that he showed up outside the paper’s offices on a snowy morning to publicly denounce it.
The news media said Muskie shed tears. He insisted it was snow melting on his face. But the crying narrative won out, casting him as weak, and his campaign flamed out. A more liberal candidate, George McGovern, won the Democratic nomination and got swamped by Nixon.
Two years later, the Watergate scandal forced Nixon’s resignation, but Republicans kept the White House for the rest of the term. The dirty tricks worked.
1980: Fear of an “October Surprise”
Iran holding U.S. embassy staffers hostage dragged down President Jimmy Carter’s reelection bid against Republican challenger Ronald Reagan. But the Reagan camp worried about an “October Surprise” in which a hostage release would give Carter a last-minute boost. After Iran waited and Reagan won, strong suspicions arose that Republicans had secretly urged the regime to hold off until after the election.
Congressional investigators later found “no credible evidence” of covert Republican outreach to Iran, but in 2023 came a revelation: Texas politician Ben Barnes told the New York Times he was part of the plot. A secret backchannel is especially plausible because some of the same Republicans were later involved in an arms-for-hostages deal with Iran. And the alleged scheme bears similarities to the Chennault Affair 12 years earlier.
If it happened – and I think it did – it means Republicans engaged in an outrageously cruel conspiracy: urging Iran to keep Americans in captivity longer.
2000: The Brooks Brothers Riot
Democrat Al Gore won half a million more votes than Republican George W. Bush, but that didn’t matter under our flawed Electoral College system. The outcome came down to Florida, where the winner would take the presidency. The count was incredibly close, and Republicans sent dirty tricksters to the state, including the infamous Roger Stone. They violently besieged an election office to stop Miami-Dade County’s recount. The incident became known as the Brooks Brothers Riot, a reference to the rioters’ upscale clothes.
The case went to the Supreme Court – where seven of the nine justices had been chosen by Republican presidents – and a statewide recount was blocked, leaving Bush as the winner by just 537 votes out of nearly 6 million cast.
The consequences have been devastating. Bush’s selection of Justices John Roberts and Samuel Alito was enough to tip the balance in the Citizens United ruling, which allowed the rich to further dominate our politics, and also made the difference in the Dobbs decision, which took away women’s reproductive rights.
2016-2017: The insurrection
I don’t need to explain this one. You saw the televised Republican-fueled assault on the Capitol. You read about the Republicans’ fake electors plot.
Of the five examples of apparent GOP cheating I’ve cited, this is the only one in which Republicans didn’t win immediately. But they sure did later. Joe Biden served four years, but the failure to throw Donald Trump in prison allowed him to retake the White House, pardon the Jan. 6 rioters who beat up cops, and start building his dictatorship.
I’m not saying Democrats have been squeaky clean. Of course not. But Republicans have been far worse, and still are. It’s up to us to not let the cheaters win this time.
This week’s media atrocity
An organization called Wedgewood Polls said it faked the results of political polls as a “social experiment,” and the not-careful-enough news outlets that got fooled included the New York Times, Newsweek, the Hill, CBS News, MS NOW, and the Daily Beast.
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And, you are going to witness Elmo-the-Subtractor doing his space age magic, yet again, on 3-4 November 2026.
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