These Midterms Are Different

Americans think of elections as a periodic bundle of candidate competitions, sort of like the Olympics, every four years. And then the mid-terms every two years, sort of like the Winter Olympics, less important but still a spectacle! And the coverage is basically a leader board showing how many medals for each. All sorts of speculation and stories, etc, but a fundamental belief is that the competition will be fair, or that problems not only would not, but could not influence the outcome in a significant way. I mean sure, gerrymandering is terrible, but the outcome will be how people vote.

If only. 

That is indeed more or less how it used to be.

But our unflinching unconscious confidence in institutions like fair elections has led us, sleepwaking, into a new era. 

As always the Democrats plan is,, “let’s hope we win lots of races!”. The Republicans plan is “what do we need to do, by any and every means possible, to get or keep power?”

They focus. 

The Republicans have a national trifecta meaning they control the presidency, the House, and the Senate. In this particular election, the presidency is not on the ballot. All House seats are. If the Democrats can’t win the House in this election, then US democracy, I’m sorry to say, is over for a few decades. And if they can't get the House, then the Senate will remain Republican. 

OK, that all sounds very bleak and is. But…the early voting indicates that very very many Democrats will vote in this election, so there is a good chance that part is covered which is really great.

When people talk about voter suppression they often mention gerrymandering which is actually voter dilution not direct voter suppression. It is drawing electoral boundaries so that you dilute the force of your opponents' votes. The House is heavily gerrymandered. 

But there is no gerrymandering with Senate seats because there are not gerrymanderable electoral districts, there are only state good old fashioned state lines.

For now, there are fifty states, with two Senators per state, so a hundred Senate seats. They each have a six year term, so a third (thirty five this year) are up for election every two year “cycle”. Currently there are basically fifty three Republicans and forty seven Democrats in the senate. A 50/50 tie means Republican control because the tie breaking vote is JD Vance the Republican Vice President. 

In terms of the survival of US democracy, if after these midterms the Republicans retain control of the Senate, it is not good news. Notice I didn’t say “win”, I said keep control. Al Gore won the 2000 presidential election, but he didn’t take control. If Congress is split and the Democrats control the House, we’ll get some spectacular Instagram Reels of hearing snippets, but….do we really need more of that? The House supposedly controls money, but can’t enforce much, so….controling the House won’t really matter much. The Senate on the other hand controls appointments which right now is way more important than controlling funds.

Here’s the key thing to understand. 

If the outcome of the midterms is that the Democrats control the House and the Senate, there are many oligarchs in the Administration and many not in the administration who will one way or another end up in jail. It will be the beginning of the end of this bleak period of spectacularly corrupt oligarchy. More concisely, these midterms are much higher stakes for the Republican leadership and their billionaire allies than for the Democratic Party leadership. And we know that the Republican leadership has no problem breaking the law, certainly for their own enrichment, for personal protection and safety, and for plenty of other reasons. It’s logical to assume they will break the law to keep control of the US Senate, and they have done many many things over the last ten years, and even further back, to prove it. 

So, let’s go over some assumptions so we can get to the good part. I am not saying these things will happen or even that I think they will happen, I am saying they are very possible and if they happen, we need to understand that scenario clearly. 

1. Let’s say Republicans are deflated and don’t turnout in high numbers because everything is objectively shit.
2. Let’s say the Democrats are energized and do turnout in high enough numbers to take the Senate despite all the endless national and local barriers put in their way.
3. Let’s say The Republican national leadership is willing to break the law, to the degree they would need to, in order to keep control of the Senate.

How would they do it? 

Normally the states to watch are just the states that are swing states, meaning the ones that could go either way. Not this time.

To figure out the swing states, you’d look at the polling which relates to who will get more votes. 

The non-partisan Cook Political Report says North Carolina, which is currently a sitting Republican, will likely go Likely Democratic; Georgia and New Hampshire, which are currently Democratic will likely stay Democratic.

Michigan is currently Democratic and Cook says it’s a toss-up, but it increasingly leans Democratic.

Alaska, Ohio, Texas, and Maine are all Republican and Cook calls them toss-ups but actually the Democratic candidate is in the lead by a percentage point or two in each, within the margin of error, but still.. 

Even Iowa, Kansas, and Nebraska, all with sitting Republicans, are precise statistical toss-ups according to Cook. 

And looking into the details of early voting in each of these, things look good for Democrats in terms of….the the actual voting.

This list below of the eleven seats that the Democrats will likely win in terms of votes. The Democrats need to win and take control of seven of these eleven in order to take control of the US Senate. Keeping in mind our assumptions and that these polls are roughly right and the Democrats get more votes in each of these states, what will the Republicans do?

1. North Carolina

2. Georgia

3. Texas

4. Ohio

5. Iowa

6. Kansas

7. Nebraska

8. New Hampshire

9. Alaska

10. Maine

11. Michigan

Remember, our assumption is that it will be a landslide for the Democrats and the Democrats lead in all these states. The Republicans will do five main things starting election day.

1. They will create disorder. Sending ICE into and near polling stations, and in general creating various stories that will cause outrage and pave the way for cries of fraud, and retaliation. 
2. They will magnify that disorder on social media. As we can see in Brazil and everywhere else, the billionaires who control social media, particularly Zuckerberg and Musk, use their platforms and money, most importantly Instagram, but all the others they control, to magnify whatever will help the Republicans. And disorder favors the Republicans. 
3. At some moment when a Republican senate candidate is ahead, or as ahead as they can manage to pretend, the Republicans will declare victory. They will then say that any other votes that come in from cities, which all tend Democratic, are fraudulent and, more importantly, they will try to prevent them from being counted.
4. They will create problems everywhere to diffuse attention throughout the country so that the Democrats have a hard time focusing, and getting people to focus, on the problems that could actually influence control of the Senate, which is what they care about. They only need to control the outcome in five of these eleven to retain control. So in a landslide, they will focus on which five in which they can best control the outcome.

So we, as well informed smart caring people, we need to figure out as quickly as we can, which of these five states the Republicans will try to take.

Which brings us to the list of the seven states above.

What order are they in, you ask?

Due to the electoral system of the state and what's happened in the past several years there, the higher the ranking, the greater the Republican’s ability to cheat. Let’s call it the Republican Administrative Control (RAC) Rank, a name I made up. 

To start, Republicans will do everything they can to make it difficult for Democrats to vote. We’ve already seen this with, for example, the Republican State Board of Elections moving the early voting location over a mile off campus at the biggest historically black university in the US, North Carolina A&T in Greensboro. The North Carolina state legislature took appointment authority over the State Board of Elections from the (currently Democratic) governor to the obedient Republican State Auditor Dave Boliek. By the way, remember him, you will hear his name lots starting on the night off Tuesday 3 November.

But persistent voters can overcome barriers. 

Once the voting has taken place the Republicans will shift to focusing on the administrative levers they can influence, particularly relating to vote counting.

Highly partisan direct Republican appointees control North Carolina elections at all levels. Of course there is a limit to what they can control, particularly against a massive Democratic turnout, but it will take a landslide by the Democrats, which is currently predicted by the polls in North Carolina, for the Republicans to allow a Democrat to win enough to actually take control.

Georgia also has Republican controlled administration and they have shown in recent years that they are willing to bend and break the rules at the local and state level. But the Georgia Supreme Court has mandated that County officials must certify results on time, making it tougher to delay counts which is a key Republican strategy. The other thing about Georgia is that the winning candidate must get 50% of the vote. So if the predicted Democratic landslide takes place, the Republican goal will simply be to somehow put the Democratic candidate total at 49.something percent so the Republicans will get another chance to cheat in the run-off that will be held the first of December..

The Texas election administration is very Republican but highly decentralized. The Democratic candidate in Texas is far ahead of the Republican candidate who is a hot mess to dwarf all other hot messes. The decentralized electoral authority in Texas makes it more difficult but not at all impossible for the Republicans to delay the count in Texas cities, or along the Rio Grande. The Florida electoral authority was also decentralized in 2000, and Al Gore won Florida. The decisive event of the 2000 elections was the Republicans stopping the Miami (Dade) County recount via the Brooks Brothers Riot, so that the five Republican Supreme Court justices could appoint the Republican candidate president, which they did.

Ohio is in between, the Republican Secretary of State has a great deal of authority over the county election board but the counties are procedurally independent, which preserves some local control. Basically it is not clear how much the Republicans would be able to cheat in the result of a landslide. Kansas and Nebraska, for our purposes, have a similar amount of Republican ability to cheat as Ohio.

New Hampshire is very decentralized, and efforts to slow the count would also need to be very decentralized. Alaska is the opposite, very centralized under Republican state control, and also Alaska has a very slow count because it is so big. 

Maine and Michigan have pretty limited ability for Republicans to slow counts, sow discord, and influence results. 

What all this means is that the higher the RAC Rank the more ability the Republicans have to cheat, they will decide which five of these eleven they cheat in based on how massive the landslide against them and their ability to cheat. 

So what do I do? (so, yea. YOU) 

1. Write these down these states in RAC Rank order: North Carolina, Georgia, Texas, Ohio, Iowa, Kansas, Nebraska, New Hampshire, Alaska, Maine, Michigan and tape the paper to the inside of your glasses until the results are clear.
2. Before the election, send a message to every person you know in those states asking them to send you a selfie of them at the polling station voting and to vote as early as possible in the day. Not a picture of the ballot! Just at the place. You know, grinning in front of the polling station with a sticker, that kind of thing. Have them put it on social media, and tag you, if you do that stuff.
3. On election day call people you know, get them to vote, in your state and these.
4. If you haven’t voted, and are eligible, vote as early as possible and spend all day getting people you know to vote, particularly in these states.
5. On election day, don’t magnify videos of people talking, or sharing opinions, only focus on turnout in your state, or these eleven, until the poles close.
6. As soon as the polls close on the night of the election, keep this state list and check off those that have been called by a real source. Don’t magnify information except related to the uncalled states on this list.
7. The day after the election (Wed 4 Nov) monitor only real information from the uncalled states from the list. 
8. Thu 5 Nov, follow unresolved counts, recounts, lawsuits and certification.

The best sources:

AP: apnews.com/hub/elections, Official results, outstanding ballots, race calls. Of big, famous traditional news sources, this will be the best.

Votebeat: votebeat.org, Voting problems, counting procedures, election officials.

NBC News: nbcnews.com/politics/2026-elections likely second best traditional source.

Vote Watch: verification of election claims and incidents.

Democracy Docket: democracydocket.com: Election lawsuits, court orders, disputed ballots.

Bolts: boltsmag.org, Local election officials and election administration.

Reuters: reuters.com/world/us Independent confirmation of major developments. Third best official traditional news outlet for US election coverage.

Questions you want to ask:

How many ballots remain uncounted?

How large is the margin?

Could disputed ballots change the result?

Are officials following normal counting procedures?

Are courts or election authorities intervening?

Has the race been called, recounted or certified?

Who is calling fraud, or other delays, where, and on what grounds? 

Remember:

Ignore unverified social media allegations, particularly via video.

A delay means a problem but it doesn’t mean somebody is causing that problem intentionally. Figure that out if you can.

"99% reporting" doesn't mean 99% of votes counted.

Prioritize documented problems large enough to affect the outcome.

Check the date and location of any reported incident, ie, if there isn’t one, ignore it. 

As the list of uncalled US Senate seats narrows, focus your attention and magnification only on those seats. Encourage your personal elected representatives, no matter what their other local concerns to do the same. 

When their space begins to contract, the corrupt turn on each other quickly. Let’s get control of the US Senate and watch them. 

Meanwhile, thank you Hungary, Brazil, and Serbia for showing us the way.

Stay relentless siblings. 

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