INDIANAPOLIS — President Donald J. Trump asked everyone at the GOP’s inaugural midterm convention in Dallas last week to raise their right hand to take a peculiar oath. He sought from supporters a series of pledges, the penultimate one being, “I’m going to try and cheat like hell.”
The presidency in this decadelong Trump era is no longer the moral and ethical beacon to Americans — not since that day in Iowa in 2016 when Trump said he could shoot someone on Fifth Avenue and not lose political support from his ardent proponents.
But this one begs a response. It clashes with everything our parents, teachers, Scout leaders, coaches, pastors and professors have taught us here in the Hoosier experience.
It began with the mantra we learned in sing-song fashion in grade school: “Winners never cheat, and cheaters never win.”
Cheating on a test in high school or college led to expulsion. Cheating in collegiate sports here in the old Big Ten Midwestern country meant being run out of town on a rail if you were caught red-handed, as Indiana University basketball coach Kelvin Sampson acutely learned in 2008.
Cheating on your husband or wife could make you a social and religious pariah. Cheating on your taxes could put you in prison.
This past year — just six since Trump attempted a coup d’état on Jan. 6, 2021, to negate the will of 2020 presidential election voters — we’ve faced a series of hair-on-fire warnings that Trump will attempt to circumvent the November midterm elections, or to put it bluntly, cheat.
His Justice and Homeland Security departments have sought voter files from all 50 states, as part of an effort to expand the federal government’s role in election administration. The U.S. Constitution gives states primary responsibility for conducting elections, while Congress can regulate certain aspects of federal elections. Trump sought to impose new federal rules on mail voting through the U.S. Postal Service.
Social media influencers such as “WarRoom” podcaster Steve Bannon have called for federal troops and immigration agents to show up at polling sites in acts of intimidation.
Indiana Republican Secretary of State Diego Morales made Indiana one of 20 states to comply with what appears to be an unlawful federal effort to obtain state voter files. His actions during the recently concluded Senate District 23 Republican primary election recount and legal challenge underscore how malleable Indiana’s so-called chief elections officer really is.
As one of three voting members on the Indiana Recount Commission, Morales voted to negate six ballots cast for state Sen. Spencer Deery, not because of fraud or malfeasance, but because of clerical errors.
Deery attorney Karen Celestino-Horseman noted, “In this case, the lack of the clerk’s seal and signature occurred on only six ballots out of nearly 13,000 cast. The counties counted all six ballots and ultimately rejected by the two Republican members of the commission.”
During the Indiana Supreme Court hearing last week that restored Deery as the SD 23 primary winner over former Fountain County Clerk Paula Copenhaver, Justice Derek R. Molter observed, “A paramount principle of election law … rules for counting ballots should be specified without ambiguity insofar as possible before the ballots are counted.”
Molter cited Indiana Code that makes clear that votes must be counted if no fraud is alleged. Molter noted that Morales, who chairs the Recount Commission, flipped his vote to toss out these six ballots anyway.
There are signs that Trump and his GOP allies are preparing a midterm cheat. Conservative jurist J. Michael Luttig wrote in The New Republic about a “coming crisis” where Republicans will refuse to seat Democrats elected to Congress on Jan. 3, 2027, describing the Nov. 3 midterm as a “final battle in Trump’s determined war to corrupt America’s democracy.”
Indeed, U.S. House Speaker Mike Johnson told Republicans in Dallas, “We cannot and will not allow them to take the majority in the Congress. We’re not gonna do it.”
But the courts — here in Indiana and in the 30 states refusing to participate in Trump’s federalized election gambit — appear to be holding. Trump’s DOJ has sued 30 states for access to their voter lists, losing 23 cases so far, with seven still pending.
David Becker, executive director and founder of the Center for Election Innovation & Research, is less alarmed than Luttig. In an interview with Unity Forum founder Chris Malone, Becker observed that the party controlling the federal government lost presidential elections in 2016, 2020 and 2024 — powerful evidence that no one is “putting a thumb on the scale.”
The real threat is “disinformation” to “hack our heads” and thus weaken trust amid the ensuing chaos, Becker argued.
Becker cited federal law (18 U.S.C. § 592) that prevents troops from appearing at polling sites. “ICE won’t be at the polls. Troops won’t be at the polls,” he said, citing logistical impossibility, political backlash and the decentralization of voting.
On Monday evening, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled against the new Postal Service rules in a 7-2 decision. But on Wednesday, FBI Director Kash Patel wouldn’t rule out sending FBI to polls, saying, “We have election crisis coordinators manned at all 56 field offices. This FBI will not shy away from that effort.”
That’s not to say partisans like Morales won’t try. But in doing so, he became so toxic that even Indiana Republican State Convention delegates refused to renominate him, though not because of alleged corruption, but because most believed he would lose reelection in November.
Brian A. Howey is an opinion columnist for State Affairs Indiana and the founder of Howey Politics Indiana. His writing offers analysis and opinion shaped by decades of experience covering Indiana politics. Email him at howey@stateaffairs.com.
