Amidst the blizzard of news about ICE and Minnesota, I took note last week when The Washington Post published an article detailing all the ways President Donald Trump “is trying to change how the midterm elections are conducted.” Elections are, after all, kind of a big deal.

“Many of these endeavors go far beyond typical political persuasion,” the Post frets, “challenging long-established democratic norms.” Hmm, we wouldn’t want to “challenge norms,” now, would we?

Of course, the Left has been nuking norms from orbit for decades, but by all means, let’s wring hands over sensible things Trump wants to happen with American elections. To be sure, the Left suffers PTSD on top of its TDS thanks to the events of January 6, 2021. While tens of thousands of Americans came to DC to protest what they saw — for many reasons — as a stolen election, a few hundred reprobates besmirched the entire movement by attacking police and rioting. The Left has gleefully exploited that for five years to discredit anyone with doubts about the ways elections are conducted.

Back in 2022, I wrote that just because the fraud in 2020 was legal doesn’t make it legitimate. Those “norms” deserve to be upended, and that is my beef with The Washington Post’s article.

In short, the Post covers several of Trump’s efforts at changes and reforms. Here are its headings, which are each followed by a series of brief explainers about what the Post says Trump is doing:

• Pushing states to redraw House districts
• Demanding to end mail voting
• Attacking voting machines
• Seeking millions of voters’ private information
• Staffing the administration with election skeptics and deniers
• Calling out the troops
• Seeking a new census that excludes undocumented immigrants

Some of these are easy to dispense with, so I’ll do that quickly. Gerrymandering is a centuries-old practice of both parties to gain partisan advantage in drawing House districts. Leftists aren’t mad that it’s happening; they’re angry that Trump is pushing it. The census is a no-brainer. The Post insists that “voting by noncitizens is exceedingly rare,” but that’s hard to say with confidence because of other election problems, such as laws against requiring ID to vote. Either way, it affects congressional apportionment, which largely helps Democrats.

As for “election skeptics and deniers,” that’s a Leftmedia catch-all pejorative to dismiss anyone who questioned the 2020 election specifically. They do not use it to describe Democrats who have challenged election results anytime a Republican wins. That isn’t to say that every person the Post cites as an example is 100% reliable on election integrity, but the partisan use of the made-up term “election denier” is, well, undeniable.

Now, to a couple of the more complicated bullet points, though I’ll endeavor to be brief.

On mail-in voting, the Post says, “Trump for years has railed against mail voting, leading many of his supporters to question electoral outcomes even though academic studies and courts have found that widespread ballot fraud is rare.”

Trump pledged to lead an effort to end the far-too-widespread practice, but for very good reason. In 2005, Jimmy Carter and James Baker co-chaired the Commission on Federal Election Reform, which concluded that mail-in ballots “remain the largest source of potential voter fraud.” Few other countries have a two-month mail-in and early-voting process like ours. The Post neglected to mention either detail, despite citing unnamed “academic studies and courts.” As for the claim that “ballot fraud is rare,” 20% of mail-in voters admitted they cheated in 2020. Nine states mail ballots to every resident, and verification is laughable.

That leads me to the Post’s “private information” complaint. The Left is appalled that Trump’s Justice Department is seeking to hold states accountable for maintaining clean voter rolls. Only citizens can vote (once) in federal elections. The Left assures us that’s just about the only way voting ever happens because it’s illegal to do otherwise.

(Yes, you can pause here to laugh hysterically.)

Yet the Left also doesn’t want anyone checking to make sure voting happens that way. Democrats oppose voter ID, Election Day, the Electoral College, and clean voter rolls because ensuring election integrity would undermine their every attempted power grab. The “Democracy Dies in Darkness” crowd at The Washington Post is carrying water for the Left.

President Trump is a long way from perfect, and he doesn’t have a squeaky-clean record when it comes to how he talks about or conducts himself during elections. Yet most of the policies the Post worries about are not only good but also necessary for conducting free and fair elections.

The way to secure our elections is simple: With exceptions for mail-in ballots for military personnel and a relative handful of others with specific needs, voting should be in person with a photo ID on Election Day.

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