A Warning in the Americas

The U.S. midterm elections are all but guaranteed to be chaotic and contentious, but no matter what their results portend for 2028 and beyond, recent moves by the president of Nicaragua offer a cautionary example for anyone worried about the United States’ democratic future.

On July 19, Nicaraguan President Daniel Ortega announced that the country will be abolishing elections , canceling the one scheduled for November 2027 and extending his nearly 20-year control of the country. Nicaragua’s congress announced July 23 that it would carry out Ortega’s plan, after voting repeatedly to amend the country’s constitution to give him more power, which he has used to jail political opponents, target religious organizations and the Catholic Church , purge the legal profession and strip hundreds of their citizenship.

Ortega made his announcement during a speech marking the anniversary of the Sandinista Revolution of 1979 that first brought him to power. According to the Associated Press:

“There won’t be anymore elections,” Ortega said in a speech railing on his longtime adversary, the United States. “Parties put in place by the Yankees, put in place by the Somoza regime, coming back to power — that story is over.”

“Never, never, never,” he said of any future elections.

While the United States condemned Ortega’s announcement — Secretary of State Marco Rubio said the move “lays bare their true authoritarian nature” and that Nicaragua “cannot expect to maintain business as usual with other nations when it is thwarting the basic tenets of our democratic hemisphere” — President Donald Trump has made no secret of his desire to remain in office beyond his constitutionally mandated two terms. As Sean Morales-Doyle of the Brennan Center for Justice wrote in the New York Times in May, Trump’s greatest threat to democracy is not that he will cancel elections, but that he and his Republican allies will undermine and manipulate them in order to entrench power.

“Election subversion, not cancellation,” writes Morales-Doyle, “is the real authoritarian move”:

The goal is to keep elections going but without unseating those in power…Look around the world. Vladimir Putin hasn’t canceled an election. Iran has regular elections. In the 21st century, the name of the game is “competitive authoritarianism,” in which democratic institutions and elections persist, but are hollowed out by authoritarian incumbents. Elections — even if they’re rigged — give rulers legitimacy.

Trump and his state-level MAGA allies are years into a sustained push for changes to voting laws and election administration. According to NPR , more than 50 candidates who refuse to admit that Trump lost the 2020 election are “running for offices that will have a direct role in certifying future elections” in 23 states, including five presidential swing states. Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche, whose nomination is scheduled for a Senate vote next week, oversaw FBI efforts to examine 2020 election records from Fulton County, Georgia, which have been the subject of conservative conspiracy theories for years.

The Brennan Center’s Morales-Doyle also lays out the steps that the Trump administration has taken to change how elections in the U.S. take place.

Mr. Trump’s call last week to “nationalize” elections — arguing that Republicans should “take over” voting — more closely reflects how he could subvert the electoral system. The president has no lawful authority for such a takeover: Under our Constitution, states and Congress set the rules that govern elections. Under our laws, state and local officials run our elections. Still, his administration has taken dozens of actions to undermine elections that, together, show that an attempted election “takeover” may be underway.

There’s Mr. Trump’s executive order from last March attempting to institute a “show your papers” rule requiring Americans to produce a passport or a similar document when they register to vote. This policy would block the votes of millions of citizens who lack ready access to those documents. A version of this rule is at the core of the SAVE Act, legislation that Mr. Trump is pushing his colleagues in Congress to pass.

There are the Justice Department’s efforts to vacuum up personal information on voters and force purges . The federal government lacks the know-how, the tools and the legal authority to conduct such purges, creating the real risk that eligible voters will be knocked off the rolls.

Then, there are the attacks on the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency. Last year, the administration fired or sidelined its election security personnel and defunded its election security operations, which state officials relied on for critical intelligence and support. This eliminates a crucial line of defense against cyberthreats, which are constantly evolving.

Nicaragua does not represent the only way a democracy can end. The Trump administration is acting as an occupying force in Venezuela, threatening Cuba with invasion and regime change, and is mired in a war with Iran — all countries whose leaders the U.S. has condemned for authoritarianism. The hypocrisy is lost on no one. Whether Americans can stop what Trump is trying to set in motion for his own people will be clearer on November 4.

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