Anxiety among election officials and experts had been building for months before Donald Trump issued his latest executive order purporting to ensure election integrity late last month. When the actual text emerged, the reaction wasn't relief exactly'but a definite sense that things could have been much worse. Americans have many reasons to be worried about whether the midterm elections will be free and fair. As I laid out in a cover story last fall, the president's plan to subvert the 2026 election is multifaceted and already in swing. But last month's order and the dismissive reaction it's received from experts'along with this weekend's decisive defeat of Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban, which shows how the competitive-authoritarian playbook that Trump has imitated can be beaten'also point to the reasons to resist doomerism. 'This is relatively mild stuff, at least compared to the draft EO that had been floating around from election denier conspiracy theorists that would have...
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