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As presidential candidates finalize their running mates and barnstorm swing states, Americans are fortunate that their votes are needed because U.S. elections aren't "fixed." By contrast, many across the world are watching in disgust as Venezuela's dictator Nicolás Maduro falsely crowns himself the presidential election winner. Maduro is demonstrating one way to "have it fixed so good [that citizens are] not going to have to vote." Those words were spoken ominously by former President Donald Trump, who recently said: "You got to get out and vote. In four years, you don't have to vote again. We'll have it fixed so good, you're not going to have to vote." Whether in the U.S. or abroad, this language and the threat it implies must be taken seriously and opposed.
There are multiple ways to interpret Trump's deliberately ambiguous statements, including articulating that he will be a dictator on "day one." And there are multiple ways to "fix" the vote. Or, as Maduro said, "Win by hook or by crook," including use of violence and arbitrary arrests. If Venezuela represents the extreme end of the spectrum, a range of spin dictators represent modern authoritarians who hold power by manipulating information and faking and co-opting democracy. Some autocrats like Viktor Orbán, Vladimir Putin, and Jarosław Kaczyński leave office, only to stew in resentment toward their political opponents and democratic institutions before returning to power with plans—like Project 2025—to exact retribution and entrench autocratic power.
In a year of major elections where democracy is on the ballot and threatened globally, understanding and responding to the autocracy playbook and defending freedoms have never been more critical.
Venezuela is the extreme case. Both the exit polling and partial voting tallies collected by the opposition, and corroborated by a recent review, suggest that Maduro lost in a landslide 66 percent to 31 percent. Facts be damned, Maduro's captured electoral body announced that he won 51 percent of the vote without releasing detailed results.
Since the end of the Cold War, autocrats rarely throw out election results entirely like Maduro is doing. Instead, they "fix" the electoral playing field with severe imbalances such as government control over public media, crony ownership of private media, online repression, civil society crackdowns, corruption of campaign finances, and control over electoral administration.
Over the past two decades, several autocrats have returned to power intent to avoid what they see as their top mistake of their first term, which was to play too nicely and slowly. After Hungary's Orbán lost power in 2002, he turned his back on democracy and embraced ethno-nationalist populism, returning to power in 2010, only to pack the courts, turn public television into propaganda machines, buy up private media, target civil society, and capture the electoral commission. In 2012, Putin returned to the presidency and swiftly cracked down on civil society, independent media, and political opposition, and two years later, started invading Ukraine. In 2015, Kaczyński emulated his autocratic neighbor Orbán when PiS won elections after losing in 2011, promptly packing the constitutional court, undermining impartial media, allowing public corruption, and castigating perceived enemies.
Beyond threats to U.S. electoral integrity, Trump and confidants are signaling plans to swiftly advance and implement a dangerous plan laid out in Project 2025 to upend American democracy.
In case there are civil demonstrations on Inauguration Day, Trump's advisors are considering deploying the U.S. military by invoking the Insurrection Act. Also on day one, Trump said he will re-issue his Schedule F executive order making it easier to fire thousands of government workers, who could be replaced by loyalists vetted for inclusion in a personnel database managed by Project 2025. Trump wants to investigate his former officials turned critics and name a special prosecutor to "go after" his political opponents. His allies promise to prosecute journalists and are drawing up lists of lawyers who may eliminate the Justice Department's independence. Beyond DOJ, they plan to bring independent agencies under direct presidential control, purge the national security apparatus of anyone deemed disloyal, and refuse to spend certain congressional appropriations. These examples are just the tip of the iceberg of the exposed autocracy threats that Trump and Project 2025 pose to American democracy.
It's unclear how successful such an autocratization drive would be in the U.S. since there are options today for real bipartisan American leadership and unity in response to these autocratic threats. We have seen citizens globally, including recently in Poland, snatch back democracy from the jaws of autocracy. In Venezuela, the people's remaining viable recourse includes peaceful mass mobilization. Let us hope the U.S. never reaches the point where such extremes are needed because some believe they have it fixed so good, "you won't have to vote anymore."
Norman Eisen, a former ambassador to the Czech Republic and former President Barack Obama's "ethics czar," served as special impeachment counsel to the House Judiciary Committee in 2019-20.
Josh Rudolph is a former official who served under both Democratic and Republican administrations at the White House National Security Council, U.S. Treasury, USAID, and the IMF after a career on Wall Street.
Jonathan Katz served as the former deputy assistant administrator in the Europe & Eurasia Bureau at USAID in the Obama administration and held senior positions in the State Department and in the U.S. Congress, including as a National Security Fellow for Senator Amy Klobuchar (D-Minn.).
The views expressed in this article are the writers' own.
