Attorney Marc Elias is one of the country’s most important legal voices and advocates for voting rights, democracy and justice. Look no further for proof than his role in securing over 60 legal victories against Donald Trump’s efforts to falsely claim voting fraud in the 2020 elections, as well as his ongoing efforts to push back against a Trump regime bent on voter suppression in the coming elections.
In all the topics that we discussed, one central concept about Donald Trump lingers. It’s what Marc, the founder of Democracy Docket, called “optionality”—that is, “a menu of tactics that he wants available to him” to operate. Trump, he says, is not “a genius playing five-dimensional chess” and “at times can barely play checkers.” But his actions are not merely random: He possesses an “instinct for what he needs, what he believes he needs to do, to maintain power.”
He offers an example of “optionality” related to the midterms:
[Trump] wants Congress to pass the SAVE Act. [But] if they don’t pass the SAVE Act, he’ll proceed by executive order. If he doesn’t get what he wants by executive order, they’ll go to court. If they don’t get what they want by court, maybe he’ll deploy ICE. If he doesn’t get what he wants there, maybe they’ll subpoena ballots. If he doesn’t get there, maybe they’ll have election deniers refuse to certify elections. In other words, these are not mutually exclusive: They are just a menu of tactics that he wants available to him.
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