Just How Bad Can It Get On Election Day?

Days before the 2026 midterms, voting rights attorney and author of Stealing Elections, American Style David Walbert joins Kathryn Rubino to size up the real risk heading into Election Day. It is not the vote count he worries about, it is what happens after a close result: a congressional election contest, the same playbook Trump tried with electoral votes in 2020, now aimed at the House.

Walbert also walks through live legal fights in Alaska and California, and traces today’s fights over the Voting Rights Act back to the Supreme Court decisions that enabled Jim Crow a century ago.

Key Takeaways

• A close election, not a landslide, is what opens the door to a congressional election contest over House seats.
• The Ninth Circuit’s split ruling on California’s non-citizen voter list shows how little room frivolous election cases now get from this Supreme Court.
• Alaska’s ballot fight, where the GOP’s own filing argues a loss would make the election invalid, is a preview of post-election litigation tactics.
• Gutting federal agencies now, as with DOGE’s cuts to the CDC, has consequences that outlast the people who get rehired later.
• Walbert reads the Supreme Court’s rollback of the Voting Rights Act as the modern echo of the Reconstruction-era rulings that helped entrench Jim Crow.