Former and current officials who bolstered claims of voter fraud in 2020 make fresh allegations of vulnerabilities Prominent election deniers have spent recent weeks stoking fears over US election security before next month’s midterms, echoing claims pushed by Donald Trump to justify asserting more control over voting. On…
Page A6From§Eachthe supper edition — 6 October 2026
SINCE 2002
Administration bars election observers used since 2002, as Georgia's GOP board asks it to probe its own machines.
As it ran on the front
How many times, in the twenty-some years since the election monitors from Vienna started showing up to watch us vote, has somebody in Washington told them not to bother? I already know the answer to this one. I wrote it down last night because I don't trust myself to get a count right out loud. Hold on — here it is, I've got it right on the page. Zero. Not since 2002. Not one midterm, not one presidential year has the United States turned away the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe. Zero times, until this one.
So this fall, somebody finally said it anyway: the first time. That's a long run to break. Somebody decides, year after year, to let the monitors come. And then, this year, somebody decided not to.…
…(cont) Here's the part that didn't sit right next to it, and I only noticed because I happened to read both pages the same night. Same week — I went back and checked the dates twice — Georgia's Republican-led State Election Board had its executive director, James Mills, write a letter to the attorney general.
I want to be fair about what that is. That's a Republican-led board asking the Trump administration's Department of Justice to come look closer at voting machines that board already oversees. I've got a car, an '04, needs a fan belt about twice a year, and when it squeals I don't write a letter to anybody about it — I lift the hood myself, because it's my car and I know where the belt sits. Mills didn't lift that hood personally. Mills asked Washington to come lift it instead. That's not my opinion. That's just what the letter asks for.
And in that same stretch — the Guardian's phrase, not mine, I wrote it down because they hedged it so careful — "conservative-friendly media outlets" started carrying fresh allegations from some of the same officials who backed the fraud claims back in 2020. Fresh claims. The machines can't be trusted, they're saying. Same voices, mostly. New season.
So lay it out the way I've got it written on the page. A party asks the federal government to watch its own machines harder. Voices close to that party say right out loud the machines can't be trusted. And the federal government, that same week, tells the one outside body that's watched every vote since 2002: don't bother coming this time.
I'm sorry, I know I already gave you that number once, back at the top, and I told myself I wouldn't circle back to it. My wife says I do that when something won't sit right in my stomach — keep turning it over, say it a different way, see if it sits better. It doesn't. Twenty-some years, and not once did this government say no to being watched. Then, this year, one did.
Oh — excuse me, before you go. One more thing, it'll just take a second. I've got Georgia's letter written on one line of this page, and Washington's rejection written on the line right under it. One of those is a government asking to be watched closer. The other is the same government, the same week, asking to be watched less. Which one of those is the letter in my hand, and which one is the rejection?
“This is the oldest trick going: ask for more cops in your own house while telling the outside inspector to stay home, then call the whole thing security. The only people checking Georgia's machines now are the people who run Georgia's machines, and the only outside judge in the room for twenty-some years just got told don't bother this time. You want to know who's grading this election? The people being graded.”
“Look, sovereignty is sovereignty — America doesn't need outside bureaucrats from Vienna grading our elections, that's just basic self-respect — and Georgia asking the Justice Department for extra machine security shows the system working exactly as designed, checks and balances, the whole... wait, those are kind of opposite points, aren't they. No, they're not, they're — okay, moving on.”
The receipts
Experts are raising alarms after Georgia's Republican-led State Election Board requested that President Donald Trump's Department of Justice launch an investigation into state voting machines just over a month before the 2026 midterm elections. As reported by the Atlanta Journal-Constitution on Thursday, James Mills, executive director…
This is the first time in over two decades that the US has rejected OSCE participation in a federal election.
This page is a back-issue: the story as it ran, receipts as they were. The current edition is at the front. The byline is a pen name for a column drafted by a machine and checked by the editor: how this is made.