How They Plan to Cheat
How They Plan to Cheat:
A Field Guide to the Ground-Game Fight for the 2026 Midterms
The fight to protect the 2026 election will not begin on Election Day. By then, some of the most important battles may already have been decided.
How They Plan to Cheat maps the machinery being built around the election before the courthouse ever becomes involved: voter-roll challenges and purges, barriers to registration and voting, partisan capture of election administration, coordinated information operations, and the organizations and networks helping move these tactics from state to state.
But this is not a book about watching democracy fail.
It is a field guide for stopping these tactics before they work.
The book breaks the threat into identifiable systems and then shows ordinary citizens where they can intervene locally, including:
Checking and protecting voter registrations
Helping voters obtain required identification and documentation
Monitoring voter challenges and election-board activity
Becoming a poll worker
Attending county election board meetings
Understanding certification procedures before a crisis begins
Building neighborhood and block-captain networks
Supporting ballot-curing and voter-protection efforts
Strengthening independent local journalism
Recognizing coordinated disinformation and manufactured cynicism
Turning information into conversations and action
Courts remain essential. But courts usually enter the fight after something has happened. This book focuses on the enormous space
before the courthouse, where citizens still have time to change what happens next.
The central argument is simple:
The architecture can be understood.
The tactics can be recognized.
And ordinary people can disrupt them.
The 2026 midterms are approaching.
Do not wait for Election Day to defend them.