As US voting rights shift, could Trump’s midterm strategy backfire on Republicans?

The United States midterm elections are just weeks away. Far from business-as-usual ballot casting, the democratic exercise is expected to be supercharged by President Donald Trump's attacks on the voting process.

Since the 2024 US federal election, Trump has signed numerous executive orders targeting voter ID and mail-in ballots, while state-level changes to voter districts and early-access voting have also shifted the playing field.

Dr Emma Shortis, Director of The Australia Institute's International & Security Affairs Program, told SBS News that the upcoming elections are "probably the most important in at least a generation".

"They will give us a really strong indication of the health of American democracy," she said. "I don't think we should attempt to predict the outcome. There are just too many moving parts."

Trump has made election integrity a key message since the 2020 election, which he continues to claim was stolen from him, without evidence.

In July, the 80-year-old US leader made a prime-time address to the nation alleging a "stunning investigation" had uncovered major election interference was undertaken in 2020 by China, for which no substantive evidence was provided.

He further demanded Republicans pass the SAVE America Act, which would restrict mail-in ballots and force voters to present passports or birth certificates at the polls. While the Act passed the House, it remains held up in the Senate.

How these and other reforms will impact the electoral process remains to be seen, but University of Sydney United States Studies Centre CEO Dr Michael Green told SBS News that Trump's "blunderbuss" approach may only have a "marginal impact" on the results.

Because state and local authorities hold significant sway over how elections are conducted, Trump's approach may "end up blasting some of his own candidates," Green said.

Gerrymandering

One of the most significant changes to the electoral system is the impact of aggressive gerrymandering — a term that refers to the perfectly legal process of re-drawing electoral boundaries for political gain by sitting representatives.

While the practice has been undertaken for decades in the US, it has ramped up in recent years thanks to politically charged inter-state fighting urged on by Trump.

Since 2024, 10 states have adopted new congressional maps, including Texas, California, and North Carolina. Overall, Republicans are estimated to gain an additional five to seven seats as a result.

The practice has also entrenched and further polarised the voting landscape. While Americans will vote for all 435 seats in the House of Representatives, very few are now considered to be in genuine democratic contest.

Electoral analysis from the independent Cook Political Report finds that just 38 House seats are actually competitive races — with only half of those in serious question. The number of districts with single-digit margins is also in serious decline.

"The biggest problem with gerrymandering is it undermines the basic premise of a representative democracy," said Andrew Koneschusky, a former senior staffer in the US Senate told the Agence-France Presse news agency.

"Voters are supposed to choose their representatives, not the other way around. With gerrymandering, you have politicians choosing their voters."

Because voting is optional in the US, experts caution that Trump's attacks on voter rights could have the opposite of the intended effect when driving voter turnout has an outsized influence on the result.

"The gerrymandering in South Carolina was designed to basically get rid of majority districts for black people," Green said. As a result, "black voters are furious," and therefore more likely to vote.

Other changes

While redistricting is the most direct structural change, the impact on mail-in voting and other practical shifts could also impact the midterms.

On Monday, the Supreme Court lifted a lower court's injunction on Trump's March executive order requiring federal bodies to compile "state citizenship lists" to cross-reference and verify mail-in votes.

While there is no current legal obligation on states to act, the move is likely to increase unease around the reliance on mail-in ballots as legal proceedings continue.

Shortis describes it as a "really dangerous" ruling that "contributes to a kind of chaos" that the Trump administration could use to contest negative results.

"When you put this alongside Trump's election denial, his false allegations about foreign interference, in the context of what ICE agents are doing ... It's a huge mess with quite dangerous potential," she said.

While there have been restrictions placed on voting in some states, there has been expansion in others to counterbalance it.

Connecticut expanded access to mail-in voting since the last federal election, while a number of Republican controlled states have tightened both postal votes and ID requirements to vote.

Other states, like Michigan, Missouri, and Minnesota, have expanded early-voting windows to make it easier for people to cast ballots ahead of time. Southern states like Georgia, Florida, and Iowa have, however, placed further limits on voting periods — which could also backfire.

"Trump criticised mail-in voting, said it can't be trusted, but most of his message went through Fox News and conservative outlets," Green said. "The people who didn't vote using mail-in were Republicans."

"So in the last round, he actually hurt himself."

For Green, the biggest influence on the outcome of the results is not structural changes but policy shifts. Trump's approach to the cost-of-living crisis, the fixation on vanity projects, and the war with Iran have all seen his ratings decline.

"Midterms tend to be a referendum on the sitting president, especially when that president's party controls the House, the Senate, and the White House," Green said.

"No president has won their midterms when they are this unpopular in the national polls," he said. "He's pretty much making it as easy as he could for the Democrats to win."

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