Will Trump contest the midterm election results?

State officials and millions of Americans are holding their collective breath, fearing that a sweeping Democrat victory in the coming midterm elections will prod President Trump to challenge the results in several states. The question is how far would he or could he go.

Trump has already ordered the Justice Department to deploy 1,000 “election monitors” to polling sites around the country. Attorney General Todd Blanche defended the move , claiming Trump “is doing the same thing that every single administration has done in our generation.”

But Trump has still never accepted the results of the 2020 election. He has repeatedly claimed, with bogus evidence or none at all, that elections are rigged. So when it comes to monitoring elections, the public has good reason to doubt his motives.

Ironically, about the only people convicted of election interference after the 2020 election were Trump supporters.

Would Trump initiate Department of Justice lawsuits against certain states or cities if Republicans lose? He’s already begun.

Trump ordered Blanche to file a preemptive lawsuit to block certification of the Senate election in Alaska if incumbent Republican Sen. Dan S. Sullivan (R-Alaska) loses.

Alaska uses a multiparty ranked choice voting system, which allowed another candidate named Dan J. Sullivan to make it to the general election as a Republican, along with the incumbent Republican Dan S. Sullivan and Democrat Mary Peltola. Ranked choice is a bad way to run elections, but the U.S. Constitution says the “Times, Places and Manner of holding Elections for Senators and Representatives, shall be prescribed in each State by the Legislature thereof.” And the Alaskan Supreme Court has ruled that the alternative Dan Sullivan cannot be removed from the ballot.

Democrats may have put the alternative Dan Sullivan on the ballot to confuse voters, but filing a preemptive challenge sets a terrible precedent that will encourage Democrats to follow suit once they control the White House again.

Would Trump confiscate voting machines in certain states or cities? He has done that, too.

Trump has confiscated voting machines and ballots in Puerto Rico, Atlanta and Arizona, looking for evidence that Democrats or foreign actors conspired to defeat him in the 2020 election. And yet, he has produced no evidence that any of those machines altered votes.

But that won’t necessarily stop Trump from claiming he found evidence of fraud, illegal aliens voting or vote tampering in the 2026 election, especially in blue states.

If Trump decides to seize voting machines, that action would disrupt the machines’ chain of custody. Once voting machines are out of state officials’ hands, they may be reluctant to certify election results. What might happen after that is anybody’s guess.

And then there’s this question: Would Trump call out the military if election results go against the GOP? Some of his associates recommended that action in the aftermath of the 2020 election, and he reportedly gave it serious consideration.

Some of the country’s top generals were apparently concerned that Trump would do just that. In a press conference in 2021 , former Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman Mark Milley and former Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin told the media “the United States military is an apolitical institution.” And they added, “We don’t arbitrate elections. That’s the job of the judiciary and the legislature and the American people. It is not the job of the U.S. military.”

The Trump administration recently denied it would deploy the military in case of a blue wave. But Trump told the New York Times last January that he regretted not ordering the National Guard to seize the voting machines in three swing states he lost in 2020. And Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth has already taken certain steps .

States have been organizing election-response and legal teams , filing their own lawsuits , and working to ensure nothing goes amiss. Trump may be less likely to challenge election results from red states, with the possible exception of Alaska, because it would embarrass those states’ Republican leaders who run the elections. Blue states are a different matter.

What if Trump does challenge the results of a few states? Would he demand Republicans in Congress refuse to recognize some newly elected Democrats? The Supreme Court has ruled the House of Representatives can’t exclude duly elected representatives unless the person doesn’t meet the Constitution’s qualifications. But the Trump-aligned Center for Renewing America claims democratic socialists cannot truthfully take the oath of office and outlines a newly released process for the House to exclude them.

Such efforts, if they were to happen, would likely turn voters against Republicans for years to come — unless Republicans finally stand up to Trump.

People occasionally rush to predict a “constitutional crisis” when the country hits a road bump. But if Trump refuses to accept the election results and takes questionable steps to challenge them, that really could lead to a constitutional crisis.

Merrill Matthews is the Texas state chair of Our Republican Legacy.