This looming contest may be our last chance to stop Trump's march to one-party rule

Perhaps like most Americans, I didn’t take seriously enough the significance of the rousing welcome that Hungary’s authoritarian prime minister, Victor Orbán, received from Republicans at their 2022 CPAC conference in Texas. In retrospect, it was an alarming portent of the authoritarian direction in which the GOP was determined to take the country.

It also dispelled my naïve belief that Americans were united in their reverence for American democracy and commitment to preserving it. Millions of Trump supporters are more than willing to see America moving in the direction of Hungary’s “illiberal democracy,” as characterized by Orbán.

An illiberal democracy is a faux democracy where the government manipulates electoral processes, restricts civil liberties, suppresses dissenting voices, bends the rule of law, destroys checks on government power, and institutes virtual one-party rule.

In Hungary, Orbán’s Fidesz party has been in power for 15 years. In that time, Orbán and his allies have dismantled Hungary’s democracy: undermining checks and balances, taking control of the country's media, civil society and universities, and consolidating power.

Trump and his anti-democratic allies are trying to accomplish at breakneck speed what Orbán accomplished over considerable time, hoping to secure a tight enough grip on the country by the 2026 midterm elections to ensure a Republican victory and authoritarian future. To accomplish his purpose, Trump has yet another year to continue his election rigging, with every extrajudicial scheme on the table.

Some political analysts have posited that the 2026 midterm elections could be the last free and fair elections Americans will see. In fact, we may have already seen America’s last free and fair election.

A great deal of rigging has already occurred to skew voting results in 2026 in Republicans’ favor.

Trump has demanded red-state gerrymandering to create more Republican-dominant districts. Republican-controlled states have enacted voter suppression laws that include shortening the time period for mail-in ballot returns, limiting drop box locations, disqualifying all legally dated ballots received after Election Day, changing an individual’s registration status to “inactive” after missing one election, adding documentation requirements in order to vote, limiting polling hours, banning drive-through and overnight early voting, and empowering partisan poll watchers.

The worst may be yet to come. The House has passed a bill requiring proof of citizenship for all federal-election voters, which could disenfranchise more than 21 million legal voters.

Cleta Mitchell, an anti-voting lawyer involved in Trump’s failed attempt to overturn the 2020 election, believes Trump could declare a national emergency in 2026 to allow the federal government to take control of national elections from the states. Who would put it past him?

While Trump has a year to plot more ways to rig the midterm elections, states committed to democracy have been expanding access to voting. In 2023, 47 new laws expanding voter access were enacted in 23 states, 13 of which are controlled by Democrats and four which have split control. At least six Republican-controlled states expanded voter access.

At least 80 national organizations are also working to ensure that no legal voter is deprived of his or her constitutional right to vote, including the League of Women’s Voters, the NAACP, AARP, ACLU, Alliance for Youth Organizing, Brennan Center for Justice, Common Cause, The Voter Participation Center, VoteAmerica, and Voto Latino Foundation.

Countering the voter-suppression movement of the authoritarian right, these organizations are working overtime to ensure that no voter suppression hurdle will prevent any American from exercising his or her constitutional right to vote.

The 2026 midterms will be more than a referendum on how Americans feel about Trump’s presidency. They will be a referendum on how committed we Americans are to preserving our democracy.

If submissive Republican legislators hold their congressional majorities in 2026, American democracy as we have known it for 238 years will no longer exist, the constitutional checks-and-balances system demolished. Trump’s assault on democracy the last 10 months would be but a small preview of the chilling authoritarianism awaiting the country the next three years.

Americans who truly want to help save our democracy will not only vote in the midterms but will help to register voters, participate in GOTV outreach, advocate for voters’ rights legislation, and work for pro-democratic candidates.

In 1962, President John F. Kennedy inspired a nation by asking, “If not us, then who? If not now, then when?” May we be so inspired.

Uncertainties abound. Do the 7-8 million Americans protesting at No Kings rallies represent the over 75 million Americans who constitute the majority of voters? Does that portion of voters who support a more authoritarian Trumpian government extend well beyond the MAGA faithful? Could a rigged election preclude a fair outcome? Is preserving our democracy even a significant voting issue for most Americans?

Only the 2026 midterm election results can answer those questions — as the fate of America’s democracy hangs perilously in the balance.

• Tom Tyner is a freelance editorialist, satirist, political analyst, blogger, author and retired English instructor