Good morning.
Thursday in Whitewater will be increasingly sunny with a high of 77. Sunrise is 6:29 and sunset is 7:13 for 12 hours 44 minutes of daylight. The moon will be new this evening with none of its visible disk illuminated.
On this day in 1846, Elias Howe is granted a patent for the sewing machine.
A federal and state election draws near. There is a reasonable concern that a movement that stormed the United States Capitol to disrupt the peaceful transfer of power will seek new ways to prevent another peaceful transfer of federal power. There are two principal ways to achieve this aim: by interfering with lawful voting or by contesting the lawful results. Of the latter — ways to contest votes lawfully cast — Evan Gorelick lists four main lines of attack:
Trump is the only president in U.S. history to try overturning an election. His ongoing assertion that elections are “rigged” creates a potential pretext for officials — a growing number of whom back the president’s election denialism, my colleagues Nick Corasaniti and Alexandra Berzon report — to question the outcome of this year’s midterms. If Democrats win enough seats to retake one or both chambers of Congress, then officials could:
Claim they saw polling-site irregularities. The Justice Department has been deploying election monitors this primary season. It could do the same in November. (Trump has claimed that loads of undocumented immigrants vote, for instance, even though a database managed by the conservative Heritage Foundation identifies only about 100 cases of noncitizen voting over the last quarter century, or roughly two instances per U.S. state.)
Claim voting machines lie. The president says they are “extremely exposed to attack” and has spread baseless allegations that they once “deleted” millions of votes. Trump told The Times he regretted not seizing voting machines after the 2020 election, and his administration has explored bringing criminal charges against election officials whom it believes did not sufficiently safeguard their computer systems. (Cyber experts have identified security flaws, but there’s no evidence they have ever been exploited to flip election results.)
Claim there was foreign interference. Trump often complains, falsely, that China sabotaged him in 2020. This summer, he made a prime-time speech resurfacing that exaggerated narrative. There’s a grain of truth: Beijing collected American voter data. But such data is publicly available and often purchased by domestic political campaigns. On the other hand, Russian meddling might have helped Trump in 2016.
Refuse to certify the results, or sue to challenge them. The Justice Department could unleash a torrent of post-election litigation. The agency has already demanded that states turn over voters’ confidential Social Security and drivers’ license data. Dozens of states have resisted, and the Justice Department sued them. It has lost every case so far. Still, election officials and Democrats worry the battle over voting records may be used to discredit or spread disinformation about midterm results. (Read The Times’s profile of the gladiatorial Trump official leading these efforts.)
See Evan Gorelick, What could go wrong?, New York Times, September 10, 2026.
It is not possible for a people to support a government that either burdens an election or rejects election results. This principle applies nationally, statewide, and locally. In this way, all places, whether big or small, are bound together in defense of a right they hold in common.
There are no exceptions, nor could there be.
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Forthcoming topics (in no particular order): Development in Downtown Whitewater (Follow-Up), Polling Places in the City (Further Considerations), A New Ethics Ordinance, and Steps for a Public Interest Campaign.
Scientists say August 2026 was the Earth’s joint hottest month ever recorded:
