Democrats are widely expected to win control of the House in November's election. The Senate remains a tossup. But there is a nagging suspicion that Trump will somehow pervert the will of the people to ensure that Republicans retain their majority in the House and somehow steal the election.

Here's his playbook: For starters, MAGAs will demonize the Democrats. Evoking Senator Joseph McCarthy, President Trump has already referred to Democrats as "hard core, godless Communists."

Republican House majority leader Steve Scalise (R-La.) said, "The Bolshevik takeover of the Democratic Party is in full swing, and communism is on the ballot this November."

House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) posted, "The question before Congress is whether we will preserve our constitutional republic OR chart a fundamentally different course that leads us down the ROAD TO COMMUNISM."

Trump will delegitimize eligible voters. He will scare them away from the polls by posting federal agents at their voting places or discouraging them by disparaging mail-in ballots.

But here's the crusher: If the outcome is close, his minions can refuse to seat elected Democrats by reason of a yawning loophole in how congressional elections are administered. But beware! If Republicans try this one on the Democrats, and the Democrats at some point reverse positions, you can count on them to return the compliment next election. The bottom-line of such an action will be constitutional chaos.

The Constitution provides: "Each house shall be the judge of the elections, returns and qualifications of its own members." Those decisions are not reviewable by the courts. This leaves an opportunity for presumptive Speaker-in-waiting Johnson to deny Democratic members-elect their seats in the 120th Congress.

A losing House candidate may contest his or her election. The issue is decided by a simple majority vote. The new House can refuse to seat the winner while the challenge is pending. If things are close, Republicans may even temporarily hold a majority. Thus, even if Democrats only narrowly win a House majority, one or more defeated Republican candidates might try to deny office to their Democratic opponents. The Senate has its own rules for dealing with contested elections and normally seats the certified winner without prejudice.

We are accustomed to voters having final say, but this has not always been the case. Jeffrey Jenkins, a Professor of Law at USC Price determined there have been 601 election contests in the House between 1789 and 2002 — an average of around 5.6 per Congress.

In 2021 Mike Pence followed the advice of his courageous lawyer, retired Judge J. Michael Luttig, who persuaded him that our constitutional traditions required an orderly transfer of power and the election result must be respected. The same quandary may be unfolding now. And Johnson is no Mike Pence. A card-carrying election-denier, Johnson once filed a brief in the Supreme Court claiming there were "unconstitutional irregularities" in 2020 election outcomes.

That is exactly why I fear that Republicans have a legal loophole to subvert the will of the people. The 2026 midterms could thus be a decisive test of U.S. democratic norms, with the potential for a constitutional crisis if elected members are denied seats.

As the 2020 election conspiracies illustrate, the challenges could be based on virtually anything. Defeated contestants could claim that their state's refusal to turn over voter rolls to the Trump administration meant the election was corrupt. They could argue that the Senate's refusal to pass the SAVE Act allowed illegal immigrants to vote for their opponents in large numbers. They could try to cast doubt on mail-in ballots.

The brooding omnipresence in the midterms is Trump, whose endorsements have already proved to be the kiss of death. One thing is clear about Trump — most Americans don't like him. His job approval rating stands at 33 percent in a new Reuters-Ipsos poll of adults, with 63 percent disapproving.

Trump has a big stake in the outcome aside from just his hatred of losing. He does not want to face congressional investigations, much less potential impeachment for corruption.

So, what's the answer? Only an unambiguous election landslide will scotch Trump and his movement. That's what dethroned Viktor Orban in Hungary. But there is no prospect that such a landslide is imminent. The influential Cook Political Report lists 18 tossup races in the House out of 435. A further 19 races lean Democratic or Republican. Even taken together, it means less than 10 percent of House races that will prove decisive.

So, it is entirely possible that we will run a reprise of 2020, when the outcome of a narrow election beclouded with accusations of fraud, and MAGA determined to retain control. The hope is only fleeting that men like Johnson have enough honesty and integrity to keep the nation from a constitutional crisis.

Whatever you learned in school, it is ultimately the House and the Senate deciding who sits in Congress — not the American people.

James D. Zirin is a former federal prosecutor in the Southern District of New York and a published legal analyst. 

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