Mikel Bolden
Aug 27, 2026
There is a difference between an alarm and a warning. An alarm goes off when something might happen. A warning goes out when something already is.
We are past the alarm stage.
Over the last several months, the White House has fired every commissioner at the Election Assistance Commission, the small bipartisan agency that helps states run elections and certifies the machines we vote on. Two were Democrats. One was a Republican who had served since 2014. All three were shown the door within hours of each other, by email, with no replacement plan and no path to a quorum before this November. The agency that is supposed to help state and local officials run clean elections currently cannot legally act on anything that matters.
At the same time, the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency has been stripped of the staff and funding it used to protect election systems from foreign interference. Contracts ended. Positions eliminated. The federal partnership that state election officials in Mississippi and everywhere else relied on to flag threats before they became crises has been quietly dismantled, even as the President tells the public we need urgent action to secure our elections from outside meddling.
And the President himself has floated canceling this year's midterms, more than once, in more than one interview, arguing in essence that the country is doing so well under his leadership that an election is almost beside the point. Legal scholars are correct that he does not have the constitutional authority to do it. But the goal was never a clean legal victory. The goal is to say the unthinkable often enough that by the time someone tries to make it real, we're too exhausted to be shocked.
That is the playbook. We have seen it before. Project 2025 was mocked as fringe fantasy right up until it became the operating manual. Deny it is happening. Mock the people sounding the alarm. Then implement it the moment the door is unlocked. It's not a conspiracy theory anymore when you can watch it happen in real time, on the record, with press releases.
Here at home, the pattern has a Mississippi accent.
After the Supreme Court's Callais decision weakened the tools Black voters have used for decades to fight discriminatory maps, Lieutenant Governor Delbert Hosemann formed a committee to study redistricting our state's political lines mid-decade, years ahead of the normal schedule. When Senate Minority Leader Derrick Simmons, along with House Minority Leader Robert Johnson and Legislative Black Caucus Chairman Kabir Karriem, wrote a letter simply stating their professional opinion that Mississippi does not need to redraw its maps right now, and that doing so risks diluting Black voting strength, Hosemann's response was to remove Simmons from the committee.
Think about what that teaches every other legislator watching. It doesn't matter whether you're right. It matters whether you comply.
That is not how democracy is supposed to work. Disagreement is supposed to be the point of a legislature, not a fireable offense. When the response to "I don't think we should do this" is removal from the room, we've stopped debating policy and started enforcing obedience.
None of this happened by accident, and none of it is happening in a vacuum.
Federal election oversight is being hollowed out. State legislative dissent is being punished. And the man at the top of it all has said, out loud, that maybe we shouldn't bother having an election this year. Individually, people will tell you each of these is defensible, overblown, or just politics as usual. Together, they are a straight line. You don't need a conspiracy to see a fire. You just need to notice that every exit is being blocked at the same time.
This is where Mississippi comes in, and where our opportunity actually lives.
Every national map treats Mississippi as a lost cause, a safe red state not worth the investment. But the math tells a different story. Our numbers are more than sufficient to flip competitive races up and down the ballot this November, if the people who agree with us actually show up. The gap between what Mississippi could do and what Mississippi does isn't a gap in belief. It's a gap in turnout. Too many Mississippians who share our values have quietly decided the system isn't worth their time, that their vote won't matter, that nothing changes either way.
I understand the exhaustion. I don't share the conclusion.
If you sit this one out because no candidate on the ballot is exactly who you'd have designed yourself, understand what you're actually risking. It isn't just this election. It's the ability to have a meaningful say in the next one, and the one after that. The infrastructure being dismantled right now, the oversight being gutted, the dissent being punished, all of it is aimed at making sure future elections matter less than this one. If you skip this vote waiting for a perfect candidate, you may find there's less democracy left to vote in by the time one shows up.
Stop waiting for perfect. Perfect doesn't run for office. Look for the candidate who shares most of what you believe, cast your vote for them, and then do the harder, more permanent work: stay engaged, organize, and push them the rest of the way once they're in office. That is how real political power gets built, not by waiting on the sidelines for someone flawless to arrive, but by showing up for the people closest to right and making them better through pressure and participation.
Mississippi has never been a state that waits to be told what it's capable of. We've been underestimated before and proven people wrong before. This November is another chance to do it again, if we choose to take it.
The flames are visible. What we do next is up to us.
Mikel Bolden is the Executive Director of the Mississippi Democratic Party. A native of Columbia, Mississippi, and a graduate of Tougaloo College with a degree in political science, she has spent her career building voter protection initiatives and community programs across the state. She is also the founder of The Humble Change, Inc.