Earlier this month, the good people over at The Onion released an online game: The Onion Voting Simulator 3D. It’s a retro-style first-person platformer you can play in your phone’s browser (I played through it on my iPhone) or in any desktop browser except Safari.
There are two gameplay options: “Voting Mode” and “Stay At Home Mode.” In “Voting Mode,” the objective is to “cast a ballot and heal democracy.” (No pressure.) In “Stay At Home Mode,” your goal is to “eat a burrito” and “enjoy your digital apartment.” It’s a fun (and funny) way to kill some time. Check it out!
Some of the things you deal with in the voting simulator are things you might encounter in real life. Making sure you’re at the right location, making sure you’ve got whatever forms of ID you need depending on where you live, etc. And… well, there’s a lot of stuff you probably don’t have to worry about (hell demons, a nuclear bomb, a voting machine that functions as a boss fight).
And while it’s good to have a laugh (and I’ll always hype up my pals at The Onion, who do great work), the federal government (i.e., Donald Trump) has been trying to make voting harder and find ways to intimidate voters.
The midterms are less than two weeks away, so if you haven’t figured out what you’ll do if you run into one of the game’s obstacles at your real-life polling place, this weekend is a great time to make a plan.
The administration lost most of its legal fights over voting rules, so it’s leaning harder on intimidation
We all know that Donald Trump is what some might call a “sore loser.” And after his attempted autocoup in 2021 went unpunished — the federal case against him was dropped once he won in 2024 — it makes sense that he’s pushing the envelope (a bit of an understatement) when it comes to trying to tilt the midterms in his favor.
Since retaking office in January 2025, Trump has signed two executive orders on voting. Judges blocked most of the first one, from March 2025. The second tried to control how the Postal Service delivers mail ballots, and the Supreme Court made sure that rule won’t apply this November. The Department of Justice has also filed 31 lawsuits trying to get its hands on voter rolls. Thankfully, by the Brennan Center’s tally, it’s 0-for-26 in the ones judges have ruled on so far. Then there’s the SAVE America Act, which would make people show documentary proof of citizenship to register and photo ID to vote. It’s stuck in the Senate.
So, yes, Trump is trying to interfere, which should be treated as a gigantic scandal in itself. But he’s hit some bumps in the road. Those bumps are good.
After a summer of court fights over Trump’s mail-ballot order, NPR summed up where things landed: “In the end, no mail voting rules have actually changed.” That hasn’t kept people from worrying. Carly Koppes is a Republican election official in Colorado’s Weld County, and she told NPR she’s been hearing from confused voters. “This is my 22nd year [running elections],” she said. “Absolutely, this is the most uncertain.”
That uncertainty didn’t come from nowhere. Asked in May whether federal agents might be sent to polling places, Trump said he’d do “anything necessary” to make sure elections are “honest.” Last month, Markwayne Mullin, the Homeland Security secretary, said ICE might come to a polling place to serve a warrant, and FBI Director Kash Patel wouldn’t rule out his agents showing up at the polls either, offering only that they’d “follow the law.” DHS told NPR that ICE “is not planning operations targeting polling locations,” and then, in the very next line:
“ICE conducts intelligence-driven targeted enforcement, and if an active public safety threat endangered a polling location, they may be arrested as a result of that targeted enforcement action.”
It also said, “Those who are here legally and are not breaking other laws have nothing to fear.”
Then there’s the Justice Department. It plans to send about 1,000 monitors to the polls this year, which Harmeet Dhillon, who runs its Civil Rights Division, called “the largest monitoring effort” DOJ has ever run (roughly three times as many monitors as it sent for the last midterm). This time, it also plans to use some criminal prosecutors, which the department used to avoid because of how that might feel to voters. The NAACP is in court trying to keep prosecutors, and law enforcement generally, out of the monitor ranks. Kiersten Pels, a DOJ spokesperson, argued that the lawsuit grew out of “unwarranted fear and baseless speculation.” She also said this, which I assume was meant to be reassuring:
“Monitors will not identify themselves as prosecutors.”
In California, the department is suing to make the state set aside the ballots of anyone on a list of about 20,000 people it calls “likely” noncitizens, and the administration has warned election officials that if they knowingly count those ballots, they “risk becoming aiders and abettors to a federal crime.” When Los Angeles County did a preliminary review of 200 names from the list, 38.9% of the people whose birthplace was “meaningfully reported” listed a U.S. one. Trent McCotter, the acting deputy attorney general, had already conceded at a Monday press conference that the list might not be clean: “There may be some names on there who it turns out ultimately are citizens, we’re not perfect,” he said. “And that’s why we’ve asked California to cooperate with us.”
Is any of it landing? Yeah. Even before most of that, a UC San Diego poll taken Sept. 1-9 found that about 40% of Americans thought it was likely ICE agents would be at voting sites near them, and the worry that immigration agents would question them, even though they’re citizens, was much higher for people of color than for white people.
And that’s kind of the idea, right? If the administration can make voters so afraid that they’ll be harassed or intimidated by Trump goons at the polling place that they stay home, then it has accomplished its goal, no goons required.
So make a plan
Have you ever made a voting plan before? You should! Here’s a good place to start. (If you want an even longer checklist, Ms. has a good one, which I leaned on here.)
If you’ve got a few moments this weekend, you should check your registration, find your polling place and its hours, and look up exactly what sort of ID you need to cast a ballot (VoteRiders has a state-by-state rundown).
If you’re voting by mail, consider hand-delivering your ballot to either your election office or an official drop box (if your area has them) instead of putting it in the mail. The Postal Service recommends mailing it at least a week before your state’s deadline. Most states won’t count a ballot that arrives after Election Day, whatever the postmark says, and several more have adopted that rule since the last midterms.
If you’re told by a poll worker that your ID isn’t acceptable, ask what you can do. In some states, you can sign a sworn statement and vote as you normally would. In other, stricter states, you might be allowed to cast a provisional ballot that will count if you do something like show your ID at an election office within a specific window of time. Basically, now’s the time to check to see what you need. If you don’t have an acceptable ID, VoteRiders will help you get one for free (call or text 866-432-8683).
If they can’t find your name at the polling place, ask them to double-check that you’re in the right place (in many states, a provisional ballot cast at the wrong precinct won’t count). Have them direct you to the correct location. Around 20 states and D.C. let you register and vote on Election Day itself, which can clear up this problem, too. For everyone else, you can ask for a provisional ballot. Ask what you need to do for it to count, and by when.
As for anyone at the polls who isn’t a poll worker, you don’t owe them a conversation. Some states, including Florida and Texas, bar partisan poll watchers from talking to voters at all. DOJ monitors can watch, and they can talk to you once you’re outside, Reuters reports, but they have no power to open an investigation right there or keep anybody from casting a ballot. In most states, they can’t come inside without election officials’ permission, and DOJ has agreed under administrations of both parties that its monitors will openly say they’re monitors.
An agent stopping you is a different situation. The Brennan Center’s guide for voters says to ask if you’re allowed to leave, and if they say yes, to go, calmly. You don’t have to answer their questions (in some kinds of stops, like traffic stops, you may have to identify yourself), and without a warrant, you don’t have to unlock your phone for them. It’s also against federal law for anyone, government officials included, to “intimidate, threaten, or coerce” you for voting. If you see that happening, to you or anybody else, tell the poll workers (or whoever’s in charge there), call or text Election Protection, and, if you can do it safely, write down what happened and when. Anyone in danger? Call 911.
One more thing: don’t post that ICE is at your polling place unless you know it is. Brennan warns that a false report can scare people out of voting by itself.
And if there’s still a line when your polling place closes, don’t leave it. If you got in line before closing, you get to vote.
For anything else, there’s the Election Protection hotline, run by a nonpartisan coalition, administered by the Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights Under Law and answered by trained volunteers. Put these in your phone now:
866-OUR-VOTE (866-687-8683), call or text
888-VE-Y-VOTA (888-839-8682) in Spanish
888-API-VOTE (888-274-8683) in Asian languages
844-YALLA-US (844-925-5287) in Arabic