Nevada's top elections official has described the Trump administration's attempt to micromanage our mail-in ballot system  as "careless."

Well, that's one word for it. If we wanted a few more, we could add "malicious" and "dangerous" to the mix. And if we were to offer complete phrases, one might consider "intentionally injurious to the democratic process" as well. 

Of course, that assumes that the administration has some inkling that what it is doing will undoubtedly cause administrative challenges with the upcoming election — problems that will inevitably risk disenfranchising countless voters. 

On the other hand, it is always possible that the administration actually believes all the conspiratorial nonsense about election fraud it has been spewing for the last six years, and therefore believes it's righteously battling to correct a broken and corrupt system. 

Considering the obsession President Donald Trump has with blaming his 2020 loss on "fraud," and the degree to which his most loyal sycophants seem to believe anything he says, the latter seems entirely possible. Nonetheless, it's increasingly hard to tell what's merely bad policy borne of a partisan echo chamber and what's actually a calculated plan to undermine our upcoming election.  

Now, to be sure, not all proposed reforms to improve the integrity, accuracy and efficiency of our election system are inherently bad. Nevada voters are on the cusp of implementing a voter ID requirement, for example, which has long been a popular policy proposal among ordinary voters. Similarly, certain existing election protocols — such as results that aren't reported for several days after an election — can (and do) feed into voters' paranoia about possible fraud, even if most voters still tend to trust the final results. 

Unfortunately, modest proposals to boost confidence in elections aren't what the MAGA wing of the Republican Party has proposed. Instead, this administration has raided election offices throughout the country, openly flirted with sending federal agents to polling locations and has unveiled presidential diktats attempting to micromanage the way elections are run in all 50 states. 

Not that pointing out the hypocrisy of this administration matters at this point, but it's worth noting that each of those policies would garner vicious condemnation from MAGA if implemented by former President Joe Biden or, say, a future President Gavin Newsom. And for good reason: The federal government doesn't need to be mucking around in locally run elections. 

Alas, the MAGA politburo in the White House has decided radical reform is the only solution to occasionally unfavorable election results — and so, double standards be damned. 

One such example is the president's executive order on mail ballots that has been temporarily blocked by the courts. Dressed up as a way to bolster "integrity" in our elections, the order makes the United States Postal Service (USPS) the arbiter of who does and does not receive a ballot by requiring it to verify each ballot with a yet-to-be-built master list of registered citizen voters. 

Unsurprisingly, whistleblowers are already warning that the process will be a nightmare if the order ultimately has to be implemented before November. According to The Associated Press, for example, those with inside knowledge have reported that even a single misscanned ballot could potentially delay or cancel the delivery of tens of thousands of ballots intended for otherwise eligible voters. 

Making matters worse is that local Nevada Republican voters have unfortunately decided to nominate a Trumpian conspiracist of the same cloth to run for secretary of state. Former Assm. Jim Marchant (R-Las Vegas) is challenging incumbent Secretary of State Cisco Aguilar (D), and he's bringing with him some truly breathtaking policy proposals for how our state should run future elections. 

For starters, he has previously called for completely eliminating electronic vote-counting machines — because there's never any drama when human beings have to manually inspect each ballot the way they did in Florida circa 2000. He has also called for unregistering then re-registering every single Nevada voter, and he's even floated the idea of scanning people's heartbeats to verify their identity before they cast a ballot. 

To be fair, he admits that last proposal might be a bit much for the public to swallow "right now," but it certainly offers us a glimpse at how much he's bought into Trump's conspiratorial whinging about the 2020 elections. And that unfettered belief in such nonsense is just as concerning as the proposals themselves, because it illustrates the degree to which a sizable swath of the Republican Party believes the only plausible explanation for lost elections is "fraud." 

Within certain circles of GOP politics, there clearly exists an echo chamber where theories about widespread election fraud aren't merely considered a possibility but are instead considered indisputable truths. 

Indeed, Marchant unwittingly made it clear he resides full-time within such a bubble when he explained to The Nevada Independent that wherever he goes "nobody has a problem with" his conspiratorial take on election integrity. 

Certainly, he believes this notable lack of opposition is evidence of widespread popularity for his ideas. In truth, however, it merely exposes how little he has ventured outside of his own partisan enclave to talk to ordinary Americans — let alone discuss such issues with serious policy folks who might, for example, disagree with the assertion that Venezuela altered the election results in 72 countries. 

Unfortunately, what this means is that it doesn't really matter if the administration believes its own justifications for upending our election process, because the all-powerful MAGA base that has taken control of the Republican Party largely does. And, as a result, even something as blatantly illogical as putting the postal service in charge of voter verification is now a real possibility we may face as we head toward the midterm elections. 

That's not the administration merely being "careless" with policy. Instead, it's an insidious, malicious and deliberate attempt to undermine our democratic process — all because one man in the White House still can't get over an election loss from nearly six years ago. 

Michael Schaus is a communications and branding expert based in Las Vegas and founder of Schaus Creative LLC, an agency dedicated to helping organizations, businesses and activists tell their story and motivate change. He has more than a decade of experience in public affairs commentary, having worked as a news director, columnist, political humorist and most recently as the director of communications for a public policy think tank. Follow him on Twitter @schausmichael or on Substack @creativediscourse.