Georgia residents line up to vote in 2024. State Democratic officials nationwide are bracing for potential federal interference during November’s midterm elections. (Photo by Ross Williams/Georgia Recorder)
State Democratic officials are preparing for chaos at the polls this November, as President Donald Trump casts doubt on election security and pushes for more federal involvement in local voting.
“We’re no longer talking about hypothetical situations,” said Nick Brown, Washington state’s Democratic attorney general, noting the president’s push to nationalize election administration and to question the integrity of upcoming elections.
Brown is among the many Democratic state officials raising alarms over how Trump may seek to interfere with or challenge the results of November’s midterms. At stake is not only whether Republicans will maintain their grip on Congress, but also the control of state legislatures across the country. Democratic gains at either the state or national levels could provide a new check on Trump, who has sought to significantly expand executive power in his second term.
State lawmakers have introduced new legislation this year with the aim of protecting polling places this November. And behind closed doors, Democratic attorneys general and local election officials have sought to anticipate and prepare for ways the federal government could interject itself into local elections.
In recent months, Democratic attorneys general have been meeting to prepare for worst-case scenarios — including the possibility of federal immigration officers patrolling polling locations or the FBI visiting county election offices. Those AGs are gearing up to immediately fight potential intimidation or interference efforts in court, Brown said, and are working to educate local election administrators on basics of election law.
“Absent some very unusual circumstances, you can’t send the military to polling locations just to hang out. You can’t do those sorts of things,” he said.
The White House did not respond to Stateline’s questions. Republican state officials told Stateline they will respect voting laws and the outcomes of local races — no matter how the president reacts. Some Republicans have opposed Trump’s efforts to restrict mail-in voting and resisted requests for private voter data.
Brown said he’s less worried about a White House effort to cancel or attack the legitimacy of elections across the country. Rather, he fears a more targeted effort to interfere with or challenge results in a few states that could determine the balance of federal power.
The president still refuses to acknowledge his 2020 electoral defeat, and Brown noted some fellow election deniers now hold power in state and local governments. At least 25 county election officials who align with the broader election-denier movement have taken office across the country since the last federal election in 2024, according to a recent New York Times analysis.
“That is what worries me, is a half a dozen local elected officials saying I have doubts about the election because the president said there was something shady, and I’m not going to certify it,” Brown said. “And we’re just in a chaos moment. And I think that’s a very real possibility.”
He added: “The struggle I have often in this job, and particularly on this issue, is raising the alarm for people about these possibilities, while not sounding like an alarmist, but I think we really need to in this circumstance.”
Utah Republican Gov. Spencer Cox said elections have always had “some issues,” but he said there’s no evidence of anything coming close to major voter violations of election laws in the recent past. He said he expected Republican and Democratic secretaries of state to continue their long tradition of conducting elections with integrity.
“I feel confident in the election system in this country, and I hope that politicians will be responsible,” he told Stateline, “that you’ll win the right way, and there’s a right way to lose, too, and I hope we’ll see more of that.”
Election officials preparing
Midterms generally favor the party that doesn’t control the White House, but this cycle looks particularly competitive for Democrats as the president’s popularity sinks and consumer angst grows over high prices.
In New Hampshire, both Republican-controlled legislative chambers are considered competitive this November, along with key U.S. House and Senate races.
New Hampshire Republican Secretary of State David Scanlan said voters in his state generally trust local election officials to administer and count ballots. And he said the Trump administration would have to “have facts” to refute any unfavorable results.
“The results are going to speak for themselves,” Scanlan told Stateline. “And the results are factual.”
Scanlan has heard concerns about the prospects of federal agents showing up at the polls, but said he has no indication that will actually occur. While federal officials could arrive unannounced, he said he’d expect some kind of communication from Washington.
“At this point, if something were to happen, we would be prepared for it. I won’t say what that preparation is at the moment, but when you conduct an election you have to be ready for whatever gets thrown at you, whether it’s a fire in the polling place, or really bad weather, or some type of natural disaster. We prepare for those things.”
Katy Owens Hubler, director of elections and redistricting at the National Conference of State Legislatures, said local election officials have spent months running through tabletop exercises about all manner of potential disruptions, including the potential for federal involvement.
“There is more rhetoric coming from the federal government than we have typically seen,” she said.
While federal law prohibits ordering armed forces to polling places in most circumstances, lawmakers in multiple states this year introduced and passed legislation to prevent the presence of immigration officers or troops at voting locations, according to NCSL tracking.
Democratic governors in California, Connecticut, Illinois, Maryland, New Mexico, New York, Oregon, Rhode Island and Virginia signed new laws this year to limit law enforcement and military presence at voting sites and ensure more protections against voter intimidation.
Last month, U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement officials said they were not planning an aggressive campaign at voting sites. In a statement to States Newsroom, the agency said it conducts “intelligence-driven targeted enforcement” that could bring officers to polling places if they were endangered by a public safety threat.
“ICE is not planning operations targeting polling locations,” the statement said.
Broad election concerns
Many Republican lawmakers have embraced the president’s push to purge noncitizens from voting rolls. Experts say noncitizen registration and voting, already illegal under federal law, are rare. But since 2018, 15 states have adopted constitutional amendments to verify citizenship status, according to the National Conference of State Legislatures. And several states have passed similar laws this year.
Those include a Mississippi law signed in April that requires election officials to verify proof of citizenship with documents such as birth certificates and passports when registering voters — which raised major concerns from voting rights advocates about restricting voting access for citizens without the proper documentation.
Republican state Sen. Jeremy England, who sponsored that measure, said he sought to balance election security against voting access. He said media attention of even one case of a noncitizen voting in an election can cast doubt on the entire election system.
“At least the last couple of presidential elections have really led to a lot more questions,” he said, “and a lot of I would say probably a lot less confidence by the people.”
Still, England rejected Trump’s call for the federal government to take over elections. The U.S. Constitution grants states primary responsibility for election administration.
“This idea of federalizing the election system, I don’t think the people of Mississippi would support that,” England said. “And we’re a red state with a Republican president.”
In July, Trump raised the alarm over election security in a primetime address from the White House. The president said Russia, China, Iran, North Korea and some other groups could compromise the country’s election infrastructure. Without evidence, Trump cast doubt on the integrity of the Los Angeles mayoral race and the state’s recent gubernatorial race.
And in an interview with a conservative commentator this week, the president did not rule out declaring a national security emergency and federalizing control over November’s elections.
England was among a bipartisan group of state leaders who discussed election preparations at last month’s National Conference of State Legislatures summit in Chicago. Joining him on a panel discussion was Arizona Secretary of State Adrian Fontes, a Democrat.
Fontes urged state leaders to exercise more self-discipline when talking about and regulating elections.
“This should not be a partisan issue. That’s the hill that I’m willing to die on,” he said during that panel.
If states want to beef up election integrity, Fontes said lawmakers should provide local election officials with more funding to improve security — rather than making it more difficult to vote. And he held up the right to vote as among the most sacrosanct in society, giving ordinary people their constitutional right to check government power.
“That’s the real issue here,” he said. “The one chance citizens get, the one chance the governed get to keep us in our place, is being the most heavily regulated.”
Stateline reporter Kevin Hardy can be reached at khardy@stateline.org.
This story was originally produced by Stateline, which is part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network which includes Washington State Standard, and is supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity.
Source: Washington State Standard
This article was originally published by Washington State Standard.
