US Election Officials Brace for Federal Interference Ahead of Midterms

With two months to go before US midterm elections that could shift the balance of power in Washington, state and local election officials are preparing for a scenario once considered far-fetched: a president using federal power to influence the vote.

In California, officials have war-gamed the possibility of federal agents appearing at polling places to intimidate voters. In Michigan, clerks are being advised on how to respond if the federal government demands access to voting machines. Nationwide, election administrators are bracing for legal fights over ballot seizures and voter-fraud investigations.

More than 50 state and local election officials from both parties, including a dozen secretaries of state, were interviewed for this story. Almost all said they are adopting new strategies to counter political interference, misinformation, cyber attacks and potential violence. The preparations span large and small jurisdictions, in Republican- and Democratic-controlled areas alike.

The concern reflects a growing alarm that the biggest threat to November's elections may come not from foreign meddling or technical failures, but from the Trump administration itself, as the president seeks to expand federal involvement in elections, a domain traditionally overseen by states and localities.

The White House has dismissed such concerns, saying it is enforcing election laws and protecting confidence in voting. It has blamed Democrats for what it calls widespread voting by noncitizens, despite scant evidence. A Varta Wire investigation published in July and independent studies have found that noncitizen voting is extraordinarily rare and unlikely to affect outcomes.

"The distrust in our elections is caused by extreme Democrats," said White House spokesperson Lauren Bis, adding that the administration has good reason to pursue voter-fraud allegations "despite the media and Democrats denying it for decades."

Yet Trump has openly described many of his election-related initiatives as ways to help Republicans win. Under the US Constitution, elections are administered by states and localities, not the president. However, Trump has urged Republicans to "nationalize" voting in at least 15 places, directed federal law enforcement to pursue debunked voter-fraud claims and sought to restrict mail-in balloting. His administration has also launched probes of election officials and offices in Wisconsin, Georgia and elsewhere.

His push to redraw congressional maps before the midterms sparked a nationwide redistricting battle expected to give Republicans a net advantage in House races. He has sued states that refused to provide federal agencies with confidential voter data, including birthdates, driver's license numbers and partial Social Security numbers, and gutted programs designed to thwart cyber attacks and foreign interference. At the Republican Party's midterm convention in Dallas last week, he urged supporters to "cheat like hell" and vote whether they're "registered or not."

"Election officials are concerned about the role the federal government is going to play," said Bill Gates, a Republican lawyer and former official in Maricopa County, Arizona, who now advises and trains election officials around the country. The mood, he said, is one of "apprehension," rather than the close cooperation that once characterized election cycles.

More than a dozen local and state election officials said they are hiring outside lawyers or seeking legal training for themselves and their staff to prepare for potential demands by the administration for access to sensitive voting records or election equipment. Nearly twice that many said they are expanding public outreach and social media campaigns to counter misinformation, including false claims by Trump and Republican allies that voting machines are unreliable and mail-in voting is inherently corrupt.

Most said they are scrambling to fill gaps left by the Trump administration's cuts to programs that help safeguard elections from cyber attacks and physical security threats. That includes ongoing work to fortify election offices with camera systems and bulletproof glass – a trend that began after Trump disputed his loss to Joe Biden in the 2020 election, igniting waves of violent threats by Trump supporters against election workers.

The administration's election rhetoric could prove to be mere bluster, said David Becker, a former voting-rights lawyer for the US Justice Department who now runs the Center for Election Innovation and Research, a group that works to build confidence in elections. Courts have repeatedly rejected the administration's efforts to change mail-in ballot rules and obtain confidential voter rolls from states that refused its demands. Other actions, such as sending armed agents to polling sites, would likely be illegal and risk political backlash, Becker added.

But with control of Congress potentially hinging on a small number of races, many election officials say they cannot assume such guardrails will hold. The stakes are enormous: A Republican loss of one or both chambers would end the governing trifecta that has enabled much of Trump's agenda, opening the door to aggressive Democratic oversight of him and new obstacles to his legislative and judicial priorities.

SUBPOENAS, WARRANTS AND PRIVATE ATTORNEYS

Election officials are planning for a wide range of scenarios, particularly in battleground states and Democratic strongholds targeted by Trump's false election-fraud claims. Any disputed result, they say, could trigger federal investigations, courtroom battles, and even civil unrest.

Wisconsin offers insight into those preparations. In Dane County, home to Wisconsin's capital, county attorneys have begun drafting court filings to fight any attempt by the Trump administration to seize voting equipment or election records, and they are preparing for the possibility that federal immigration agents could appear at polling places, said the Democratic county clerk, Scott McDonell.

"It's going to be a matter of speed," McDonell said of any legal response. The county is also preparing for possible protests over disputed results. He said January's FBI raid on election operations in Georgia's Fulton County was a wake-up call, convincing him that the Trump administration could try to intervene.

Dana Barrett, a Fulton County commissioner, said the raid exposed a vulnerability few local governments had anticipated. After federal agents seized about 650 boxes of 2020 election records as part of an investigation into voter-fraud allegations previously rejected by courts and audits, the county rushed to hire outside counsel and sued to recover the records.

"The only thing that would have been nice is if we had already had those people on board," said Barrett, a Democrat. "But how could you know?" The county, Georgia's most populous and a Democratic stronghold, lost that legal fight in May, when a federal judge ruled prosecutors could retain the records while their investigation continues.

Wisconsin faces similar pressure. In May, FBI agents sought to question at least eight current and former Milwaukee city and county employees about the 2020 election. Trump's loss in the state had spurred him and his allies to sue the state's two largest Democratic counties.