The Justice Department is compiling the largest set of national voter roll data it has ever collected, buttressing an effort by President Trump and his supporters to try to prove long-running, unsubstantiated claims that droves of undocumented immigrants have voted illegally, according to people familiar with the matter.
The effort to essentially establish a national voting database, involving more than 30 states, has elicited serious concerns among voting rights experts because it is led by allies of the president, who as recently as this January refused to acknowledge Joseph R. Biden Jr. fairly won the 2020 election. It has also raised worries that those same officials could use the data to revive lies of a stolen election, or try to discredit future election results.
The initiative has proceeded along two tracks, one at the Justice Department’s civil rights division and another at its criminal division, seeking data about individual voters across the country, including names and addresses, in a move that experts say may violate the law. It is a significant break from decades of practice by Republican and Democratic administrations, which believed that doing so was federal overreach and ripe for abuse.
“Nobody has ever done anything like this,” said Justin Levitt, an election law expert at Loyola Marymount University’s law school and a former Justice Department official.
The Justice Department has requested data from at least 16 Republican-controlled states, including Mississippi, Alabama and Texas. It has also sent more formal demands for data to at least 17 mostly Democrat-controlled or swing states, including Pennsylvania, Nevada, Wisconsin and New York.
Nearly every state has resisted turning over voter files with private, personally identifiable information on voters like driver’s license numbers or Social Security numbers. Last week, a local judge blocked South Carolina from releasing private voter information to the Justice Department.
In a private meeting with the staff of top state election officials last month, Michael Gates, a deputy assistant attorney general in the civil rights division, disclosed that all 50 states would eventually receive similar requests, according to notes of the meeting reviewed by The New York Times. In particular, he said, the federal government wants the last four digits of every voter’s Social Security number….
Mr. Levitt likened the effort to sending federal troops to bolster local police work. “It’s wading in, without authorization and against the law, with an overly heavy federal hand to take over a function that states are actually doing just fine,” he said, adding that “it’s wildly illegal, deeply troubling, and nobody asked for this.”
In a statement, a Justice Department spokesman, Gates McGavick, said, “Enforcing the nation’s elections laws is a priority in this administration and in the civil rights division.”…
Category Archives: election subversion risk
“Democrats pick members for new GOP-led committee on Jan. 6 Capitol attack”
WaPo:
Democrats named the members of their caucus to serve on a new subcommittee reinvestigating the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol — a Republican-led probe that threatens to reignite tensions over one of the most divisive events in American political history.
Democratic Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-New York) announced Monday that Reps. Eric Swalwell (D-California), Jared Moskowitz (D-Florida) and Jasmine Crockett (D-Texas) will participate in the eight-member committee and Jamie Raskin (D-Maryland) will serve as an ex officio member….
House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-Louisiana) is tasked with choosing the Republican members who will serve on the subcommittee, but has yet to announce who will represent the GOP on the panel. Rep. Barry Loudermilk (R-Georgia), who spearheaded a report as a subcommittee chair under the House Administration Committee last Congress is expected to lead the new subcommittee.
The new subcommittee will have subpoena power and is “authorized and directed to conduct a full and complete investigation” of the events on Jan. 6, when a pro-Trump mob stormed the Capitol to prevent the certification of Biden’s election.
It is intended to be a response to the 117th Congress’s original Jan. 6 select committee, which held high-profile public hearings and released an 845-page report after 18 months of work including reviewing emails, text messages, call logs and White House records, and conducting more than 1,000 interviews….
Register for Free Sept. 16 Webinar from Safeguarding Democracy Project: “The Risk of Federal Interference in the 2026 Midterm Elections”
The Risk of Federal Interference in the 2026 Midterm Elections
Tuesday, September 16, 12:15pm-1:15pm PT, Webinar
Register here.
Ben Haiman, UVA Center for Public Safety and Justice, Liz Howard, NYU Law Brennan Center for Justice, and Stephen Richer, Ash Center for Democratic Governance and Innovation, Harvard Kennedy School
Richard L. Hasen, moderator (Director, Safeguarding Democracy Project, UCLA)
UCLA School of Law is a State Bar of California approved MCLE provider. This session is approved for 1 hour of MCLE credit.
Election Conspiracy Theorist Cleta Mitchell Suggests Trump Could Declare a “National Sovereignty” Crisis and Do an Emergency Federal Takeover of the Midterm Elections (He Can’t and It Would Trigger Massive Protests and the Potential End of American Democracy)
Ugh: “Trump’s DOJ seeks voting equipment in Missouri ahead of 2026 election”
A top official in President Donald Trump’s Justice Department recently sought access to voting equipment used by two Republican clerks in Missouri during the 2020 election, an unusual request from federal officials amid continued efforts by the president to malign the integrity of the nation’s voting systems.
Trump overwhelmingly won each of his three elections in Missouri, yet many of his supporters there and elsewhere continue to champion the president’s false claim that voting equipment was rigged against him in 2020 and that ballots should be tallied by hand. The Trump administration, working with an intermediary, previously sought access to voting equipment in Colorado, but the effort in Missouri appears to originate directly from the Justice Department.
The two Missouri clerks rejected the request from Andrew “Mac” Warner, a top official in the Justice Department’s civil rights division and a former West Virginia secretary of state who has embraced false claims about the 2020 election. One of the clerks cited state statutes that restrict who can access voting equipment, and the other told Warner he no longer has the Dominion Voting Systems equipment he was looking for.
“They wanted to test a machine that was used during the 2020 election,” Jasper County Clerk Charlie Davis said in an interview last week with The Washington Post. “I just told him we upgraded our machines. Our vendor has all of the old machines so we don’t have access.”.
Days later, Davis got a call from his friend Jay Ashcroft, who oversaw the 2020 and 2024 elections as Missouri’s secretary of state. Ashcroft did not describe his interest in the machines, or whether he was working with federal authorities, Davis recalled. Ashcroft, the son of former U.S. attorney general John Ashcroft, urged Davis to cooperate with the Justice Department and wondered if he would change his mindif he was given a replacement machine, according to Davis. Davis told him he no longer had the equipment….
“Richard Bernstein: The Trump Administration’s Arguments About the National Guard Threaten the 2026 Elections”
Yesterday, federal District Judge Charles Breyer ruled that the Trump Administration’s federalization of the National Guard in Los Angeles to assist in immigration law enforcement violated the Posse Comitatus Act, which is 18 U.S.C. section 1385. The Posse Comitatus Act bars use of the military for law enforcement, “except in cases and under circumstances expressly authorized by the Constitution or Act of Congress.” The Trump Administration argued that the National Guard authorization statute on which it relied—10 U.S.C. section 12406(3)—is an express exception. Judge Breyer’s ruling to the contrary, at pages 26-32 of his decision, was his core holding. Although the Los Angeles deployment was not about elections, if an appellate court adopts certain arguments made by the Trump Administration in that case, such a decision could set our country on a path to military interference in the 2026 elections.
It would be criminal for any Administration to use the military to interfere with voting or vote counting in any election. In particular, 18 U.S.C. sections 592 and 593 (“Sections 592 and 593”) criminalize both having troops at the polls and military interference with voting, conducting elections, or election officers. These statutes apply to use of both the regular military and members of National Guard units “called into Federal service.” 10 U.S.C section 12405; see also 10 U.S.C. section 10106. Although Sections 592 and 593 apply only to officers and members of the military, 18 U.S.C. section 2 also makes it criminal for others—for example, a member of the Cabinet or a White House official—to aid, abet, counsel, command, induce, procure, or willfully cause violations of Sections 592 and 593. And 18 U.S.C. Section 371 makes it criminal for both military and non-military officials to conspire to violate Sections 592 and 593.
But, in the Los Angeles case, in addition to the Trump Administration’s expansive interpretation of 10 U.S.C. section 12046(3), the Administration has raised three arguments that, if adopted by the Ninth Circuit or the Supreme Court, would disable federal court enforcement of Sections 592 and 593 and thus encourage using the military to interfere in the 2026 elections. The first such Trump Administration argument is that the President has an inherent power to use the military to protect federal property, federal personnel, and federal functions and that this inherent protective power is not subject to federal statutory limitations. One can almost hear the Trump Administration arguing in 2026 that it is using the military to protect the federal function of federal elections. But Judge Breyer’s decision at 33-42 exhaustively surveyed the precedents and correctly decided that any inherent protective power to use the military domestically is subject to federal statutory restrictions. Under this ruling, no inherent protective power would override the statutory prohibitions in Sections 592 and 593 against employing the military to interfere with elections….
“Already Pardoned by Trump, Jan. 6 Rioters Push for Compensation”
Bizarro World continues:
The rioters who attacked the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, secured a shocking double victory this year.
President Trump granted them clemency for their crimes on his first day back in the White House, and in the months that followed, he allowed his Justice Department to purge many of the federal agents and prosecutors who sought to hold them accountable.
But even though the president has given the rioters their freedom and has taken steps toward satisfying their desire for retribution, they are asking for more. In the past several weeks, the rioters and their lawyers have pushed the Trump administration to pay them restitution for what they believe were unfair prosecutions.
On Thursday, one of the lawyers, Mark McCloskey, said during a public meeting on social media that he had recently met with top officials at the Justice Department and pitched them on a plan to create a special panel that would dole out financial damages to the rioters — much like the arrangement of a special master to award money to the victims of the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks.
The panel, which Mr. McCloskey called a “voluntary nonjudicial resolution committee,” would consider rioters’ cases individually, he said, then assign them sums according to harms they had purportedly suffered at the hands of the federal government.
Mr. McCloskey said that he wanted the panel to be overseen by Jeanine Pirro, who runs the federal prosecutors’ office in Washington that took the lead in filing charges against nearly 1,600 rioters who joined in the Capitol attack.
“The only thing I can do as your lawyer,” he told the rioters who were at the online meeting, “is to turn your losses into dollar bills.”
Neither Ms. Pirro nor a spokesman for the Justice Department responded on Sunday to messages seeking comment on Mr. McCloskey’s plan, and it remains unclear how seriously top administration officials are taking it….
“Pa. election conspiracy activist appointed to election integrity role at Department of Homeland Security”
A Pennsylvania-based activist tied to President Donald Trump’s effort to overturn the 2020 election is now overseeing election security matters for the U.S. Department of Homeland Security.
Heather Honey, of Lebanon County, is serving as the deputy assistant secretary for elections integrity, a political appointment in the department’s Office of Strategy, Policy, and Plans, according to the department’s website.
The office is responsible for leading, conducting and coordinating “Department-wide policy development and implementation and strategic planning,” according to its page.
DHS did not answer questions about Honey’s responsibilities, or whether she will still be able to both work in government and hold positions in several advocacy groups that push conspiratorial election claims….
Votebeat had an earlier profile of Honey, This Pa. activist is the source of false and flawed election claims gaining traction across the country. MORE from Democracy Docket.
Bart Gellman: “Trump’s Stunning Power Grab on Elections”
To begin with, the surprise announcement and the sudden, if ambiguous, turnabout suggested once again that Mr. Trump is governing in his second term without advisers who can or even try to help him discipline his impulses. The episode exposes, as well, his renewed obsession with exerting control over election machinery. And it offers a vivid glimpse of his inclination to regard his powers as all but limitless.
No competent lawyer could have counseled Mr. Trump in good faith that “the States are merely an ‘agent’ for the Federal Government in counting and tabulating the votes,” as the president asserted in his post. Nor would such a lawyer have dreamed of advising him that state election officials “must do what the Federal Government, as represented by the President of the United States, tells them, FOR THE GOOD OF OUR COUNTRY, to do.”
Who, if anyone, told Mr. Trump that he could take command of state elections this way? Possibly he made up the authority himself. Some former Trump staff members believe he may not engage at all with questions about whether something he wants to do is lawful or something he wants to say is true. Those questions, they tell me, do not even occur to him.
Others who have worked for Mr. Trump say he seems to believe sincerely, if that is the word for it, that anything is permitted to him. Still others insist that he knows very well when he is crossing a line but presses on until obliged by an opposing force to stop.
Whatever the origins, Mr. Trump has now staked out a fundamentally illegitimate claim to authority over the conduct of American elections. He has yet to repudiate it. If he continues to press the claim, then the foundational mechanisms of our democracy may be in genuine danger. It is more than hypothetically possible that Mr. Trump, when frustrated, will try to compel the obedience of state election officials by throwing the weight of the executive branch against them.
Mr. Trump’s deployment of the National Guard in Washington and active duty Marines in Los Angeles, accompanied by threats that he might do the same in other Democratic urban strongholds, suggests another risk. Could he use some pretext to take control of voting machinery? If he dispatches troops or federal law enforcement agents to disrupt blue-city voting or ballot counting in swing states — Atlanta, say, or Milwaukee or Philadelphia — the midterm elections could be in real peril.
With or without the deployment of force, Mr. Trump’s fusillade of baseless claims about election fraud shakes public confidence in the integrity of the vote — and provides excuses for his dishonest efforts to delegitimize the outcomes. For all his political life, he has waged war against the proposition that he or his party could ever lose a legitimate election. He and his allies are preparing the ground for their next battle, in 2026….
Bart concludes with a note very consistent with my NYT oped on this topic earlier this week:
The ultimate safeguard of constitutional government is the great mass of citizen voters who decide by the tens of millions what kind of government they want. We hold the power, whatever our partisan preferences, to defend checks and balances and the rule of law. We cannot lose that power unless we surrender it.
I Spoke to the PBS News Hour Weekend About Trump’s Threats to the Integrity of the 2026 Midterm Elections
Bob Bauer Sounds the Alarm: “Donald Trump’s Plan for ‘Honest’ Mid-Term Elections”
Bob Bauer writes, very much in line with what I wrote in the NYT yesterday:
On August 18, Donald Trump announced on Truth Social that he would sign another executive order, following one issued in March, to “help bring honesty” to elections and to the 2026 mid-term elections in particular. According to Trump, its aims are to end to mail-in voting and to replace voting machines in favor of “watermark paper” ballots. Trump claims the legal authority to do this because it is “good for the country.” The president has no such authority, but it appears that his plans may include exploiting a particular feature of the American electoral process. That process is entrusted to election officials and administrators selected through partisan processes, and Trump is evidently seeking to make Republican state and local official support for “honest elections” a litmus test of party loyalty….
Trump could certainly call on Republican-controlled state legislatures to pass bills that support in various ways this drive against mail-in voting and voting machines. But he has other ways to apply partisan pressure in achieving these goals. As the Presidential Commission on Election Administration noted in its 2014 Report: “The United States runs its elections unlike any other country in the world,” and one of [its] distinguishing features…is the choosing of election officials and administrators through a partisan process. Some are appointed and others elected, but almost all are selected on a partisan basis.” It is complex, decentralized system run by local officials in more than 8,000 individual jurisdictions. In the last years since the “stop the steal movement” gelled, the vast majority of these officials across the country and the political divide have held firm against pressures to follow the president in his claims about “rigged” elections.
There have been a small but notable number of exceptions. Officials declined to certify lawful vote tallies until courts intervened or sought a change in the rules to give them broad discretion to do so. In one case in Colorado, Mesa County Clerk Tina Peters arranged to give unlawful access to county voting equipment to conspiracy theorists seeking to support Trump’s false claims about the 2020 election. She was prosecuted on state law charges, convicted and sentenced to nine years in prison.
These are only a few examples of how the American system of elections is vulnerable to partisan political pressure directed by a zealously committed president. The way it can all go from here under intensifying pressure from Trump can be seen in the ongoing tale of the Colorado prosecution. Trump has denounced the prosecution of Peters as a “Communist prosecution by the Radical Left Democrats to cover up their Election crimes and misdeeds in 2020.” At Trump’s direction, the Department of Justice sought to have a state court release Peters. An administration working with its party to undermine confidence in the integrity of the mid-terms can both demand Republican official support and offer protection in return. While a president cannot issue pardons for state crimes, he can ensure that the Department of Justice takes other action to aid in applying pressure to election officials. DOJ has reportedly started going down that path, exploring the options for criminally prosecuting election officials for not meeting the administration’s expectations for computer security protocols.
In broadcasting his conclusion that “VOTING MACHINES… ARE A COMPLETE AND TOTAL DISASTER” and that mail-in voting is a “SCAM,” the president is leaving no doubt that Republican election officials should share his view as members of the “Republican party” partnering with him in what he terms a “movement.” The President tried in his challenge to the 2020 election to have the department seize voting machinery to support his allegations of fraud, but while such an order was prepared, senior DOJ officials at the time successfully resisted. Those officials are now gone and those taking their places are far less likely to put up a fight in the Oval Office when the time comes. State and local election officials will likely now also face pressure to support in 2026 actions like the seizure of voting machines he could not achieve 6 years ago. The attacks on the 2020 election have already resulted in an extraordinary turnover of election officials who had enough of the “challenges, burnout, threats and harassment that [they have been] facing.”
It is impossible to identify every possible challenge to the process we may see in the months ahead. Federal and state courts will be called upon to respond as defenses are mounted under federal and state constitutional and statutory law. The success of any such legal defense will depend on the particular case and the forum in which it is presented. It is more certain that a well-coordinated attack would enable the president to seize at least the initial advantage, leaving the courts to catch up with severely destabilizing moves the administration may take, such as machine or ballot seizures and threats or actions to prosecute election officials who won’t get on the program.
Over the years, as well as at the present time, I have met and worked on a nonpartisan basis with election officials around the country, both Democrats and Republicans, who have been elected or appointed to discharge these responsibilities. I have never failed to be impressed with their professionalism. The vast majority from both parties—in red, blue, and purple states—do their jobs exceptionally well and without regard to partisan pressures. But it does appear that Donald Trump is preparing to subject them, and through them the system with its built-in partisan features, to severe pressure, and he will have federal law enforcement at his command for this purpose. The electoral process will be tested in unprecedented ways….
My New One in the NY Times on How States, Courts, and the Public Can Combat the Risk Trump Poses to the 2026 Midterm Elections
I have written this guest essay for the NY Times (free gift link). It begins:
With Republicans potentially losing their current seven-vote majority in the House in next year’s midterm elections (or, less likely, their six-vote majority in the Senate), President Trump has been sending clear signals of his intent to interfere with the fairness and integrity of those elections.
After saying in a social media post on Monday that “DEMOCRATS … CHEAT AT LEVELS NOT SEEN BEFORE,” he promised to sign a new executive order aimed at “MASSIVE VOTER FRAUD” in order “to help bring HONESTY to the 2026 midterms.” Mr. Trump also promised to “lead a movement to get rid of MAIL-IN ballots and also, while we’re at it, Highly ‘Inaccurate,’ Very Expensive, and Seriously Controversial Voting Machines.” He also claimed that the United States is the only country using mail-in balloting. (In fact, it is used in Canada, Britain and many other countries.) Mr. Trump’s claim that “the States are merely an ‘agent’ of the Federal Government in counting and tabulating the votes” is as legally wrong as it is politically dangerous. That can also be said about his plans to issue an executive order interfering with how states run their elections.
The fear that Mr. Trump will try to subvert the 2026 elections is real — after all, he tried to overturn the results of the first presidential election he didn’t win. But even if Mr. Trump fails to keep the House and the Senate in Republican hands, he will have delegitimized future Democratic victories in the eyes of his MAGA base….
For decades, I argued that the United States should join other modern democracies in having national nonpartisan administration of elections. What we have instead is a hyper-decentralized system that gives states the primary role in running elections, and states in turn give their counties the authority to conduct elections and count ballots. I had thought that the variety of voting rules, machines and personnel was inefficient and particularly dangerous in polarized times, when every local mistake becomes evidence of some claim of a stolen or botched election.
What I had not factored into my thinking was that centralizing power over elections within the federal government could be dangerous in the hands of a president not committed to democratic principles. It is among the many things I had thought about American democracy that have been overturned by the advent of Mr. Trump….
States can serve as the primary bulwark against this attempted election subversion. States are not federal “agents.” They control election systems and can assert their longstanding rights to run elections. This is no longer a red state-blue state issue: Either all states have the power to run elections, despite the president’s make-believe grievances, or none of them do. The Republican Party objected when President Joe Biden issued an executive order to federal agencies to encourage more voter registration. Mr. Trump seeks to exert far greater authority than anything Mr. Biden had in mind.
Courts are the second bulwark against presidential meddling in elections. Federal courts have already issued orders blocking parts of Mr. Trump’s earlier executive order that infringe on state sovereignty. Although courts, including the Supreme Court, have not been strong in recent years on voting rights protection — and things seem poised to get worse on Voting Rights Act enforcement after the court returns in October — so far they have amassed an admirable record in stopping attempts at election subversion. The most recent example was when Judge Richard E. Myers, a very conservative Federal District Court judge in North Carolina, blocked an attempt by a Republican candidate who tried to get North Carolina’s Supreme Court to retroactively change the rules for voter eligibility, after the election, in an attempt to turn his election loss into a win….
n the end, the American people also have a key role to play in pushing back against Mr. Trump’s meddling. People will need the courage to go vote even in American cities that may have federal agents swarming around them. “Voter protection” in recent decades has not meant protection from government-led violence and intimidation, but it may come down to that. Democrats, Republicans and other members of the public should monitor voting procedures, as allowed by state law, to make sure that state and county election officials stand up to federal pressure and do the right thing as they conduct elections and tabulate ballots. Local civic and business leaders need to back our election administrators, who may find themselves subjected to pressures to bend or break the rules. All of this organizing needs to happen now, not next November. To keep us from sliding further into autocracy, it is civil society we must make great again.
This remains true because even if Mr. Trump refrains from trying to run for an unconstitutional third term, he isn’t finished working to manipulate election results in his favor. To counter this, we will have to rely on the resilience of our commitment to democracy, which is far stronger than the rantings of a would-be strongman. Seen in this light, the diversity of our rules for running elections becomes our strength.
No, President Trump Can’t Ban Mail in Ballots or Voting Machines, as His Truth Social Post Suggests He Might Try to Do
This morning President Trump put out a post on Truth Social that shares some of his usual and debunked conspiracy theories about voter fraud in elections. Part of the post says that he will “lead a movement” to get rid of mail-in ballots and voting machines. Nothing wrong or illegal about that, and there can be a debate about these things.
But part of the post says that Trump is going to sign an executive order purporting to direct how the midterm elections will be run, on the theory that states are merely an “agent” of the federal government in counting and tabulating the votes. This is wrong and dangerous. TheConstitution does not give the President any control over federal elections. Federal courts have recognized this in the context of his first EO on elections issued months ago–and part put on hold through preliminary injunctions.
CONGRESS in Article I, Section 4 has the power to make or alter state rules for the conduct of congressional elections, but even this congressional power does not extend to state and local elections—witness how Arizona has different rules for voter registration and proof of citizenship applicable in states vs federal elections. CONGRESS also has the power to ensure certain equality in the conduct of elections, for example, to enforce the 15th Amendment’s guarantee against race discrimination in elections. The PRESIDENT has the power to “take care” that these laws are faithfully executed, but that is not the power to take over state elections. It does not make states agents of the federal government, much less agents of the executive branch.
I will have more to say about this, but I will say now that the danger of interference in the midterm elections is real, and this is a dangerous step in this direction. The timing may be connected to trying to distract from the debacle of the Russia-Ukraine war negotiations, but I was expecting more like this and now is the time to be prepared.
“Midterms are more than a year away, but Trump is already challenging them | Opinion”
Chris Brennan column in USA Today:
They’re building the machine now to meddle in the 2026 midterm elections 15 months from now.
And those machinations are built on two lessons learned from 2020: Attack the election with everything you have before it happens, and stock the Trump administration only with officials who will do exactly what he says on elections, no matter what the law says.
Trump’s team of election deniers, including Attorney General Pam Bondi and FBI Director Kash Patel, represent both of these lessons.
The first they learned in 2020, when they failed while trying to help Trump overturn a free and fair election. It was all so careless and chaotic back then, a dizzying series of unsubstantiated claims and discombobulated news conferences punctuated by judge after judge tossing out Trump’s challenges as meritless.
I was reminded recently of a news conference I attended at Philadelphia’s airport on the day after the 2020 election. Former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani, then working as Trump’s lawyer doing work that eventually got him disbarred, was the ringmaster for the election deniers that day. And Bondi was right by his side….
Wendy Weiser, vice president for democracy at The Brennan Center for Justice, told me that Trump and his team appear to be building a “pretext” on the false claim of rampant election fraud as justification for their potential meddling in the elections. They’re systematically removing “the brakes” that protect democracy during the voting process, she said.
“They’re taking aim at all of the brakes that applied before. And they’re starting earlier,” Weiser said. “That just shows you he’s laser-focused on interfering in elections here by any means necessary. Bend the rules. Throw out the playbook.”
David Becker, a former Department of Justice lawyer who founded The Center for Election Innovation and Research, has been hosting monthly webinar meetings with hundreds of state election officials since March. Those officials – Republicans and Democrats – have plenty of questions and concerns about the “unprecedented level of federal interference in state election processes,” he told me.
“They’re not sure where all this is leading,” Becker said. “They hear the rhetoric coming out of the White House. They hear the continued false statements about past elections and election security in the United States.”
It’s worth noting here, as Weiser told me, that presidents have no role in running or overseeing elections in America, except for enforcing voting laws passed by Congress. And Becker noted that Congress, now controlled by Trump’s Republican allies, has not authorized the DOJ intrusions into state election systems.