Fredreka Schouten for CNN:

A few weeks ago, Republican election officials in Colorado began receiving unsolicited calls and texts from a GOP consultant who said he was working with the Trump administration on “election integrity.”

In a text to one of the officials, the consultant, Jeff Small, indicated he was acting on a request from Stephen Miller, the White House deputy chief of staff. In a phone call with another clerk, Small said he was coordinating with the White House and the Justice Department to “implement” an elections executive order signed by President Donald Trump, recalled Justin Grantham, the top election official in Fremont County.

Grantham and Carly Koppes, who oversees elections in Weld County in northern Colorado, told CNN that Small made a specific request: Would they give a third party access to their election equipment?

Both declined.

“Not only is that a hard no, I mean, you’re not even going to breathe on my equipment,” Koppes said.

The outreach to the Colorado clerks is just one of a flurry of recent federal actions launched by the Trump administration and groups aligned with the president.

While the White House distanced itself from Small, Trump and his allies are collecting vast amounts of voter data and working to change the ground rules for next year’s midterms, often by invoking federal government authority.Next year’s midterms hold enormous stakes for Trump and his opposition. Democrats need to net just three seats in the US House in 2026 to flip control of the chamber from Republicans. A Democratic-led House could block Trump’s legislative agenda and launch investigations of the president in the second half of his second term.

Samantha Tarazi, CEO of the nonprofit Voting Rights Lab, which has closely tracked state developments, said she believes Trump is gearing up “to use the power of his office to interfere in the 2026 election.”

“What started as an unconstitutional executive order — marching orders for state action regardless of its fate in court — has grown into a full federal mobilization to seize power over our elections,” she said.

White House spokesperson Harrison Fields said Trump is “fighting for election integrity” and will keep doing so “despite Democrat objections that reveal their disdain for commonsense safeguards like verifying citizenship.”

“Free and fair elections are the bedrock of our Constitutional Republic, and we’re confident in securing an ultimate victory in the courtroom,” he said in an email….

AP:

The requests have come in letters, emails and phone calls. The specifics vary, but the target is consistent: The U.S. Department of Justice is ramping up an effort to get voter data and other election information from the states.

Over the past three months, the department’s voting section has requested copies of voter registration lists from state election administrators in at least 15 states, according to an Associated Press tally. Of those, nine are Democrats, five are Republicans and one is a bipartisan commission.

In Colorado, the department demanded “all records” relating to the 2024 election and any records the state retained from the 2020 election….