Trump says he wants fraud-free elections. Others see a threat to voting
In the past two weeks, President Donald Trump suggested “nationalizing” elections and the FBI raided a county election office he has repeatedly accused of massive voter fraud. News emerged that Trump’s director of national intelligence seized voting machines in a U.S. territory and the president’s one-time top adviser said immigration agents will “surround the polls” this November. And Trump’s press secretary acknowledged that federal agents could be present when Americans cast their ballots.
All of this has heightened concerns by election security experts and voting rights advocates that the Trump administration may attempt to interfere in, or disrupt, elections that will determine which political party controls Congress.
“What Trump is trying to do is unconstitutional and extraordinarily dangerous,” Marilyn Marks, executive director of the Coalition for Good Governance, a nonprofit that works on election security issues, told Straight Arrow News. The Constitution gives states the primary authority to run elections.
“Any time we violate the Constitution,” Marks said, “it becomes dangerous to have the heavy hand of the federal government directly involved in, effectively, who gets elected anywhere, whether it’s local offices or federal offices. There is just no need for federal intervention of the type that Trump is looking to impose.”
For Trump, though, the stakes are high. He told congressional Republicans last month that if Democrats win a majority of House seats in 2026, he is sure to be impeached.
He has said he is focused on preventing widespread voter fraud. He continues to say undocumented immigrants are voting in large numbers in U.S. elections, even though numerous investigations have failed to find evidence to support those claims, and he has singled out Democratic-led states and cities for what he says is fraudulent voting.
“Look at some of the places — that horrible corruption on elections — and the federal government should not allow that,” he said on Feb. 3. “The federal government should get involved.”
Unusual interest
In many ways, Trump’s recent statements about 2026 are actually about 2020.
He continues to claim, without evidence, that the 2020 presidential election was rigged and that he was the rightful winner over Joe Biden.
Tulsi Gabbard, the director of national intelligence, is overseeing an investigation into alleged fraud in 2020, even though her agency is barred by law from domestic operations. Gabbard was present Jan. 28 when FBI agents raided the elections office in Fulton County, Georgia. Agents seized thousands of voter records from the 2020 election, and Trump has said the investigation will lead to criminal charges.
Gabbard’s office seized voting machines and data from Puerto Rico several months ago as part of an investigation into alleged irregularities, Reuters reported last week. Reuters quoted anonymous sources as saying Gabbard’s office was trying to determine whether Venezuela tampered with the voting machines in 2020. Gabbard’s office denied trying to find a Venezuelan connection and said taking the machines was “standard practice in forensics analysis.”
State election officials complain, however, that while the Trump administration is attempting to exercise more control, it has cut funding for agencies that assist states with secure voting, including the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Agency.
“It’s harder now than it was, because we have these tools and we came to rely on these tools,” Arizona Secretary of State Adrian Fontes, a Democrat, told NBC News. “You can kind of jimmy up a solution to your problem, but those other tools that you were used to that can give you the best results are not there.”
‘Surround the polls’
Another proposal for federal intervention in the midterms came from Steve Bannon, Trump’s former top strategist.
“We’re going to have ICE surround the polls come November,” Bannon said last week on his “War Room” podcast, referring to agents from Immigration and Customs Enforcement.
“We’re not going to sit here and allow you to steal the country again,” he said. “And you can whine and cry and throw your toys out of the pram all you want, but we will never again allow an election to be stolen.”
White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt did not disavow Bannon’s comments.
“I can’t guarantee that an ICE agent won’t be around a polling location in November,” she said.
Such a federal presence would be unprecedented, voting rights advocates said.
“For decades, federal and state law has treated polling places as sensitive spaces where intimidation — whether explicit or implied — is prohibited because it undermines the right to vote,” Democracy Docket, a liberal news site, wrote. “The federal government has historically recognized polling places as off-limits for immigration enforcement, precisely to avoid deterring lawful voters.”
What state election officials say
Some state officials see Trump’s efforts as a threat to democracy.
“Everything we lived through in 2020 was the beginning — not the end — of this multi-year effort to dismantle democracy in America,” Michigan Secretary of State Jocelyn Benson, a Democrat, told Politico. “We’re seeing it play out now in reaching a fever pitch in really extraordinary, unprecedented, scary ways.”
However, some Republican election officials have welcomed Trump’s interest in overseeing this year’s voting.
“I really appreciate the accountability and the oversight from the Trump administration in making sure that the law has been, was and will be followed,” Wyoming Secretary of State Chuck Gray, a Republican, told Politico.
Other Republicans share concerns that the Trump administration is going too far.
“The things that have been said publicly, frankly, are quite appalling,” Utah Lt. Gov. Deidre Henderson, a Republican who is also her state’s chief elections officer, said at a recent meeting of the National Association of Secretaries of State, according to The New York Times.
Referring to a Department of Justice official who criticized the performance of state election officials, Henderson added: “She’s pretty much slandered all of us. And to me, that’s problematic to publicly claim that secretaries of state are not doing our jobs and the federal government has to do it for us. Not OK.”
A sign of the seriousness of potential threats to the 2026 elections comes from the Carter Center, which has monitored elections in countries around the world since it was formed by former President Jimmy Carter in 1982.
This year, the center plans to place nonpartisan observers in polling places in five U.S. states: Georgia, Michigan, Montana, Nevada and New Mexico. Paige Alexander, the center’s executive director, recently told WABE, a public radio station in Atlanta, that the “shifting balance of power between state and federal is a space that we’re watching.”
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Ella Rae Greene, Editor In Chief
