Make no mistake.
The integrity of our elections and our right to vote are dangerously threatened as the 2026 midterm elections approach.
Plans by Trump and his allies to disrupt the actual election itself as we approach Election Day and beyond will not abate even if Republicans gain more House seats with the destruction of Black districts in the South as a result of the Supreme Court’s April 29th decision gutting the Voting Rights Act (more on the Court decision’s impact later).
Fear that no matter how much gerrymandering the Republicans do, the Democrats will still win the House, will drive Trump and his allies to nightmarish schemes to interfere with the elections, both before Election Day, on Election Day, and after it. (See what the NY Times’ Nate Cohn wrote on the impact of gerrymandering on the House elections.)
And Trump and his allies are right to be afraid.
Democrats are nearly six points ahead on average in poll after poll on the question asked of voters about who they will vote for in the upcoming Congressional elections, named on the Generic Congressional Ballot.
This table from Real Clear Politics as of May 2nd, 2026, shows how well the Democrats are doing, with some polls showing leads of ten or eleven points:
Trump has already shown that he is willing to seize voting machines, ballot boxes and ballots.
President Trump, in an interview in January of this year with the New York Times, said he regretted not having the National Guard seize voting machines in the 2020 election. He actually explored that option extensively in various schemes after he lost but before the attack on the Capitol.
The United States Senator from Virginia, Mark Warner, warned that the presence of Tulsi Gabbard, the Director of National Intelligence, at the FBI seizure of the Fulton County Board of Elections ballots and voting equipment from the 2020 election, was a danger sign. The Senator viewed her presence as a prelude to a declaration by President Trump of a national emergency due to foreign interference in the midterms, requiring all manner of election interference, from seizing machines to blocking voting by mail. The fact that such allegations might be nonsense wouldn’t matter.
In the aftermath of the 2020 election, President Trump asserted nonsensical foreign interference claims, assailing Dominion Voting machines on Twitter for instance, by retweeting a false claim that Dominion’s machines were “engineered by China, Venezuela (and) Cuba” and claiming that Dominion had “(r)igged” the election. (from “The Final Report of the Select Committee to Investigate Jan. 6th.”)
I discussed the dangers ahead with staff from the Office of Congressmember Dan Goldman of New York, who serves on the Judiciary and Homeland Security Committees. Rep. Goldman’s view is that one of the gravest threats involves Trump and Republicans seizing voting machines or ballots, ahead of or after various midterm races. Seizing the ballots or the machines risks the loss of chain-of-custody and the security of the ballots, possibly preventing certification of elections. Congressman Goldman and 47 House members attempted to insert language into Department of Homeland Security appropriations bills prohibiting the seizure of election infrastructure and requiring a report on the Fulton County raid.
I also fear efforts to block voting by mail, from seizing ballots before they are mailed, to blocking the Post Office from delivering the mail or blocking efforts to count mail ballots, all of which would occur by claiming fraud.
This time don’t think for a second that plans to seize voting machines and ballots, either before or after elections, block voting by mail, or prevent certification of Democratic winners for House and Senate seats, aren’t in the works.
The United States Department of Justice secured a warrant to seize the Fulton County, Georgia, 2020 ballots for an election that is over. But for an ongoing election, seizure of machines or ballots creates a crisis for counting the ballots, determining the results, and certifying the election. That is why much thought is being given to protect the election before these seizures occur. I’ll look at that but I want to review President Trump’s and the Republicans efforts to alter who in this country is allowed to vote since those efforts are integral to their effort to hold power.
Trump is also trying to stop certain people from voting at all.
The first Save Act, introduced by Republicans into the House in early 2025, required proof of citizenship to register to vote, and, if registering by mail or online, compelled people to present their proof physically at local Board of Elections offices throughout the country.
Today 94% of people register by mail or online, so compelling people to show up at local Board offices would gut this simple form of voter registration. This bill passed the House of Representatives in April 2025 but failed in the Senate.
In March 2025, President Trump issued an Executive Order similar to the first version of the Save Act, requiring documentary proof of citizenship on the Federal mail registration form. Since drivers’ licenses don’t indicate citizenship, not even the new REAL IDs issued by the States would qualify, and so a passport, a birth certificate, or naturalization papers would have to be sent in.
About 50% of Americans don’t have passports, many Americans don’t have easy access to their birth certificates, and many women changed their last names upon marriage and that name won’t appear on their birth certificate, causing significant complications. Many groups sued to block this order, and on October 31, 2025, a Federal court issued an injunction blocking the Order from taking effect. Fundamentally, the court said the President has no role in regulating elections. The Constitution has reserved that role to Congress and the States in Article One, Section 4.
The Department of Justice has been asking, or suing, states to turn over their unredacted voter rolls for the purpose of identifying noncitizens on the rolls, and many states have been refusing on grounds of privacy issues related to birth dates, social security numbers, drivers’ license information, party enrollment, voting history, and other concerns. Some Red states have cooperated, but of the 30 lawsuits brought, five Federal courts have ruled against the Department so far, with no victories for DOJ.
Early this year, the Republicans in Congress passed a new version of the SAVE act and President Trump issued a new Executive Order aimed at voting by mail. The new SAVE act requires photo ID with indication of citizenship to vote. Most Americans in polls saying they approve of photo ID (36 states have photo ID) don’t realize that drivers’ licenses don’t indicate citizenship.
In New York State, many residents have a REAL ID drivers’ license, but it doesn’t’ indicate citizenship. One needs an ENHANCED ID to show citizenship, a type of license only available to five states that border Canada, including New York. As a practical matter, New Yorkers, and the rest of Americans, will need a passport, a birth certificate, or naturalization papers to vote. The new version of the SAVE Act passed the House in February 2026 and continues to fail in the Senate, although an effort to insert the SAVE Act language into the budget reconciliation package was narrowly defeated when four Republican Senators refused to vote for that amendment, Collins, Murkowski, Tillis, and McConnell.
This March the President, ignoring the court ruling on his first Executive Order, issued a new one directing the United States Post Office to create its own list of eligible citizens for voting by mail, and then refuse to deliver mail ballots to anyone who is not on them.
The order also directs the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) to develop a “citizenship” list for every state and share the list with that state sixty days before the election. Anyone excluded, but who is a citizen, presumably couldn’t vote.
DHS, instead of using state voter registration lists, is directed to bypass them by using other Federal data bases that have not been created with information on citizenship. As with the 2025 order, many groups have gone to Court to block the Order on the same grounds, that the President does not have the authority to regulate elections, override Privacy laws, or dictate who the Post Office can deliver mail to.
This order too is sure to be halted before the election, but what the President will try to do with respect to mail ballots during the election is fraught with danger to the right to vote.
It’s imperative that everything that can be done to secure our elections happens now or it might be too late.
Congress will convene on January 3rd, 2027, to swear in the newly elected members of Congress, but states, local leaders, candidates, and concerned parties must do everything possible to assure the results are certified by the States before January 3rd.
Politico Magazine has published an article, “The Clock is Ticking to Secure the Midterms – Here’s What the Experts Say” that discusses everything from blocking ballot seizures to speeding up tallying votes. (Think of the delays in California.)
I’ve partially excerpted and edited two salient comments from election security experts (quoted in the Politico article noted above):
Prevent a seizure of ballots ahead of time
BY RICHARD L. HASEN
Richard L. Hasen is professor of law and political science at University of California, Los Angeles and director of the Safeguarding Democracy Project.
Professor Hasen writes that courts, states, election administrators, political parties and candidates should assure that no government authority can seize ballots before election results are finalized and before all election contests and recounts are resolved…. local election officials should ensure that all ballots cast remain in the custody of election officials under rules giving the public the ability to observe how election officials are protecting ballots.
What can be done to prevent a seizure of ballots in 2026? Court administrators must educate the judges and magistrates who might handle any requests for warrants to seize ballots. Judges should be reminded that they must carefully scrutinize the evidence to look for real proof of wrongdoing before issuing an order that could irreversibly break the chain of custody.
Second, starting now, states, parties and candidates should proactively sue the United States government to obtain injunctions barring federal agents from seizing any ballots without offering the court that issued the injunction significant proof of wrongdoing. Even in the case of reliable evidence of wrongdoing, judges can order that original ballots remain in the custody of election officials, giving federal officials access but not control and preserving the chain of custody.
The consequences of seizing ballots in an ongoing election are dire, and everyone must be on guard so that seizures do not happen in live 2026 elections.
Prepare a playbook for ballot seizures
BY ALEXANDRA CHANDLER
Alexandra Chandler is director of Impact Programs, Free and Fair Elections at Protect Democracy.
If the Department of Justice seizes ballots, voting machines and other election materials on election night or shortly after, that could seriously disrupt the legally required post-election processes governing the canvassing, counting, and certification of races, and potentially break chain of custody over ballots in a way that could fuel conspiracy theories and make it difficult to declare a widely accepted winner.
Election officials can and should prepare now for this scenario.
First, they need to draft clear legal contingency plans — with their counsel as well as partners, such as state attorneys general — on how they would respond. They need to be prepared to be in court within minutes seeking to regain custody, which means doing all the legal research now and pre-drafting pleadings for different scenarios. If the Department of Justice were to succeed in seizing ballots, time would then be of the essence. The faster elections officials can regain lawful custody of all ballot materials and resume the counting process, the less likely it is that federal officials would be able to tamper with those records in some way
Finally, improving tabulation speeds itself is very helpful. We’ve already seen attempts to spread falsehoods about the period between Election Day and when races are called, particularly in California, and research has shown that these attacks can be successful at impacting voters’ trust in an election. More than ever, elections officials — as well as the policymakers who allocate funding to them — should be doing everything possible to bolster tabulation systems for the fastest possible count, as well as encouraging voters to vote early if possible. The less time it takes to canvass, count, and certify the results, the smaller the window will be for possible interference.
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If those comments seem grim, it’s because Trump is more dangerous now than he was in 2020. The entire apparatus of the Democratic party, its candidates, its lawyers, and attorneys-general need to be prepared.
How many seats will the Democrats need to win to take the House? No doubt more than the three needed to get to 218 within the current composition. The pre-Supreme Court decision gerrymandering may come out as a wash (assuming the Virginia Supreme Court upholds the referendum permitting the four-seat redrawing of the lines there for the Democrats), since the Virginia redraw will neutralize Florida’s Republican redraw, if upheld by the Florida courts.
Louisiana, Tennessee, and Alabama appear certain to attempt to destroy one or more Black districts in those states before the midterms, although every effort will be challenged. But Democrats could face the need to win as many as 8 seats, rather than three, if all the Republican gerrymanders are successful.
That’s the Nightmare Ahead.
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