National: How Trump and his allies are sowing doubt ahead of the midterms | Laura Meckler, Chris Hacker, and Patrick Marley/The Washington Post

President Trump, the Justice Department, and high-profile right-wing influencers are conducting a coordinated messaging campaign focused on questioning election integrity, priming supporters to doubt the midterm results if Republicans lose. Digital claims questioning election procedures—particularly focusing on noncitizen voting and mail-in ballot fraud—have doubled compared to 2024, largely supplanting past conspiracy theories regarding voting machines. While noncitizen voting remains illegal and documented cases are statistically rare, the administration has used unverified claims to launch preemptive lawsuits in California and Alaska, deploy expanded federal election monitors, and propose cash rewards for fraud reports. In response, Democrats and nonpartisan voting rights coalitions have run tabletop exercises to prepare for 162 potential post-election challenge scenarios—including potential disputes over congressional seating, executive emergency declarations, and attempts to leverage the Department of Justice to block election certifications. Read Article

National: Hackers target US FEC system, disrupting campaign finance disclosures days before midterms | Dawn Kopecki/Reuters

A cyber incident targeting the Federal Election Commission’s website forced the agency to temporarily take its electronic filing system offline days before the midterm elections. While the FEC plays no role in election administration or ballot counting, the outage disrupted mandatory 24-hour and 48-hour spending reports, temporarily obscuring disclosure of massive last-minute expenditures by super PACs and dark money groups in the most expensive election cycle in U.S. history. IT staff and federal cyber officials moved to identify the issue and implement fixes to restore public disclosure access. Read Article

National: Behind Cleta Mitchell’s Relentless Effort to Overhaul U.S. Elections | Doug Bock Clark/ProPublica

A detailed investigation by ProPublica traces how conservative attorney Cleta Mitchell turned post-2020 election skepticism into a national movement that now heavily influences federal and state election policy. Through her organization, the Election Integrity Network (EIN), Mitchell built a multi-million-dollar coalition of state chapters, researchers, and policy shops dedicated to enacting stricter voting rules, purging voter rolls, and ending private election funding ("Zuckerbucks"). The report highlights her key role in drafting the SAVE Act and SAVE America Act, as well as her influence on White House staffing and executive actions regarding noncitizen voting checks and federal election monitoring. Despite significant administrative and judicial pushback against some of her network's most radical proposals—such as attempting to eliminate the Senate filibuster for voting legislation or invoking emergency executive powers—Mitchell remains a primary architect of conservative election strategy heading into the midterms. Read Article

Pennsylvania election official turnover continues ahead of midterm elections | Lindsay Shachnow/Pittsburgh Post-Gazette

Pennsylvania is experiencing a steep, ongoing exodus of county election directors and experienced staff. Driven by a combination of rapid legislative shifts (such as the implementation of Act 77 no-excuse mail-in voting), escalating public pressure, conspiracy-driven threats, and increased federal scrutiny/monitoring, over a third of Pennsylvania counties have hired new election directors since 2024 alone. Election experts and long-serving officials warn that the widespread loss of institutional knowledge creates operational strain and heightens the potential for administrative errors, prompting the Pennsylvania Department of State to deploy dedicated training teams to support new county directors. The divisive environment has also complicated local operations, leading to difficulties recruiting poll workers and forcing the relocation of dozens of polling places. Read Article

North Carolina: HBCU students organize marches and shuttles following the removal of on-campus early-voting sites | Adria R. Walker/The Guardian

Following decisions by election boards led by state Republicans to remove early-voting sites from several college campuses—including North Carolina A&T State University, Bennett College, Western Carolina University, and UNC Greensboro—students have mobilized collective marches and community shuttles to reach off-campus polling locations. Student organizations, joining a lawsuit brought by College Democrats of North Carolina against the state board of elections, contend that eliminating on-campus sites disproportionately burdens young and Black voters. Partnering with national voter mobilization initiatives, student leaders have turned the administrative hurdle into an organizing catalyst, coordinating shuttles and march-to-the-polls events across early voting weeks. Read Article

National: The Limits of Trump’s Midterm Trickery | Quinta Jurecic/The Atlantic

While the Trump administration has deployed an unprecedented array of executive tools—including last-minute lawsuits in California and Alaska, demands for voter rolls, and threats of voter fraud prosecutions—legal scholars and election experts suggest these efforts face structural constraints. Because American elections are highly decentralized across hundreds of distinct local jurisdictions, attempts to disrupt outcomes rely heavily on razor-thin margins in key districts. Polling indicating a potential major surge for Democrats in the House, coupled with a fractured Republican caucus, could render localized disruption or post-election certification standoffs ineffective. Although legal experts remain cautiously optimistic that state-level safeguards and court checks will hold, they note that relying on a "wave" outcome to insulate elections highlights ongoing vulnerabilities in public trust and administrative stability. Read Article

California: Federal judge denies DOJ request to segregate 20,000 mail ballots, calling demands unreliable and disruptive | Gary Grumbach and Dareh Gregorian/NBC News

U.S. District Judge David O. Carter rejected a Department of Justice lawsuit requesting that California segregate and refrain from counting over 20,000 mail-in ballots cast by individuals the federal government claimed were noncitizens. Ruling that the request violated constitutional principles of state electoral sovereignty and would "wreak havoc" on an ongoing election, Judge Carter emphasized that the administration's claims relied on vague and unreliable methodology—pointing to similar federal lists in Nevada that were debunked after state checks confirmed all flagged individuals were U.S. citizens. State attorneys argued that complying with the last-minute demand would risk widespread voter disenfranchisement, while the DOJ announced an immediate emergency appeal to the 9th Circuit. Read Article

Alaska: Inside Democrats’ Secret Effort to Stack Senate Ballot | Kellen Browning/The New York Times

An investigative report details how operatives aligned with Democratic Senate nominee Mary Peltola and the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee (DSCC)—in an internal initiative dubbed the "ballot composition project"—spent months covertly recruiting candidates, including a retired teacher from the Alaska Panhandle named Dan J. Sullivan, to run against incumbent Republican Senator Dan S. Sullivan. While this specific maneuvering is novel, ballot-stacking tactics and the recruitment of third-party, independent, or "spoiler" candidates in primaries are neither illegal nor uncommon, and have historically been utilized by both political parties in Alaska and nationwide. Furthermore, Alaska's use of a ranked-choice voting system heavily mitigates any purported voter confusion, as voters can distinctly rank their preferences and choices rather than being forced into a strict binary or falling prey to accidental mis-votes. Although campaign officials publicly denied involvement, the effort has fueled fierce pushback, including a Department of Justice lawsuit attempting to block election certification should the incumbent senator lose by a narrow margin attributable to the namesake candidate. Read Article

Texas: Panhandle Republican group wants all ballots hand counted in the Nov. 3 election | Colleen DeGuzman/The Texas Tribune

The Potter County Republican Party and its chairman filed a federal lawsuit in Amarillo asking a judge to halt certification of Texas's upcoming midterm election results until every paper ballot across the state's 254 counties is manually hand counted. While acknowledging no proof of past or present vote tampering in Potter County or statewide, the petition cites speculative risks regarding AI manipulation and foreign-manufactured voting machine components. Election security experts and county officials strongly countered the lawsuit, noting that Texas machines are not connected to the internet, are protected by robust audit protocols and paper trails, and that mandatory hand counts introduce human fallibility and substantial delays. Local GOP lawsuit wants hand count of all Texas ballots

National: Last minute Trump administration election challenges across country fuel concerns White House may challenge midterm election results | Dion Nissenbaum/Votebeat

The Trump administration has launched a series of late-stage election lawsuits and legal demands in the weeks leading up to the midterms. These include suing California and issuing demands to Washington state to set aside thousands of mail ballots over unverified claims of noncitizen registration, as well as suing Alaska to block certification of a tight U.S. Senate race between incumbent Republican Dan Sullivan and Democrat Mary Peltola based on potential voter confusion caused by a second candidate named Dan Sullivan on the ballot. Federal judges have issued sharp pushbacks—such as Judge David O. Carter affirming state sovereignty in California—while state officials in California and Washington confirmed that DOJ lists were riddled with errors, including listing native-born U.S. citizens. Legal scholars and political scientists warn that these rapid-fire challenges are less likely to succeed on their legal merits than to sow public doubt and lay groundwork for challenging the midterm results. Read Article

Iowa: GOP sues Black Hawk County Auditor over voting machine seal records | Ryan Luetkemeyer/Courthouse News Service

The Republican National Committee filed a lawsuit against Black Hawk County Auditor Karen Showalter after her office denied RNC observers the ability to photograph or record security seal numbers placed on voting equipment during pre-election logic and accuracy testing. Showalter cited confidentiality under local security rules, but Iowa Secretary of State Paul Pate clarified to auditors that logic and accuracy documentation constitutes public records. Seeking an immediate court order for the release of the seal numbers along with civil penalties, the suit underscores the escalating legal battles over election transparency and equipment verification heading into Election Day. GOP sues Iowa county auditor over voting machine seal records | Courthouse News Service

National: False and misleading voting claims spread ahead of 2026 midterms | Melissa Goldin/Associated Press

False and misleading claims about the voting process are being spread online as voters cast their ballots in the 2026 midterms, with Election Day less than a week away. The posts often focus on alleged election rigging or voter fraud. However, closer scrutiny of the claim typically reveals a logical explanation. “I always like to say, get your facts straight from the source, and the source is your local election official,” said Pamela Smith, president and CEO of Verified Voting, a nonpartisan group focused on election technology. “Not your friends, cousin, uncle, on Facebook.” Smith encouraged voters to seek out information on the websites or social media accounts of those officials. She also suggested asking a poll worker who marks a ballot why they’ve done so if a voter has concerns. Read Article