National: The New Worst-Case Scenario for Election Officials: Federal Interference | Richard Fausset, Zolan Kanno-Youngs, and David W. Chen/The New York Times

For the first time in modern American history, state and local election administrators from both major parties are actively training staff for potential federal interference ahead of Election Day. Scenario planning includes preparing poll workers and local law enforcement for potential ICE activity near voting sites, clarifying legal limits for Department of Justice election monitors, and reviewing protocols in the event federal agencies attempt to seize ballots or voting equipment. Supported by nonpartisan legal and election integrity networks, Secretaries of State and county clerks report that while constitutional checks and state sovereignty remain strong barriers against federal overreach, the need to prepare against potential executive interference marks an unprecedented shift in election administration. Read Article

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

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

National: Election officials brace for federal interference but expect to persevere | Kevin Hardy/Stateline

Despite mounting federal intervention, legal threats, and public pressure, state and local election administrators across both parties express overwhelming confidence in the resilience of the nation's highly decentralized electoral infrastructure. Nonpartisan experts and local election officials emphasize that constitutional checks, judicial oversight, strict statutory protocols, and bipartisan oversight mechanisms leave little room for executive overreach or improper manipulation of election outcomes. From tabletop contingency exercises in rural counties to firm pushbacks against federal demands by Secretaries of State, election workers remain anchored to their constitutional oaths, ensuring that the integrity of vote counting and the rule of law will prevail across all jurisdictions. Read Article

National: Massive Groups of Volunteers Are Ready to Face Down ICE at the Polls | David Gilbert/WIRED

Across key battleground states, grassroots organizations—including Common Cause, the ACLU, Indivisible, and local groups like 614 ICE Watch and NorCal Resist—have built a multi-state volunteer infrastructure to observe polling sites and track potential ICE activity. Utilizing encrypted messaging chats, unlisted heat maps, and de-escalation methods, thousands of trained volunteers aim to document federal immigration enforcement near voting locations and protect immigrant voters against intimidation. While federal officials maintain that ICE does not target polling places, community organizers emphasize that active neighborhood patrols and rapid-response monitoring are necessary safeguards to maintain voter confidence on Election Day. Read Article

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: 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

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: The State Officials Defending the Midterms from the President | Barton Gellman/The New Yorker

An extensive profile by Barton Gellman examines how chief state election officers across the country—most notably Utah Lieutenant Governor Deidre Henderson, a Republican—have served as a primary bulwark against federal efforts to reshape midterm administration. Despite escalating pressure from the Department of Justice and Department of Homeland Security, including threats of criminal prosecution, state officials have consistently refused to surrender unredacted voter rolls or initiate last-minute purges, citing federalist constitutional protections, state privacy laws, and statutory deadlines. With federal courts repeatedly dismissing DOJ voter-roll lawsuits and blocking sweeping executive orders, election administrators and security experts have increasingly turned to crisis scenario planning to safeguard ballot chain of custody and protect local polling operations from potential executive interference on Election Day. 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

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

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

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. Read Article

Michigan officials working to prevent voting slowdowns during 2026 midterm election | Hayley Harding/Votebeat

Following a technical bottleneck during the August primary that temporarily paralyzed Michigan's centralized Qualified Voter File (QVF)—making it difficult for local election clerks to process absentee ballots or handle same-day voter registrations—state IT and election authorities have expanded system infrastructure and processing capacity. While state officials express high confidence that the database will run smoothly on Election Day, municipal clerks across the state are establishing backup protocols to manage potential high volume, particularly if postal delays lead a large portion of the state's nearly 2 million absentee voters to cast ballots in person. 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

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

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. Read Article

Washington state secretary of state fires back at DOJ over noncitizen voter claim: ‘Profoundly disappointing’ | Tara Suter/The Hill

Washington Secretary of State Steve Hobbs rejected a Department of Justice directive asking state election officials to set aside ballots cast by over 400 individuals the federal government claimed were noncitizens. Rebuffing the demand as "profoundly disappointing" and legally baseless, Hobbs noted that ballots had already been mailed to voters weeks earlier and that a preliminary state review revealed the federal list was riddled with glaring errors—including listing native-born U.S. citizens, inactive voters, and basic factual mistakes like misstating Election Day. Firmly declining to alter processing procedures without individualized proof of ineligibility, state officials warned that complying with the hastily submitted, unverified list would risk illegal voter disenfranchisement. Read Article

National: Ballot Rejections Soared in Rural Counties After USPS Reduced Mail Service | Ken B. Morales, Jen Fifield, and Misty Harris/ProPublica

Data analysis shows that delays resulting from the U.S. Postal Service’s cost-cutting measures have endangered the validity of ballots cast in rural areas across the country. Over the past three years, as mail volume continued to plummet and annual deficits ballooned, the Postal Service started consolidating the processing of first-class mail at larger regional plants instead of at smaller hubs closer to local post offices. Then, in a little-noted switch that mostly took effect after the 2024 election, the agency cut the frequency of mail pickups in half at many post offices 50 miles or more from these processing plants, from twice daily to once. Read Article

National: Why reported challenges with touchscreen voting machines don’t signal election rigging | Ali Swenson and Melissa Goldin/Associated Press

As early voting gets underway for the midterm elections, social media reports have surfaced featuring voters—particularly Democrats in states like Texas, Tennessee, South Carolina, Ohio, and Kansas—claiming that touchscreen ballot-marking devices are switching their votes. Election administrators and voting experts emphasize that these anecdotes are almost uniformly the result of unintended touches, screen miscalibration, or minor user error rather than coordinated election rigging. Officials note that all machines undergo pre-election testing and that voters can review their printed ballot records, seek immediate assistance from poll workers, or have screens recalibrated to ensure their selections are accurately recorded. Read Article

National: Trump administration stokes concerns about Chinese-made parts in voting equipment, but experts say risks remain low | Dion Nissenbaum/Votebeat

The Trump administration and some conservative election activists argue that foreign-made components in voting machines present a national security risk, and believe the federal government should take steps to mitigate it for the midterm elections. But voting equipment manufacturers say it’s impossible to build the equipment without Chinese-made parts — and they already take precautions to protect against sabotage and foreign interference. The same Chinese-manufactured computer parts are used in critical infrastructure from ports and the electrical grid to telecommunications and water systems, said Pamela Smith, president and CEO of Verified Voting. Smith said companies and election officials work to develop what she called “defensive depth,” a system of safeguards to protect against any attempts to manipulate results. “You may have a risk inherent in your supply chain, but that does not mean you won’t end up with a legitimate, correct, accurate, fully verified result at the end of the day,” Smith said. Read Article

National: Democrats sue to block Trump administration from usurping states’ authority on elections | Michael Kunzelman/Associated Press

Top Democratic congressional leaders and party committees filed a federal lawsuit in Washington seeking to block the Trump administration from encroaching on state-administered election authorities or intimidating local officials. The legal challenge asks the court to bar federal actions aimed at purging legally registered voters, blocking mail-in ballots, or prosecuting election workers ahead of the midterms, specifically pointing to Justice Department litigation targeting states over noncitizen voter lists. Plaintiffs argue the efforts constitute an unlawful attempt to seize control of state election processes. Read Article

National: Trump Appointees Asked a Federal Cybersecurity Agency to Secretly Acquire a Voting Machine — and Hack It | Andy Mannix and Doug Bock Clark/ProPublica

Political appointees within the Department of Homeland Security directed the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) during Trump's second term to covertly procure and hack a voting machine without notifying the vendor, alarming career staffers who feared the effort was intended to manufacture pretexts for invalidating unfavorable election results. The initiative ultimately stalled because necessary technical personnel had been laid off under federal workforce reductions, but it underscored a broader pattern of political interference. Investigative findings reveal that the administration has slashed CISA's workforce by roughly a third, dismantled information-sharing relationships, and published sensitive state election records, leaving state and local election officials largely on their own to secure infrastructure ahead of the midterms. Read Article

National: Blanche won’t rule out DOJ post-election action in a ‘doomsday’ scenario | Ryan J. Reilly and Jane C. Timm/NBC News

Attorney General Todd Blanche stated that while the Justice Department does not intend to improperly interfere with elections, he could not entirely rule out a "doomsday" scenario in which federal intervention might occur regarding vote certification or ballot handling ahead of the midterms. Blanche's remarks follow recent DOJ litigation targeting states over potential noncitizen voting lists, such as a suit compelling California to review registered voters. Voting experts emphasize that no federal statute authorizes the department to challenge ballots or delay state certification processes. Read Article

National: Watching the watchers: Meet the volunteers observing Trump’s poll monitors on election day | Fabiola Cineas/The Guardian

Amid heightened friction over the upcoming 2026 midterms, tens of thousands of volunteers have signed up with grassroots and civil rights organizations—such as the ACLU, Common Cause and local immigrant rights groups to act as poll observers and protect voters. While the Department of Justice plans to deploy about 1,000 federal monitors and the administration has floated the potential presence of immigration and law enforcement officials, voting rights experts and local organizers emphasize that federal monitors lack special overriding authority and that deploying armed federal agents to polling sites is restricted by Civil War-era laws. Community groups are actively mapping enforcement activity and deploying volunteer watchers to ensure vulnerable voters feel safe and confident exercising their rights. Read Article

National: America Is About to See What Happens When Voters Turn to AI | Will Oremus/The Atlantic

As tens of millions of voters increasingly turn to generative AI chatbots and search summaries for election information during the midterms, research reveals significant vulnerabilities, including frequent factual inaccuracies, reliance on unreliable or foreign state-run sources, and susceptibility to "sloptimization" tactics by political campaigns. Security researchers have uncovered coordinated networks of suspicious local news-style websites specifically designed to feed biased or fabricated data into AI models, while watchdog reports highlight instances of chatbots amplifying foreign deepfakes and disinformation. Read Article

Arizona Attorney General sues Maricopa County recorder to restore voting rights to confirmed citizens | Sasha Hupka/Votebeat

Arizona Attorney General Kris Mayes filed a lawsuit against Maricopa County Recorder Justin Heap, demanding the immediate reinstatement of voting rights for 25 confirmed U.S. citizens who were incorrectly flagged as noncitizens by the error-prone federal SAVE database and subsequently placed on "not eligible" status. Although county prosecutors verified that the voters are citizens, Heap has refused to update their status without direct documentation from prosecutors, prompting criticism from local officials and a legal challenge as early voting proceeds. Read Article

Californians accused of voter fraud react with shock, confusion, anger | Brittny Mejia and Kevin Rector/Los Angeles Times

Federal authorities arrested and charged 28 lawful permanent residents in California with voter registration and naturalization offenses as part of a Department of Justice sweep dubbed "Operation Protect the Vote". Defendants and their families expressed shock and confusion over the charges, with several stating they had no recollection or intention of registering to vote. While federal prosecutors pointed to the arrests as proof of compromised election systems, California Attorney General Rob Bonta and election experts criticized the high-profile enforcement as a politically motivated scare tactic, noting that the isolated cases represent an infinitesimal fraction of the state's 23 million registered voters and often stem from administrative errors rather than intentional fraud. Read Article

Colorado pushes back on federal election monitors | Colleen Slevin/The Colorado Sun

The Colorado Secretary of State's Office informed the U.S. Department of Justice that federal election monitors planned for Adams County must formally apply for approval to access non-public election spaces, such as mail-in ballot processing and signature verification areas, under state rules. Local county officials and state Democrats criticized the move as a politically motivated intimidation tactic designed to scrutinize a competitive congressional district. Read Article

Top Georgia election officials clash over Trump-fueled conspiracy theories | Jason Morris, Gabe Cohen, and Nicky Robertson/CNN

A sharp divide has emerged between Georgia's Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger and the Trump-aligned State Election Board after the board's executive director sent a formal letter asking the U.S. Department of Justice to intervene in Georgia's voting systems and inspect Dominion voting equipment. The friction has heightened local anxieties over potential federal interference ahead of the midterms, prompting some county election offices to brief poll workers on protocols should federal agents arrive at polling locations. Read Article