A new analysis from Issue One finds that half of all counties in 11 Western states have lost their chief election official since the 2020 election, underscoring a deepening workforce crisis driven largely by stress, threats, and burnout — not electoral defeat or term limits. “This isn’t just normal turnover,” the report’s authors wrote in…
Congress members, state election chiefs, and voting rights advocates are decrying President Donald Trump’s insistence that the federal government wrest control of elections from the states. “Any calls to ‘nationalize’ our elections are a power grab by the Trump Administration,” Rebekah Caruthers, the president and CEO of Fair Elections Center, told Democracy Docket. “Our Constitution says that Congress and the states set the rules for our elections, and the hardworking election officials in thousands of jurisdictions all over the country run them—not the president.” Mark Lindeman, policy and strategy director at Verified Voting, echoed that view. “As president, Trump has spoken and acted as if he has unlimited power, including unlimited power to interfere in elections,” Lindeman told Democracy Docket. “Americans should expect him to cross Constitutional lines, and we should be ready to push back.” Read Article
MAGA commentator Steve Bannon voiced support for Donald Trump’s push to nationalize elections, calling on the president to deploy ICE officials and military troops to polling sites. Trump said in a Monday podcast interview that “the Republicans ought to nationalize the voting,” despite the fact that the Constitution grants states explicit jurisdiction over election administration. His call sparked outrage from Democrats and largely fell on deaf ears in the GOP — but Bannon, a conservative firebrand who has been a prominent voice in election conspiracy theories, was forceful in his support for the idea. The former White House strategist called for the Trump administration to send Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers to polling sites to prevent noncitizens from voting, citing a debunked conspiracy theory about widespread voter fraud in the 2020 election. Read Article
President Trump’s declaration that he wants to “nationalize” voting in the United States arrives at a perilous moment for the relationship between the federal government and top election officials across the country. While the executive branch has no explicit authority over elections, generations of secretaries of state have relied on the intelligence gathering and cybersecurity defenses, among other assistance, that only the federal government can provide. But as Mr. Trump has escalated efforts to involve the administration in election and voting matters while also eliminating programs designed to fortify these systems against attacks, secretaries of state and other top state election officials, including some Republican ones, have begun to sound alarms. Some see what was once a crucial partnership as frayed beyond repair. They point to Mr. Trump’s push to overturn the 2020 election, his continued false claims that the contest was rigged, the presence of election deniers in influential government positions and his administration’s attempts to dig up evidence of widespread voter fraud that year, even though none has ever been found. Read Article
Days after a tense gathering in Washington, D.C., laid bare growing acrimony between President Donald Trump’s administration and state election officials, the FBI invited those same officials to discuss “preparations” for the midterm elections. The invitation, is scheduled for Feb. 25. It will include the FBI, the departments of Justice and Homeland Security, the U.S. Postal Inspection Service and the Election Assistance Commission. The invitation, which was sent this week, according to the election official, was signed by Kellie M. Hardiman, who identified herself as an “FBI Election Executive.” A LinkedIn page for Hardiman says she was appointed seven months ago. The official who was invited and requested anonymity to speak candidly called it “unusual and unexpected,” adding that they planned to attend. Read Article
As many Republicans in Congress push for action on a voter ID bill, its future remains uncertain — and key voices in the GOP say they are wary of increasing federal involvement in elections. “I’m supportive of only citizens voting and showing ID at polling places. I think that makes sense … but I’m not in favor of federalizing elections. I mean, I think that’s a constitutional issue,” Senate Majority Leader John Thune, R-S.D., told reporters Tuesday. While the SAVE Act passed the House in April, it has yet to see action in the Senate. Rep. Brandon Gill, R-Texas, led a letter on Monday urging Senate Rules and Administration Chair Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., to advance the legislation through his committee, saying it was “past due.” McConnell, however, is one of a small handful of Republicans who have not signed on as co-sponsors of the SAVE Act. Asked about his position on the bill, his office pointed to a Wall Street Journal op-ed he wrote in April arguing that increasing federal involvement in elections is a slippery slope. While many states have voter ID requirements of their own, a federal mandate would be different. “Elections may have national consequences but the power to conduct them rests in state capitols. No public mandate, real or perceived, lets Washington tamper with this authority, not even for a worthy cause like election integrity,” McConnell wrote at the time, pushing back on an executive order signed by President Donald Trump in March. Read Article
Tulsi Gabbard, the director of national intelligence, is running her own review into the 2020 election with Donald Trump’s approval, working separately from a justice department investigation even as she joined an FBI raid of an election center in Georgia last week. Her presence at the raid drew criticism from Democrats and former intelligence officials, who questioned why the country’s top intelligence officer with no domestic law enforcement powers would appear at the scene of an FBI raid. But Gabbard, whose role ordinarily focuses on overseeing the intelligence agencies, has played only a minimal role in the criminal investigation, according to three administration officials. “She’s doing her own thing,” one of the officials said. The parallel investigations into the 2020 election underscore the extent to which it has returned as a priority for the president. And Gabbard being sent to the raid showed the interest on voting machine manipulation claims that Trump has cited as evidence the election was stolen. Read Article
Increasingly violent threats toward and harassment of public officials — from county clerks up to the president — are driving more and more of those figures out of their jobs, a particular concern among local election officials, who have struggled with attrition for years. In the years since the 2020 election, roughly 50 percent of top local election officials across 11 western states have left their jobs since November 2020, according to a new report from Issue One, a bipartisan organization that tracks election issues and supports campaign finance reforms. The election administration world has been grappling with a significant brain drain since the one-two punch of the 2020 pandemic and threats arising from conspiracy theories surrounding that year’s election. But the new report — which focuses on election offices in Arizona, California, Colorado, Idaho, Montana, Nevada, New Mexico, Oregon, Utah, Washington and Wyoming — is particularly concerning because it shows departures haven’t tapered off, marking a 10 percentage point uptick since the group’s 2023 report survey. Read Article
It’s no secret that the Trump administration has radically altered the federal government’s relationship with state election officials since being sworn into power last year. While his first term included the creation of the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency and the distribution of hundreds of millions in congressional funding sent to help states upgrade election security, Trump’s second term has so far been more adversarial toward states. As CyberScoop and others have reported, CISA has scaled back its election security support – in some cases shuttering work on topics like disinformation — while firing or sidelining election security specialists at the agency. The administration is also pursuing voter data from all 50 states, an effort that has been called “unprecedented and illegal” by one court. As feds pull back, states look inward for election security sRead Article
The usually staid and bipartisan National Association of Secretaries of State winter conference descended into rancorous dueling press conferences last week, after several administration officials promised to attend, only to withdraw at the eleventh hour. Typically, the event brings together state leaders and federal officials to discuss elections, cybersecurity and business-related issues. But the recent federal raid of the Fulton County, Georgia elections offices, observed by Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard apparently in search of alleged voter fraud during the 2020 election, as well as ongoing Department of Justice lawsuits demanding states turn over election data and records, had many officials on edge. Meanwhile, Attorney General Pam Bondi said in a letter that federal agents from Immigration and Customs Enforcement would withdraw from Minneapolis if, among other demands, the state turns over its voter rolls to the DOJ. Gabbard, Bondi and Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem had been announced on stage at the NASS conference as attending for a “fireside chat” by Jared Borg, special assistant to the president and deputy director of the White House Office of Intergovernmental Affairs. But none showed up, prompting a furious response from Democratic secretaries of state who had anticipated asking the trio about the data lawsuits, the raid in Georgia and ICE’s continued presence in their communities. Read Article
Minnesota’s Republican congressional delegation is trying to put pressure on Secretary of State Steve Simon to comply with federal requests for the state’s voter rolls, the latest volley in a monthslong battle between the state and federal government over the data. U.S. Reps. Pete Stauber, Tom Emmer, Michelle Fischbach and Brad Finstad are co-sponsoring a bill that would bar Simon’s office from receiving federal election-assistance funds until it cooperates with several U.S. Department of Justice data requests, including one for the state’s voter rolls that has escalated into a lawsuit. Simon’s office has so far rebuffed those requests, arguing they violate state and federal data privacy laws. DOJ officials have said they want the data to assess Minnesota’s compliance with federal elections laws. Read Article
Donald Trump lost his bid for reelection in 2020. But for more than five years, he’s been trying to convince Americans the opposite is true by falsely saying the election was marred by widespread fraud. Now that he’s president again, Trump is pushing the federal government to back up those bogus claims. On Wednesday, the FBI served a search warrant at the election headquarters of Fulton County, Georgia, which includes most of Atlanta, seeking ballots from the 2020 election. That follows Trump’s comments earlier this month when he suggested during a speech at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, that charges related to the election were imminent. “The man has obsessions, as do a fair number of people, but he’s the only one who has the full power of the United States behind him,” said Rick Hasen, a UCLA law professor. Read Article
Weeks before the 2024 election, American military hackers carried out a secret operation to disrupt the work of Russian trolls spewing false information at US voters. From their perch at Cyber Command at Fort Meade, Maryland, the military hackers took aim at the computer servers and key personnel of at least two Russian companies that were covertly pumping out the propaganda, according to multiple sources briefed on the operation. The trolls were trying to influence election results in six swing states by publishing fictitious news stories that attacked American politicians who supported Ukraine. One of the companies had held “strategy meetings” with Kremlin officials on how to covertly influence US voters, according to an FBI affidavit. In one case, the Cyber Command operatives planned to knock offline computer servers based in a European country that one of the Russian companies used, the sources said. Though the Russian trolls continued to create content through Election Day, when President Donald Trump defeated then-Vice President Kamala Harris, one source briefed on the hacking effort said it successfully slowed down the Russians’ operations. Read Article
Earlier this month, President Donald Trump floated the idea of canceling the 2026 midterm elections, drawing widespread attention and concern even as White House officials later dismissed the remarks as facetious. But election experts consistently agree that Trump has neither the legal authority nor the practical ability to cancel elections. And state and local election officials consistently say they will carry out the elections they’re legally required to run. The election system is under real strain, and bad-faith efforts to undermine it are serious. But after talking with local election officials, lawyers, and administrators across the country, I don’t see evidence that upcoming elections are at realistic risk of not happening at all. Elections happen because thousands of local officials follow state and local law that mandates them — and history shows they’ve done so before, even under immense pressure. The greater danger isn’t no election, but one that’s chaotic, unfairly challenged, or deliberately cast as illegitimate after the fact. Read Article
The 2026 midterm elections are right around the corner, which means Americans are bracing for the onslaught of campaign advertisements, fundraising solicitations, and media coverage of the contests that will determine control of the U.S. Congress and state capitols across the nation. If 2024 was any indication, artificial intelligence (AI) and its potential to disrupt American elections will feature prominently in the national dialogue leading up to November. While AI’s actual impacts were far less than originally feared, the rapid improvement of AI tools raises concerns that 2026 could be the year its harmful effects come to full fruition. Despite its characterization as a tool of electoral deception, AI presents a mix of opportunities and risks. This piece provides an overview of AI’s impact on the election ecosystem and the potential issues policymakers should consider when determining how to adapt and respond during this contentious election year. Read Article
Tulsi Gabbard, the director of national intelligence, has spent months investigating the results of the 2020 election that Donald Trump lost, according to White House officials, a role that took her to a related FBI search of an election center in Georgia on Wednesday. Gabbard is leading the administration’s effort to re-examine the election and look for potential crimes, a priority for the president, the officials said. The national intelligence director is usually focused on ensuring the president has the best intelligence available to make national-security decisions. Gabbard has been sidelined from some of those deliberations, including the Venezuela operation earlier this month, The Wall Street Journal has reported. Read Article
Republicans in Congress have unveiled a new bill that would impose the most extreme voting restrictions ever proposed at the federal level. The new bill goes far beyond even the SAVE Act, which the House passed last year and which one historian called “the most extraordinary attack on voting rights in American history.” It’s being unveiled at a time when GOP anti-voting legislation has been steadily gaining GOP support in the Senate, after a push by President Donald Trump and anti-voting groups. Introduced by Rep. Bryan Steil (R-Wisc.), the chair of the House Administration Committee, the proposal is called the Make Elections Great Again Act, or MEGA Act — a name deliberately echoing President Donald Trump’s campaign slogan. Read Article
The acting director of the US Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency uploaded sensitive government contracting documents to a public version of ChatGPT last summer, triggering automated security alerts and raising questions about AI governance at the agency responsible for defending federal networks and critical infrastructure. Madhu Gottumukkala, who has led CISA since May 2025, uploaded at least four documents marked “for official use only” to OpenAI’s ChatGPT platform between mid-July and early August, Politico reported. The documents contained contracting information not intended for public release. Cybersecurity sensors detected the activity in early August, generating several alerts in the first week alone, according to the report citing four Department of Homeland Security officials. Read Article
Even before winning reelection, President Donald Trump and his supporters put immigration at the center of their messaging. In addition to other conspiracy theories, the right-wing went all in on the false claim that immigrants were voting illegally in large numbers. The Trump administration has since poured billions of dollars into immigration enforcement, and in March, Trump issued an executive order requiring the Department of Homeland Security to ensure that states have “access to appropriate systems for verifying the citizenship or immigration status of individuals registering to vote or who are already registered.” In May, DHS began encouraging states to check their voter rolls against immigration data with the Systematic Alien Verification for Entitlements (SAVE) program, run by US Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS). SAVE now has access to data from across the federal government, not just on immigrants but on citizens as well. Experts have warned that using disparate sources of data—all collected for different purposes–could lead to errors, including identifying US citizens as noncitizens. According to the plaintiffs in a new legal complaint, it appears that it’s already happening. Read Article
Regrets — we’ve all had a few. One of President Donald Trump’s, apparently, is not directing the National Guard to seize voting machines after the 2020 election in search of evidence of fraud. That revelation, part of a wide-ranging interview with The New York Times on Jan. 7, commands particular attention in a world where Trump has already sought to push the boundaries of his power, deploying the National Guard to multiple U.S. cities to crack down on protests and crime. The November midterms will be the first federal general election with Trump as president since that 2020 contest, and even before his comments to the Times, plenty of people were already worried that Trump would attempt to deploy the National Guard around the 2026 election. The National Guard isn’t necessarily the problem here; the Guard actually has a history of helping with election administration, such as when troops in civilian clothing helped fill in for absent poll workers during the pandemic in 2020. But many Democrats and election officials are worried that Trump could, say, send them to polling places to interfere with voting on Election Day. If troops were to take possession of voting machines or other equipment, it could break the chain of custody and invalidate scads of ballots. And if troops just show up outside polling places, even if they don’t try to impede the administration of the election, their presence could still intimidate voters. Read Article
Donald Trump’s authoritarian chaos machine is running amok. Pro-democracy Americans — and those simply hoping for a return to normalcy — are pinning their hopes on a Democratic victory in November’s midterm elections. But that salvation will not be easy or cheap. Their hopes will face a coordinated effort by Trump and the anti-democracy right-wing to secure victory before a single ballot has even been counted. As the Washington Post reported on Monday, the events of Jan. 6, 2021, were a trial run. Then, he “pressured Republican county election officials, state lawmakers, and members of Congress to find him votes after he lost his reelection bid. Now, he’s seeking to change the rules before ballots are cast.” These strategies include “challenging long-established democratic norms” and making “unprecedented demands that Republican state lawmakers redraw congressional districts before the constitutionally required 10-year schedule, the prosecution of political opponents, a push to toughen voter registration rules and attempts to end the use of voting machines and mail ballots.” Read Article
Former special counsel Jack Smith told lawmakers Thursday that he thought Trump-era Justice Department officials would “do everything in their power” to prosecute him “because they have been ordered to by the president.” Shortly after the congressional hearing wrapped up, Trump said he wanted just that. During the daylong hearing, Smith’s first public appearance on Capitol Hill, the former prosecutor issued his strongest defense yet of the two criminal cases he brought against Trump in the lead-up to the November 2024 election. One alleged Trump unlawfully retained classified documents after his first term, and another focused on Trump’s efforts to overturn his 2020 election loss. Both were brought in 2023, ahead of the 2024 election. Neither went to trial, as Smith dropped both after Trump was re-elected, citing longstanding Justice Department policy prohibiting the prosecution of a sitting president. Read Article
The justice department is undertaking an unprecedented effort to collect sensitive voter information about tens of millions of Americans, a push that relies on thin legal reasoning and which could be aimed at sowing doubt about the midterm election results this year. The department has asked at least 43 states for their comprehensive information on voters, including the last four digits of their social security numbers, full dates of birth and addresses, according to the Brennan Center for Justice. Eight states have voluntarily turned over the information, according to the Brennan Center, and the department has sued 23 states and the District of Columbia for the information. Many of the states have faced lawsuits after refusing to turn over the information, citing state privacy laws. Some of the states have provided the justice department with voter lists that have sensitive personal information redacted, only to find themselves sued by the department. Nearly every state the justice department has sued is led by Democratic election officials. Read Article
Two members of Elon Musk’s DOGE team working at the Social Security Administration were secretly in touch with an advocacy group seeking to “overturn election results in certain states,” and one signed an agreement that may have involved using Social Security data to match state voter rolls, the Justice Department revealed in newly disclosed court papers. Elizabeth Shapiro, a top Justice Department official, said SSA referred both DOGE employees for potential violations of the Hatch Act, which bars government employees from using their official positions for political purposes. Shapiro’s previously unreported disclosure, dated Friday, came as part of a list of “corrections” to testimony by top SSA officials during last year’s legal battles over DOGE’s access to Social Security data. They revealed that DOGE team members shared data on unapproved “third-party” servers and may have accessed private information that had been ruled off-limits by a court at the time. Read Article
Even before winning reelection, President Donald Trump and his supporters put immigration at the center of their messaging. In addition to other conspiracy theories, the right-wing went all in on the false claim that immigrants were voting illegally in large numbers. The Trump administration has since poured billions of dollars into immigration enforcement, and in March, Trump issued an executive order requiring the Department of Homeland Security to ensure that states have “access to appropriate systems for verifying the citizenship or immigration status of individuals registering to vote or who are already registered.” In May, DHS began encouraging states to check their voter rolls against immigration data with the Systematic Alien Verification for Entitlements (SAVE) program, run by US Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS). SAVE now has access to data from across the federal government, not just on immigrants but on citizens as well. Experts have warned that using disparate sources of data—all collected for different purposes–could lead to errors, including identifying US citizens as noncitizens. According to the plaintiffs in a new legal complaint, it appears that it’s already happening. Read Article
Congressional appropriators announced funding legislation this week that extends an expiring cyber threat information-sharing law and provides $2.6 billion for the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA), including money for election security and directives on staffing levels. The latest so-called “minibus” package of several spending bills to keep the government funded past a Jan. 30 deadline would extend the Cybersecurity and Information Sharing Act of 2015 through the end of the current fiscal year, Sept. 30. Industry and the Trump administration have been seeking a 10-year extension of a law that provides legal protections for sharing cyber threat data between companies and the government, but a deal on Capitol Hill has proven elusive. The package, announced Tuesday, also would extend the expiring State and Local Cybersecurity Grants Program through the end of fiscal 2026. Both laws temporarily expired during the government shutdown before being included in broader government funding legislation that extended them through Jan. 30. The House Homeland Security Committee has approved legislation on a long-term extension of the grants program, but the Senate hasn’t taken any action on it. Read ‘Article
In any given election, a whole lot of people handle the ballots and voting equipment. So how does a ballot stay secure and countable after it’s left the voter’s hands? That’s possible thanks to a critical safeguard in election administration called the chain of custody. The chain of custody is a huge part of why voters can trust that their ballots are counted exactly as they intended. Voters may not give much thought to this process, but if you’re concerned about the security of your ballot and the integrity of your vote, here’s a full explanation of how the chain of custody works. Read Article
State elections officials voted to allow Bobby Knight to run for Wilson sheriff after his candidacy was challenged by competitors in the upcoming GOP primary. Party affiliation was at the center of the case. Knight has been a registered Republican for years — except for about five hours on the morning of Dec. 1, 2025, when he was a Democrat. An errant tap on his phone while updating his voter registration address accidentally changed his affiliation, he said. State law says someone must be a member of a political party for at least 90 days to run for election as a member of that party. And due to the flub, he didn’t meet that requirement, county officials determined. But the state elections board overruled the county in a 3-2 party-line vote, with the state election board’s Republican majority in favor and the Democratic minority opposed. The decision means Knight will be allowed to run in the Republican Party primary. Read Article
Five years ago, President Donald Trump pressured Republican county election officials, state lawmakers and members of Congress to find him votes after he lost his reelection bid. Now, he’s seeking to change the rules before ballots are cast. Trump, openly fearful that a Congress controlled by Democrats could investigate him, impeach him and stymie his agenda, is using every tool he can find to try to influence the 2026 midterm elections and, if his party loses, sow doubt in their validity. Many of these endeavors go far beyond typical political persuasion, challenging long-established democratic norms. They include unprecedented demands that Republican state lawmakers redraw congressional districts before the constitutionally required 10-year schedule, the prosecution of political opponents, a push to toughen voter registration rules and attempts to end the use of voting machines and mail ballots. Read Article
A federal judge on Friday became the third one to block key provisions of President Donald Trump’s executive order aimed at revising election rules nationwide, ruling that the Constitution gives states and Congress —not the president— the authority to exercise power over elections. The administration signaled it is likely to appeal the decision, the latest blow to Trump’s agenda on elections. His March executive order sought to require proof of citizenship on the federal voter registration form, mostly ban the use of machine-readable codes when tallying ballots, and prohibit the counting of ballots postmarked Election Day but received afterwards. The administration has appealed two earlier rulings in other cases against the executive order. The cases could ultimately reach the U.S. Supreme Court, but election law experts told Votebeat the president faces long odds. Read Article