With the 2026 midterm elections on the horizon, questions have emerged around how balloting will be administered, how results will be certified, and what mechanisms exist to resolve any disputes — all areas where the current administration's policy choices are drawing scrutiny. To map out nine areas of vulnerability spanning the period before and after Election Day, a team from Reuters drew on conversations with more than 50 people across the fields of election administration, voting research, and electoral law — contests that will shape which party holds power in Congress and who fills a range of key state offices.
State authority over elections is established in the Constitution, yet some officials have raised concerns that federal involvement and litigation may put certification timelines at risk, test voter trust, and unsettle outcomes in narrowly contested races. Trump has put forward a push to bring federal oversight to voting procedures, sought tighter limits on mail-in balloting, and repeated allegations of electoral fraud that lack verified supporting evidence.
Speaking at a party convention that September, he told those present to cast ballots whether or not they held valid voter registration — a remark his administration has since characterised as one piece of a wider push to protect electoral integrity. Judicial rulings have struck down a number of administration policies, among them attempts to tighten access to mail-in ballots and gather protected voter-registration records.
Local and state election administrators report general confidence in the integrity of their own jurisdictions, even as they take steps to address the prospect of intervention from the federal level — particularly around unverified claims about voting equipment and electoral fraud. Assertions of fraud — pointing to non-citizen participation, manipulation of voting machines, interference with ballots, or irregularities in late-arriving tallies — have the potential to erode public trust in the legitimacy of election outcomes.
Trump and those in his circle have put forward claims that the 2020 presidential election was marred by irregularities, including allegations that Georgia election workers handled ballots that were not legitimate. Georgia investigators cleared those involved of any misconduct, yet the unverified allegations were later cited to justify targeting election workers and pushing back against the certified vote outcome.
Following results in the gubernatorial contest and the Los Angeles mayoral race that pointed toward defeat for his preferred candidates, Trump claimed in June that California's voting process had been manipulated — a characterisation he offered without providing supporting evidence. Advocates within his circle have pushed to replace voting machines with manual tallies, a method that specialists in electoral administration describe as both slower and more vulnerable to error, alongside pressure directed at officials to alter or set aside certified outcomes.
Facing claims of fraud or foreign interference, state-level officials — from those overseeing elections to legislators and other authorities — could find themselves under pressure to withhold or postpone formal certification of results. In a telephone conversation with Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger after the 2020 election, Trump put forward a request that Raffensperger find 11,780 votes — a figure that corresponded exactly to the number needed to reverse the state's outcome in Trump's favour.
Raffensperger did not comply, while associates and legal representatives connected to Trump separately applied pressure on legislators across Michigan, Arizona, and Pennsylvania in a broader push to contest the election outcome. According to States United Action, an organisation that monitors candidates who contest the validity of US elections, people fitting that description now hold at least one statewide post carrying election oversight responsibilities in 20 states — three more than the 17 recorded during the prior election cycle.
Under a warrant or subpoena approved by a court, law enforcement at the federal level would have the authority to take possession of, or formally request, ballots, voting machines, and related election documentation. Tallying ballots, maintaining an unbroken chain of custody over election materials, and finalising certification could all face setbacks if that step were taken.
Federal agents descended on Fulton County's election offices in Georgia that January, carrying away hundreds of boxes of voting records from the 2020 election cycle after administration officials revisited allegations of irregularities that had previously been examined and disputed. Restaino, who previously served as a federal prosecutor in Arizona, described the raid as a stark departure from established Justice Department norms, adding that the episode illustrated how swiftly institutional actions can unfold and how long the consequences can take to resolve — a characterisation the Justice Department countered by noting that a federal magistrate judge had determined probable cause existed for the warrant, while the FBI maintained that its agents had adhered to standard procedures throughout.
In a January interview with a prominent television network, Trump expressed the view that deploying the National Guard to confiscate voting machines in battleground states would have been the appropriate course of action following his 2020 electoral loss. The Justice Department has announced plans to send roughly 1,000 federal election monitors into the field during the midterms, a count that would be nearly twice the 590 personnel assigned to that role in 2024.
While the department has stated its intention to uphold voter protections and adhere to federal law, election administrators and voting-rights groups have raised questions about the scope of any monitoring role — specifically, whether those deployed to polling sites would stay within observational boundaries. Wyoming's Republican governor, Mark Gordon, took exception to the presence of Justice Department monitors who had sought access to voters and voting equipment in Laramie County during that August's primary election.
Requests from those parties went unanswered by election officials, while the Justice Department pushed back on allegations that its monitors had behaved improperly, and Michigan authorities stated they would take steps to keep federal monitors operating within the boundaries set by law. The state's Democratic deputy secretary of state, Aghogho Edevbie, noted that polling locations remain open to any member of the public who wishes to watch the election process unfold.
The statement outlined that the Department of Justice would be permitted to operate within a defined boundary, with any activity beyond that boundary not authorised — a framework that also covered potential federal investigations or charges brought against election officials. In July, correspondence from the Justice Department reached the top election official in each state, outlining the circumstances under which prosecutors could pursue charges — specifically, if those officials were found to have knowingly permitted non-citizens to cast ballots or to have taken insufficient action to remove them from voter registration lists.
Administrators on both sides of the aisle viewed the notifications as an attempt at intimidation, a characterisation the Justice Department pushed back on, maintaining that the letters were meant to remind those administrators of their standing legal duties. Subpoenas, document requests, and interviews — even when no formal charges follow — place real demands on election offices that are already operating with limited staff and budgets, while a separate concern involves enforcement activity by immigration authorities near voting locations.
Ballot participation in neighbourhoods with high concentrations of newcomers — areas that also tend to lean toward one party — may be shaped by how enforcement of immigration law is carried out, according to election administrators and attorneys who track voting rights. Stationing armed federal agents at voting locations would, under federal statute, be prohibited, though enforcement operations by immigration authorities in the surrounding area would not be prohibited.
Mullin, in remarks made that September, left open the possibility of deploying agents to a polling site under two conditions — an identified threat at that location or the execution of a warrant — while the department separately noted that no operations directed at voting locations were being planned by immigration enforcement, though agents remained available to support local law enforcement in the event of a larger incident. Douglas County clerk Jamie Shew noted that poll workers have repeatedly raised the same question at every training session held so far: what steps should they take if federal immigration officers arrive at a polling location on election day.
Positioning military personnel at or near voting sites is one scenario under discussion; a separate line of legal analysis holds that the Insurrection Act could be applied if a president were to assert that organised groups had disrupted electoral processes or that state authorities had permitted ineligible residents to cast ballots. Under this statute, the executive branch holds expansive authority to act during certain domestic emergencies, carving out a pathway around the usual prohibitions on deploying military forces in civilian law enforcement situations.
Separate federal statutes bar military personnel from being stationed at voting sites, taking any role in the running of elections, or applying pressure to voters. When a reporter asked in May whether Trump would deploy the military or immigration agents to polling places, he stated that he would take whatever steps he deemed necessary to ensure elections were conducted fairly.
A written communication dispatched by Gen. Dan Caine, who chairs the Joint Chiefs of Staff, to a Democratic senator that August conveyed that deploying troops to voting locations or confiscating election-related materials fell outside any active military planning. In a written statement, he noted that no unlawful order connected to such a deployment had come his way, nor did he foresee one arriving.
Advisers close to Trump have pushed for an emergency declaration rooted in claims of voter fraud or foreign interference in elections, a move that could open the door to expanded federal oversight of ballot tallying, with hand counts among the measures being floated. In an interview aired that October, Trump stated he was keeping all options open, neither ruling anything in nor out — a position that legal analysts noted would not be altered by any national emergency declaration, which carries no constitutional power over the administration of elections. Any move in that direction carries the prospect of lawsuits, jurisdictional uncertainty, and drawn-out court battles over where presidential authority actually ends.
One scenario under discussion involves party leaders facing pressure to postpone or contest the formal certification of narrowly won seats held by opposing-party candidates. Under one theoretical situation put forward, the House clerk's post could be filled by a Johnson-appointed loyalist empowered to withhold formal acknowledgment of election-certified victors. Seating newly elected state representatives falls within the clerk's formal duties, though the speaker holds authority to remove the clerk from that post and install a temporary replacement.
Scholars who study election law have generally viewed the prospect of Congress turning away properly certified candidates as one that faces substantial legal obstacles. The position put forward holds that a statutory obligation binds the clerk to acknowledge winners certified by the state, and that judicial intervention would follow if that obligation went unmet. Pending disputes over contested seats carry the possibility of leaving those positions unfilled when the incoming Congress takes its oath on January 3.
When the House margin is razor-thin, a handful of vacant seats can reshape the speaker's race and shift the balance of power, at least for a time. Haulsee, speaking on Johnson's behalf, called the scenario hypothetical and pointed to the incoming Congress taking its seats in January 2025, while election officials noted that existing safeguards cover both ballots and voting equipment.
Data compiled by the Brennan Center for Justice shows that pre-election machine checks extend to every unit in no fewer than 47 states, with the remaining jurisdictions running checks on a representative portion of their equipment. Voting equipment typically carries tamper-evident seals, while paper ballots follow a documented chain of custody as they travel from polling locations to counting facilities. Several layers of oversight govern mail-in ballots, ranging from drop-box camera monitoring and records of when each ballot is retrieved or handled, to signature-matching requirements that most states have built into their procedures.
Data from the Brennan Center shows that 98% of ballots cast across the country leave behind a paper trail auditors can cross-reference against electronic tallies, while the administration has described its push on election security as a safeguard for voters. Spokesperson Lauren Bis spoke in support of the SAVE America Act — a bill that would tie voter registration to citizenship documentation and require photo identification at the polls — though the measure has yet to advance through the Republican-held Congress.
Lawsuits, administrative disputes, and formal objections lodged against the process could place strain on election office capacity, draw out certification timelines, and erode public confidence in the final count — even if no challenge ultimately manages to overturn the result. Becker, who leads the Center for Election Innovation and Research, told reporters that election administrators now find themselves navigating a landscape where, for the first time — not merely within their own professional experience but across the broader sweep of American electoral history — they must weigh the possibility that the federal government could shift from a cooperative partner into an entity working against their efforts.
Norm Eisen, who chairs the Democracy Defenders Fund, told reporters that voter confusion stemming from the current environment remains his principal concern.
