‘Affront to Democracy’: Trump's National Guard Troops Seen in Front of Ballot Box in DC

Amid fears that President Donald Trump will send armed agents to intimidate voters during the midterms, the DC Board of Elections told Common Dreams on Friday that it is responding to complaints of National Guard troops stationed outside a ballot drop box near downtown Washington shortly before voting was set to open.

On Thursday, Bryan K. Randolph, a Washington, DC-based political and legal commentator, posted a video to TikTok showing what he said were three members of the National Guard stationed in front of a ballot box outside the Foggy Bottom Metro station, which is located on the campus of George Washington University.

"I stood and watched for a few minutes before I watched this video," Randolph said. "They were there for at least a few minutes. I don't know for how much longer they'd been there before that."

He said that minutes after he began filming, the troops left, possibly because they saw him recording.

Federal law explicitly prohibits the presence of "any troops or armed men at any place where a general or special election is held" unless their presence is necessary to repel armed enemies of the United States.

Though the statute does not specifically mention ballot drop boxes, legal experts have argued that the phrase "any place" means it should apply not just to traditional polling places, but also ballot drop boxes, election offices, and ballot counting facilities.

While he said it was unclear why the troops were stationed at the ballot box, Randolph noted that it was "a giant white box with the word 'ballot' pretty hard to miss," adding that "they clearly, at best, have not been told to stay away."

A spokesperson for the DC Board of Elections confirmed to Common Dreams that it "has received complaints regarding National Guard personnel posted near a ballot drop box next to the Foggy Bottom-GWU Metro station."

"We are addressing the concerns with the National Guard directly and have requested that they impose limitations on the placement of National Guard service members near drop boxes and other voting locations in the District," she said.

Joint Task Force-District of Columbia, the military command overseeing National Guard operations in the capital, did not respond to a request for comment.

National Guard Members patrol 14th Street, working with Metro police on August 24, 2025, in Washington, DC. (Photo by Tasos Katopodis/Getty Images)

President Donald Trump deployed the National Guard to the streets of the nation's capital last summer. The troops have remained despite widespread public opposition and a federal judge's ruling that the deployment was unlawful, which an appeals court subsequently put on hold.

Asked about the possibility of deploying troops to polling places earlier this year, Trump did not rule it out. He has also lamented that he did not send National Guard troops to seize election materials while he tried to overturn his loss in the 2020 election.

Voting rights experts have warned about possible plans by Trump to use federal troops or agents—including US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and the National Guard—to interfere with November's midterm elections. Though elections are administered by states under the Constitution, Trump has said that Republicans should "nationalize" voting.

Dan Herman and Devon Ombres, two national security and legal policy experts at the Center for American Progress, said that "there is little to no safe or democratic way for the military to be involved with the elections process."

"Voters may stay home if they fear military presence. Ballots may no longer be trusted if a machine’s chain of custody is broken. Military deployments elsewhere in a city might prevent voters from reaching their polling site in time," they wrote in a brief published Friday by Just Security.

The recording shared on Thursday is not the first instance of National Guard personnel seen gathered around ballot boxes in DC. In June, Rep. Eleanor Holmes Norton (D-DC), the nonvoting delegate from DC in the House of Representatives, demanded answers about another video in which a resident confronted several troops who were seen outside a drop box.

Asked whether they'd been told to stay away from the boxes, one of the Guard members responded, "No. Not at all."

"The fact that Guard personnel reportedly had not been instructed to avoid ballot drop boxes suggests a troubling lack of awareness by leadership of the impact these deployments are having on the district and its residents," Norton said.

A voter uses a ballot drop box at the Bucks County Administration building voting on demand and ballot drop center in Doylestown, Pennsylvania on October 31, 2024. (Photo by Ed Jones/AFP via Getty Images)

With Republicans in Congress projected to take heavy losses in the midterms, proponents of his efforts to overturn his last election defeat have reportedly met with Trump in recent days, urging him to declare a "national emergency" that they claim would allow him to assert direct authority over the elections, an idea disputed by legal experts.

One plan that has reportedly circulated among election deniers has involved declaring the Insurrection Act, which they claim would allow Trump to flood polling locations with military and federal law enforcement.

While the Insurrection Act would permit some domestic law enforcement by the military, Herman and Ombres emphasized that it would not override the laws restricting troops from polling locations.

"Armed troops do not belong near ballot boxes," Monica Hopkins, executive director of the ACLU of the District of Columbia, told Common Dreams. "At minimum, troop presence at the ballot box creates the appearance of voter intimidation and risks discouraging DC residents from exercising our fundamental right to vote."

"The deployment of National Guard into the District without the consent of our local government is an affront to democracy here and around the nation," she said. "National Guard troops must go home."