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Beware Republicans Purging Their Way to Midterm Victory
Republican secretaries of state are bragging about the millions of Americans whose right to vote they’re “purging” from the voting rolls this year. How are they getting away with it?
Oct 15, 2026
With virtually no mention or reporting in the corporate press, Republican-run states are again running the voter purge of millions that gave Donald Trump the White House in 2024.
On Wednesday morning, Reuters published a special report on the ways the Trump administration could “interfere” with the midterms, noting that a lawyer in Idaho’s Republican attorney general’s office bragged that his state had “taken a leading role in ensuring its voter registration list is purged….”
Yep, they used the word “purged.” They’re not even bothering with the polite terms anymore.
Your “right to a gun” is real but your “right to vote” is not, at least as long as corrupt Republicans control the Supreme Court and Congress.
And it’s not like the Republicans really believe the mythology they’re trying to sell the rest of us. The GOP-aligned, billionaire-funded Heritage Foundation spent over a decade doing a deep dive into every state looking for voter fraud and noncitizen voters, examining every American vote since 2000—more than a billion ballots cast nationwide—and found just 89 cases of noncitizen voters. In more than 20 years!
The libertarian Cato Institute did a similar analysis specifically on the 2020 election looking for any evidence that Trump’s claims were right that the election was “stolen” from him by “Mexicans” voting in the US election. They concluded the same thing:
There are likely many problems with America’s voting system and there is no doubt that a non-zero number of noncitizens illegally voted, but there is no good evidence that noncitizens voted illegally in large enough numbers to actually shift the outcome of elections or even change the number of electoral votes.
Nonetheless, Republicans keep promoting their lie that “illegals are voting” to justify massive purges of legal voters whose only crime is being Black, Hispanic, living in a college town, or being a big city dweller in a red state. A likely Democratic voter, in other words.
And let’s not forget that hypocrite Trump himself is all in on encouraging voter fraud; at his “midterm convention” in Dallas a few weeks ago he had thousands of people raise their hands and repeat an oath after him:
I don’t care if I’m registered or not, I’m going to try and cheat like hell...
And the Reuters story comes three weeks after six corrupt Republicans on the Supreme Court let Trump’s Department of Homeland Security, run by former plumber Markwayne Mullin, turn an Immigration and Customs Enforcement immigration database called SAVE into a bulk voter-purging machine right in the middle of an election.
When Texas ran its registered voters through SAVE they purged thousands of people wrongly flagged as noncitizens; League of United Latin American Citizens is suing to try to get these actual citizens voting rights restored.
Which all raises a question that I’ve been asking on the air (and in my book The Hidden History of the War on Voting) for years:
Why is it that if a Republican governor wants to take away your gun he has to go to court, but if he wants to take away your vote he doesn’t even have to notify you?
You’ll recall that back in 2008 five corrupt Republicans on the Supreme Court declared that we all have an absolute constitutional “right” to own a gun, and if any state or city wants to violate that right they have to go before a judge and present evidence that you can contest and even appeal all the way to the Supreme Court itself.
When we have a “right” in America and our government wants to take it away, they have to provide notice, irrefutable evidence, a courtroom and neutral judge, a finding, and a right to appeal. It’s called “due process” and is established by the Fifth and 14th Amendments.
And in 1993, Congress passed and Bill Clinton signed a law establishing—without any ambiguity—that your vote is also a “right.” The National Voter Registration Act (NVRA) lays it out clearly:
“[T]he right of citizens of the United States to vote is a fundamental right,” and that “it is the duty of the Federal, State, and local governments to promote the exercise of that right.”
And the phrase “right to vote” also appears five times in the Constitution itself, more than any other right that document names (guns get a single mention).
So, why is it that Republican secretaries of state are bragging about the millions of Americans whose right to vote they’re “purging” from the voting rolls this year? And how are they getting away with using junk-mail-appearing postcards to justify those purges?
In 1981, the Republican National Committee sent letters to Black and Hispanic voters in New Jersey to “verify” their voting status; they built a challenge list of 45,000 people and posted off-duty cops at polling places in predominantly Black and Democratic Newark and Trenton to check names to challenge those voters.
The Democratic Party sued against this practice, called “caging” in the direct mail industry, and won a court order blocking the Republicans from doing it. That consent decree expired in 2018, though, the same year that five corrupt Republicans on the Supreme Court told Ohio Secretary of State John Husted that he could resume the practice, but this time instead of the GOP paying for it the cost of mailing the postcards could be covered by Ohio taxpayers.
Justice Stephen Breyer’s dissent pointed out the obvious fraud of it, noting that on average around 4% of Americans move their residence every year but:
The record shows that in 2012 Ohio identified about 1.5 million registered voters—nearly 20% of its 8 million registered voters—as likely ineligible to remain on the federal voter roll because they [allegedly] changed their residences.
Now the practice has spread to virtually every Republican-controlled state. They send out millions of postcards that look like junk mail, and if you don’t return one and skip an election, you’re officially purged. They don’t even have to notify you; you find out when you show up on election day and they either turn you away or give you a “provisional” ballot.
During and after the 2024 election, my radio and TV show’s phone lines were jammed with people—many from big cities in Ohio and Georgia—complaining that this had happened to them and they’d just discovered it when they tried to vote. None had been notified.
And, sure enough, the provisional ballots were the tell that exposes this GOP scam. The Election Assistance Commission’s (EAC) own survey of the 2024 election found that 1,736,209 Americans were shunted onto provisional ballots that year, and that the single most common reason was that the voter “did not appear on the list of eligible voters.”
Provisional ballots are often not counted at all, unless the voter shows up at the Secretary of State’s office before the final count to certify that they are, in fact, a legal citizen and voter.
Since the Husted decision by the Supreme Court allowing this bizarre practice, Republicans have put their corrupt system into hyperdrive. That same EAC federal survey found that GOP-controlled states sent out nearly 40 million “confirmation postcards” in just the two years between the 2022 and 2024 elections.
As a result, more than 21 million registered voters were stripped from the voting rolls in the months leading up to the 2024 election, and the most common justification was that they failed to return that junk-mail postcard.
Reporter and former statistics professor Greg Palast testified about this in federal court for the NAACP and, here on Hartmann Report, detailed how his team went through Georgia’s purge list person-by-person.
They found 198,351 Georgians who’d been cancelled even though they hadn’t moved and were still (mostly Black) citizens. In Wisconsin, where former Vice President Kamala Harris lost by 29,397 votes, Republicans had purged 166,433 voters from the lists. Pennsylvania had purged 360,132 people, about three times Trump’s margin of victory in that state.
His conclusion was straightforward:
Trump lost. That is, if all legal voters were allowed to vote, if all legal ballots were counted, Trump would have lost the states of Wisconsin, Michigan, Pennsylvania, and Georgia. Vice-President Kamala Harris would have won the Presidency with 286 electoral votes.
And, if not for the mass purge of voters of color, if not for the mass disqualification of provisional and mail-in ballots, if not for the new mass “vigilante” challenges in swing states, Harris would have gained at least another 3,565,000 votes, topping Trump’s official popular vote tally by 1.2 million.
In other words, your “right to a gun” is real but your “right to vote” is not, at least as long as corrupt Republicans control the Supreme Court and Congress.
Imagine, for example, what would happen if your county sheriff started confiscating guns from people who failed to mail back a postcard. The right-wing press would be hysterical, and the court would strike it down in a New York minute.
So here’s where we are today. Georgia’s Brad Raffensperger (pronounced “Raff - ens - purger”) cancelled nearly 471,000 registrations last August, 6% of the entire state, the majority Democrats according to a Fair Fight analysis.
When Black Voters Matter asked for the records behind the purge, Raffensperger’s office handed over a stripped-down spreadsheet, and they had to sue him to try to get the names. Ohio’s Frank LaRose published a list of 352,389 names for cancellation just this past year, following a 2024 purge in which Ohio Democrats documented more than a thousand wrongly removed voters in Cuyahoga County alone.
Meanwhile Trump’s Justice Department has filed 31 lawsuits against states and the District of Columbia to seize their full voter files, including driver’s license and partial Social Security numbers, so the whole country can be run through his flawed SAVE purging database.
Republicans can’t win elections on their track record of taking away healthcare, gutting the Social Security Administration, and handing massive tax cuts to billionaires, so they send postcards into Black and Hispanic neighborhoods and college towns. The only thing that’s changed since Jim Crow, in other words, is the technology.
Democrats in Congress tried to fix this situation in 2022 with the Freedom to Vote: John R. Lewis Act. It passed the House and had a majority in the Senate, but every Republican in the Senate joined in a filibuster. If Sens. Kyrsen Sinema (I-Ariz.) and Joe Manchin (D- W. Va.) hadn’t stabbed us all in the back by voting with Republicans to sustain the filibuster, these crimes against our democracy would be explicitly illegal, as they already are in every other advanced nation in the world.
Fixing this—codifying our “right to vote” per the NVRA from 1993 and with new legislation—has to be right up there with overturning the other most-corrupt action to come from Republicans on the court, aka Citizens United.
But none of that will ever happen if Republicans continue to control the House and the Senate so Trump can further disintegrate our republic and turn us into his beloved Russia before the 2028 election.
So, vote!
And please share this article with your friends in red states, support independent journalism by subscribing to The Hartmann Report, and pass it on. They can’t purge all of us if we’re all watching.
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This Midterm Election, Defend Democracy by Practicing It
As election defenders, voters, and community advocates in this great experiment, we can help ensure free and democratic elections by staying the course. Here’s how.
Oct 08, 2026
With less than a month before the midterm elections, attempts by President Donald Trump and his administration to keep certain Americans from voting will likely continue.
Voting is how we get an equal say in the decisions that impact our lives, regardless of race, disability, zip code, language, or income. That’s why we need to ensure that every eligible voter can cast their ballot free from fear, intimidation, or unnecessary barriers.
Anti-democratic forces might dominate the headlines, but they have not dominated the outcomes. That’s important.
Our democracy is strongest when voters can fully participate. Our elections are strongest when election officials can do their jobs free from political interference. And our future is strongest when Americans believe that their voice matters.
In the past month, whistleblowers courageously revealed that the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) may be instructing agents to break laws, and potentially “ensnare eligible voters,” in order to find alleged “proof of mass non-citizen voting—shown in studies to be exceedingly rare,” CNN reports.
In Michigan, an effort to get a “show your papers” measure on the November ballot failed to garner enough signatures. The Department of Justice lost 25 consecutive court cases in their quest to obtain private voter information.
Even the Supreme Court blocked the Trump administration’s attempt to stifle vote-by-mail nationwide by preventing the US Postal Service from implementing a rule that would have disenfranchised millions of voters.
I spent years as a local election official—I can assure you that election administrators nationwide are breathing a collective sigh of relief. The administration’s attempt to rewrite election rules was wrong, and I applaud those state and local officials who rejected political pressure and sued to uphold the law on behalf of voters.
From courtroom victories to successes in state and local communities, these recent wins are not isolated. They are victories for democracy, for the freedom to vote, and for election officials who work tirelessly to make sure our elections run smoothly. They prove democracy can withstand relentless attacks.
And they tell a bigger story: Democracy works when people are willing to defend it by showing up to vote.
Winning for democracy means continuing through the midterms with clear eyes on the multiple attempts to upend the election. These attempts could include deploying federal law enforcement to polling locations and election offices, seizing ballots or voting machines, and further gerrymandering in the future.
From secretaries of state to county clerks in Wisconsin, board of election members in Georgia, supervisors of elections in Florida, and thousands of volunteer poll workers nationwide, election defenders are already working around the clock to protect the freedom to vote. They’re pushing back against demands for our private voter data, resisting federal overreach, safeguarding ballots, and helping voters make plans to vote—whether by mail, drop box, in person during early voting, or at a polling location on Election Day.
This work is not just about ballots and election procedures. It’s about ensuring that every eligible voter can fully participate in our democracy. We cannot sit down. We cannot give up.
As election defenders, voters, and community advocates in this great experiment, we can help ensure free and democratic elections by staying the course. Here’s how:
- Visit your local elections office for voting information. Vote-by-mail remains a reliable way to vote. Early voting remains available. Voters should choose the method that works best for their lives and make a plan to vote as early as possible.
- Promote or participate in upcoming days of action, including National Voter Education Week (October 5-9), Election Hero Day (October 20), and Vote Early Day (October 24).
- Make a plan to vote with your friends and family.
Our democracy is strongest when voters can fully participate. Our elections are strongest when election officials can do their jobs free from political interference. And our future is strongest when Americans believe that their voice matters.
The fight to protect free and democratic elections has always mattered. What happens next is up to us. Let’s keep the momentum going.
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Trump Keeps Giving Ominous Warnings About a Midterm 'Surprise.' Election Experts Say Whatever It Is, They're Ready
“No one outside the administration knows what a ‘Midterm Surprise’ means, but nothing this administration has done so far has come out of nowhere," one expert told Common Dreams.
Oct 07, 2026
With the 2026 midterm elections less than a month away, President Donald Trump keeps teasing that his administration has a "surprise" in store, a message that led many to fear a new attempt to subvert what are projected to be heavy losses by Republicans.
In a Truth Social post on Tuesday, bragging about his rally crowd sizes, Trump cryptically urged readers to "Watch for the ‘Midterm Surprise'!"
Hours later, during a rally in Maryland, he shouted out Russell Vought, the director of the White House Office of Management and Budget (OMB). Vought, a key architect of Project 2025, has been instrumental in Trump's second-term restructuring of the federal government and in weaponizing federal funding to exert leverage over states.
"We have some big surprises coming up in another few weeks, right, Russ?" Trump said. "He's going to be one of the very important people in the history of our country, in my opinion. He's got some great things happening.”
In light of Trump's suggestions that he could "nationalize" elections or outright "cancel" them, send immigration agents to polling places, seize voting machines, or use federal agencies to seek out "ineligible" voters, his unexplained intonations about a coming "surprise" immediately became the subject of rampant speculation.
"The time to prepare for him to try to steal an election is now," wrote Fox News anchor Jessica Tarlov. Former US Attorney Joyce Vance wrote that it signaled “election interference is in the offing.” Conservative Trump critic Pedro Gonzalez warned that it could signal a "repeat of 2020," when Trump attempted to overturn his loss to former President Joe Biden by pushing false claims of widespread voter fraud.
"Nothing this administration has done so far has come out of nowhere."
Common Dreams spoke with several voting rights and election security experts about what sorts of "surprises" Trump may have in store and what powers he may actually attempt to wield. They made one thing abundantly clear: Whatever he tries to do—legal or otherwise—they're ready.
"No one outside the administration knows what a 'Midterm Surprise' means, but nothing this administration has done so far has come out of nowhere," said Cerin Lindgrensavage, who serves as counsel for Protect Democracy. "They have been signaling their plans for months."
Lindgrensavage told Common Dreams that "one clue" was the administration's use of federal payouts to voters—which some critics have characterized as "bribes"—including Trump's promise to send each American adult a $5,000 check if Republicans emerge victorious. Last week, Trump announced that around 20 million Medicare recipients would receive $90 checks from a fund meant to improve the program.
"We've been paying attention to the accelerating pace at which federal money is being shipped out the door and heralded in big announcements, in ways that look more like popularity plays than what Congress intended the use of those funds for," Lindgrensavage said.
Michael McNulty, the senior policy director at Issue One, agreed that while we "can't know exactly" what Trump has in mind, "we can look at the pattern," which his organization has described as the "election takeover playbook."
"It starts with tired, recycled false election fraud narratives such as claims of foreign interference, noncitizen voting, mail-in voting problems—despite himself voting by mail in previous elections—or ‘corrupt’ election officials, even when the evidence contradicts them," McNulty explained. "He then uses that to justify trying to take control of election processes, whether through an emergency declaration, demands for state voter data and election materials, or federal agents near polling places."
"It ends," he said, "with efforts to undermine certification if the results aren't what the administration wants."
OMB has no formal authority over elections. But McNulty stressed that Vought could still use his office's powers to exert "indirect" influence over the states that run them.
"Withholding funds, imposing grant conditions, and coordination with other agencies," he said, "could be used to pressure states and localities."
Russell Vought, the director of the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) for the second Trump administration, speaks during a Senate Committee on the Budget hearing to examine the president's fiscal year 2027 budget proposal on Capitol Hill on April 16, 2026, in Washington, DC. (Photo by Roberto Schmidt/Getty Images)
However, he said to "keep in mind those levers are limited by what Congress has authorized, and courts have repeatedly pushed back on funding conditions that go beyond the law."
McNulty told Common Dreams he is unaware of any specific effort directly tying OMB to election administration, but said there was a risk of possible coordination among OMB and the departments of Homeland Security and Justice "on voter data, security funding, and Election Day activity."
“We have strong protections in place, and we intend to use them."
Other experts suggested it was less useful to speculate on what Trump might do than to look at how he is already trying to exceed his legal authority.
Trump has repeatedly suggested that he should have had federal authorities seize voting machines in 2020. Democracy Docket reported on Tuesday that election denialist activists urged him to declare a "national emergency" to do just that while meeting with him in the White House recently.
Pamela Smith, the president and CEO of Verified Voting, said her organization was prepared in case Trump attempts to seize voting machines or other election materials.
“The states run elections, and the president has no authority to affect those processes, as courts have repeatedly shown," Smith told Common Dreams.
By preparing officials for what to do if chains of custody on ballots are broken, she said, "we are helping election offices prepare for any threats to ballots throughout the November 3 election and in the weeks that follow, so that every ballot can be tracked, secured, and accounted for."
John Cusick, assistant counsel for the NAACP Legal Defense Fund (LDF), told Common Dreams his group is preparing for threats ranging from federal interference in election administration to voter intimidation and mass voter challenges.
“We have strong protections in place, and we intend to use them,” Cusick said, pointing in particular to Section 11(b) of the Voting Rights Act, which prohibits voter intimidation.
Demonstrators gather on the National Mall during a 'Defend the Vote' rally marking the 63rd anniversary of the 1963 March on Washington in Washington, DC, on August 28, 2026. (Photo by Mehmet Eser/Anadolu via Getty Images)
He noted that LDF has already sued over the prospect of federal law enforcement at polling places.
“Let me be plain," he said, "a polling place is not a checkpoint.”
Cusick said LDF is also working with national, state, and local partners to identify problems ahead of election day and train volunteers to observe and report suppression efforts.
"We will protect this election," he said. "But it should not take such a herculean effort from the civil rights community to secure and protect voting rights. Congress must meet its constitutional responsibility to ensure every eligible voter can participate free from discrimination, no matter where they live."
He called on Congress to strengthen voting rights protections, establish national election administration standards, and provide more funding directly to local election officials.
Celina Stewart, the CEO of the League of Women Voters, told Common Dreams she would not speculate on what surprise attacks Trump may have in store or attempt to "assign meaning where no evidence exists."
"What we do know is that election administration in the United States is governed by law, distributed across states and local jurisdictions, and constrained by constitutional checks and balances," she said. "No president has unilateral authority to control election administration, determine election outcomes, or override the lawful counting and certification of ballots."
"Any attempt by any federal official to exceed constitutional or statutory authority would be subject to legal challenge and public scrutiny," she said. "Our focus is not on political rhetoric but on ensuring that voters can cast ballots freely, that election officials can do their jobs without interference, and that the 2026 elections are administered according to law."
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'Should Concern All Americans': Records Show ICE Has Gathered 50 Million Voter Records Ahead of Midterms
"If not for the laws that protect the public’s right to know what their government is doing, the public likely would have never known about these concerning schemes."
Oct 07, 2026
Documents obtained and released on Wednesday by the advocacy group Democracy Forward show that the investigative arm of US Immigration and Customs Enforcement has gathered tens of millions of voter records ahead of the midterm elections as part of a purported effort to combat "voter fraud."
Democracy Forward, which obtained the ICE documents through the Freedom of Information Act, said records from the agency's Homeland Security Investigations (HSI) branch underscore how the Trump administration is "using the power of the government to try to silence eligible voters and prevent them from accessing the ballot."
The 166-page document that ICE turned over to Democracy Forward shows that HSI has considered sending undercover agents to investigate nonprofit organizations accused of illegally registering noncitizens to vote. President Donald Trump and his allies have repeatedly and baselessly claimed that noncitizen voting is a significant problem in the US.
HSI admits in one of the newly released documents that its "review" of more than 40 nonprofits in New Jersey uncovered "no derogatory information."
"The information revealed in the documents should concern all Americans and is further evidence of an alarming attempt by the executive branch to undermine our elections. It appears the president and his allies want to pick their voters, as opposed to the way things are supposed to function in a democracy where voters pick their leaders," said Skye Perryman, president and CEO of Democracy Forward. “If not for the laws that protect the public’s right to know what their government is doing, the public likely would have never known about these concerning schemes. We will continue to use all legal tools to expose threats to our elections and to challenge them swiftly.”
Democracy Forward noted that the records also show that HSI has "obtained 26,235 US Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS)-derived records, and 50.6 million voter roll records from the US Department of Justice, for investigating so-called voter fraud."
"Notably, ICE listed out priority states for each set of these records, including Texas, Pennsylvania, California, New Jersey, Minnesota, Michigan, Arizona, Florida, Georgia, and Ohio," the group said. "Alarmingly, certain state voter roll data may have been entered into Palantir’s ELITE app, which is used by ICE to identify, prioritize, and locate targets for deportation. HSI may also be investigating voting machines and seeking to prove voter fraud in 'counties with 2020 results.'"
ICE's efforts are part of what watchdogs and election experts have characterized as a sweeping, lawless attempt by the Trump administration to disrupt the 2026 midterms, which will determine control of the US Congress.
Hart Wood, senior oversight counsel at Democracy Forward, said the ICE documents provide "chilling new insights into the breadth and depth of the Trump-Vance administration’s efforts to pursue baseless claims of widespread election fraud and assert greater federal control over elections ahead of the 2026 midterms."
"These records also expose the influence of election denier Heather Honey at both [the Department of Homeland Security] and ICE—including her working in partnership with activists and feeding nearly 50 million records from ‘independent sources’ into DHS voter fraud data collection," said Wood. "They also show, for the first time, that HSI may be using undercover agents to investigate non-profits for purely political reasons.”
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Intimidation Feared as Trump DOJ Boosts Its Own Election Monitors While Rejecting International Observers
The president also met with election denier and former county clerk Tina Peters and discussed "plans" for the election on Monday.
Oct 06, 2026
International election observers who have monitored US federal elections since 2002, in line with the practices of the vast majority of countries across North America, Europe, and Asia, said Tuesday that President Donald Trump's refusal to invite the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe to observe the November midterms was "regrettable" and "not in line" with the United States' commitments.
The decision was announced as the US Department of Justice defended the administration's plans to send its own election monitors to the polls, with Attorney General Todd Blanche insisting in an interview with Fox News on Sunday that Trump "is doing the same thing that every single administration has done in our generation and in multiple generations."
In a letter to Blanche and Harmeet K. Dhillon, the assistant attorney general for civil rights, US Reps. Jamie Raskin (D-Md.) and Joe Morelle (D-NY) wrote last week that Congress authorized federal election observers in 1965 under the Voting Rights Act, with observers determining "whether persons who are entitled to vote are being permitted to vote” and “whether votes cast by persons entitled to vote are being properly tabulated."
The DOJ's Civil Rights Division also sends its attorneys to monitor elections, with observers required to remain outside polling places and notify local authorities of their presence.
But the DOJ deployed monitors to eight states over the summer to observe primary elections, and Wyoming Gov. Mark Gordon, a Republican, complained of "aggressive" and "disruptive" behavior, including demands to interview voters and attempts to access voting machines.
"In light of the DOJ’s announcement that it intends to deploy an unprecedented 1,000 monitors to polling places throughout the
country for the general election," wrote Raskin and Morelle, "the DOJ must demonstrate that it is not misusing its election monitoring program in any way and that its monitors are being used for appropriate purposes."
Some Republican officials have alluded to plans for US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) to go to polling places during the midterms. The Department of Homeland Security has denied there is such a plan, but Trump, who has persistently claimed US elections are rife with so-called "voter fraud," has said he would "do anything necessary to make sure we have honest elections."
The news that the OSCE is not being invited to observe the midterms only heightened concerns that the administration may try to intimidate people who go to vote in elections that Republicans are widely expected to lose, as Trump's approval rate plummets to 32% and Americans express disdain for his war on Iran, soaring prices of everyday goods, and the violent mass deportation agenda that has turned communities upside down.
“The Trump administration’s decision not to invite international observers to the United States is deeply antithetical to the spirit of freedom, democracy, and transparency that defines our elections," said Sen. Jeanne Shaheen, ranking member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. “I was an official election monitor in the country of Georgia in 2012 and most recently in Bosnia and Herzegovina in 2022, so I know firsthand the importance of showing up for Allies and partners to improve the public’s confidence in election integrity. The OSCE does just that."
"I urge the Trump administration to respect the role of independent election observers and ensure that the United States holds itself to the same standards that we would expect of any other democracy," said Shaheen.
The decision to keep the OSCE from observing the elections makes the US one of only three countries in the organization, along with Russia and Belarus, to do so.
“Refusing election observers is usually something that countries in a position of weakness do, when they know that they have corrupt or unfair elections,” said Dan Baer, a former US ambassador to the OSCE during the Obama administration, told MS NOW on Tuesday. “It’s very strange for the United States, which has been historically a standard setter in free and fair elections, to refuse observers.”
On Monday, Trump also met with former Mesa County, Colorado clerk Tina Peters, who was convicted on charges of trying to breach the state's voting machines in a search for evidence that election had been committed in the 2020 election Trump lost. Democratic Gov. Jared Polis granted Peters clemency after repeated calls from Trump.
Former acting US Attorney Ed Martin told Real America's Voice that Trump and Peters were "talking about the plans" for the elections, and claimed voting machines are "compromised" because parts of them are manufactured in China and Russia.
Ed Martin says that Tina Peters met with Trump in the Oval Office today to discuss election integrity and “the plans” for the upcoming midterms elections. https://t.co/NsGuZ4UNSO
— Anna Bower (@AnnaBower) October 6, 2026
"If she's meeting with Trump to talk about the midterms," said journalist Pedro L. Gonzalez, "then there is a real non-zero chance that Trump is going to try or wants to try to do something to upend them."
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The Supreme Court's Latest Shadow-Docket Ruling Could Help the GOP Win the Midterms
Standing alone, neither the expanded SAVE program nor the citizenship lists may be capable of changing the outcome of the midterms. But they do not stand alone.
Oct 03, 2026
Just when it seemed the Supreme Court might be prepared to stop Donald Trump from sabotaging the midterm elections, the six Republican justices who dominate the court handed the president a potentially far-reaching victory on September 25 with another ruling on its emergency “shadow” docket. The ruling in Department of Homeland Security v. League of Women Voters permits the administration and Republican-led states to use a newly expanded federal database to review state voter lists, overturning a lower-court decision that had concluded the database could not be used for the midterms because it violates federal privacy laws and the Administrative Procedure Act.
The Systematic Alien Verification for Entitlements program was created in 1986 to allow federal, state, and local government agencies to verify the citizenship and immigration status of noncitizens applying for public benefits, relying on records maintained by the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), the Department of Justice (DOJ), and the Department of State. However, in March 2025, Trump promulgated Executive Order 14248 (titled “Preserving and Protecting the Integrity of American Elections”), that revamped the program to permit state and local authorities to verify the citizenship status of registered voters so they could purge noncitizens from the rolls—a purpose the SAVE program was never intended to serve. The executive order also directed the Social Security Administration (SSA) to make its records available to the DHS for that purpose. Two months later, the DHS, acting on its own, launched a modified SAVE program that allows state and local authorities to conduct unlimited bulk searches of multiple individuals at once.
In September 2025, the League of Women Voters, together with its affiliates in Texas, Louisiana, and Virginia, and the Electronic Privacy Information Center sued the federal government, claiming that the expanded SAVE program violated the Social Security Act, the federal Privacy Act, and the Administrative Procedure Act. On June 22 of this year, District Court Judge Sparkle L. Sooknanan, who sits in Washington, DC, blocked the revamped SAVE program from being used for the midterm elections. The Justice Department, led by Solicitor General D. John Sauer, took its case to the US Court of Appeals for the DC Circuit, and, after failing to secure relief there, turned to the Supreme Court’s shadow docket, where the administration has enjoyed great success.
In one Texas county alone, searches conducted under the database returned an astounding error rate of 21%. There is no reason to believe the master citizenship lists will be any more reliable.
The high court granted Sauer’s request with a seven-page unsigned “per curiam” ruling, holding that the plaintiffs’ claims about the expanded database lacked merit, and that “the Federal Government has an obligation to respond to requests from state and local election officials seeking to verify the citizenship of voters.” In their dissent, the court’s three Democrats argued that the use of the database will result in voter disenfranchisement.
On its face, as some commentators have noted, the court’s ruling appears limited in scope because the National Voter Registration Act (NRVA) of 1993 prohibits states from conducting “systematic” purges of registered voters in the 90-day “quiet period” prior to elections. If the terms of the NRVA are faithfully and literally applied, this means that states can utilize the expanded SAVE program to conduct only “individualized” (one at a time) citizenship checks of prospective voters in the weeks remaining before the midterms. Use of the SAVE program is also voluntary, as states are not compelled but only urged to use the system.
The problem is that neither the NRVA nor the Supreme Court’s shadow docket ruling defines what is meant by “systematic” purges, and that individual purges can easily be aggregated to have a mass impact. In a post for Democracy Docket, reporter Yunior Rivas explained the problem this way:
Now, a crucial voter protection [under the NRVA] could hinge on whether the Supreme Court [in subsequent cases that will surely come its way before the midterms] wants to narrow the definition of “systematic” as applied to purges. And there’s reason to fear that it does [ … by allowing states to] run thousands of voters through SAVE and then evade the NVRA’s quiet period by treating each resulting citizenship challenge as an “individualized” inquiry.
Rivas also observed that the Supreme Court’s shadow docket decision does not prevent the Trump administration from preparing master citizenship lists for each state, which GOP-led states could use to purge unlimited numbers of individual voters without even using the SAVE program.
In fact, those citizenship lists are being compiled pursuant to Executive Order 14399, which directs the DHS, SSA, and State Department to create lists of all “confirmed” citizens residing in every state who are entitled to vote. Once again, states are not required by the order to use the lists to purge their voting rolls, but the order stipulates that election officials in states that permit noncitizens to vote will be referred to the DOJ for possible criminal prosecution.
On September 14, the Supreme Court handed Trump a rare shadow-docket defeat, preventing the US Postal Service from interfering with mail-in balloting. But that decision did not address the legality of the citizenship lists. The legality of the lists is currently pending in litigation brought by the Electronic Privacy Information Center and the public-interest groups Protect Democracy and Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, but no decision has been rendered.
Meanwhile, the clock is ticking.
According to the DOJ, 27 states, including Texas, Florida, Georgia, Ohio, and Indiana, have agreed to use the expanded SAVE database, which in practice has proven to be plagued by serious mistakes. In one Texas county alone, searches conducted under the database returned an astounding error rate of 21%. There is no reason to believe the master citizenship lists will be any more reliable.
Standing alone, neither the expanded SAVE program nor the citizenship lists may be capable of changing the outcome of the midterms. But they do not stand alone. They are part and parcel of a multifaceted plan to sabotage the elections, engineered by a president with dictatorial aspirations and a core of committed quislings determined to keep him and the MAGA movement in power through the midterms and beyond.
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If the Voice of Voters Is Muffled This Year, Blame the Roberts Court
Daunting structural obstacles will make it harder for voters to be heard during the upcoming midterms, and we can trace many of these back to the Supreme Court and its destructive rulings on democracy over the past two decades.
Oct 01, 2026
Will this be a “wave” election, sweeping new people into power? In some ways, it already is.
Due to retirements and primary defeats in safe districts, there will be 99 new members of Congress next year—and that’s before accounting for any seats that change party hands. A powerful anti-incumbent fervor pervades both parties.
Throughout history, there have been times when voters spoke loudly. The 1974 Watergate election, in which Democrats won 49 new seats. The 1994 “Republican Revolution” that made Newt Gingrich speaker after gaining 54 seats. The 2018 election, the first time voters rejected Donald Trump’s chaos. Polls do not suggest a swing of that magnitude. Democrats are lagging in popularity, even as voters recoil from Trump’s Republicans. But voter sentiment is not the only reason less may change than before.
Even if the Supreme Court does no further damage, it will have designed a dystopian political system where competition is scarce, billionaires dominate spending, and voters of color have little protection against abuse.
Daunting structural obstacles will make it harder for voters to be heard. We can trace many of these back to the Supreme Court and its destructive rulings on democracy over the past two decades. If the voice of voters is muffled this year, blame the Roberts Court.
To start, there are far too few competitive congressional districts. In 2019, in Rucho v. Common Cause, the Roberts Court refused to police gerrymandering. Then Louisiana v. Callais earlier this year finally demolished the Voting Rights Act and let Southern states eliminate seats held by Black lawmakers.
Political scientist Peter Miller of the Brennan Center for Justice explained it this way: “About 1 in 10 Americans are in a new US House district this year. Mid-decade redistricting in nine states ahead of the elections in November has scrambled the House elections (an 11th-hour attempt to redraw the map in Missouri was rejected by the US Supreme Court for the third and hopefully final time just last week). All of this effort to gerrymander the maps, however, may come to nothing as it is becoming clear that the two parties have fought the redistricting wars to a draw.”
But even amid electoral upheaval, nearly all seats are reliably Democratic or Republican. Political scientist Larry Sabato calculates there are only 21 competitive seats this year. The Cook Political Report counts 22 toss-up seats.
The Supreme Court has also demolished the laws that curbed big money in politics. Today big donors wield greater power than in memory. The top 20 donors have already spent $1.2 billion this year—all but two of them helping Republicans—and that figure is from before the start of the general election campaign. Elon Musk alone has already spent over $90 million. And while donors like Musk can be identified, much of this funding consists of “dark money,” where the identity of the donor is obscured.
It can all blur. But until 2010’s Citizens United and the cases that followed in lower courts, all this spending would have been flatly, explicitly illegal.
Then there are laws, big and small, by which states restrict the right to vote. The Supreme Court has not reversed a state voter suppression law this century. Shelby County v. Holder in 2013 first gutted the Voting Rights Act. Since then, our research shows, the turnout gap between white and nonwhite voters has grown all over the country. And it has grown at twice the rate in the places once covered by preclearance under the Voting Rights Act. That means hundreds of thousands fewer votes are expected this year than might have been the case otherwise.
Generally, the court has refrained from injecting itself into election contests. In 2020, after all, the justices refused to countenance Trump’s bid to overturn the election.
This year, the court’s record is mixed. Encouragingly, two weeks ago the justices upheld a ruling that blocked a Postal Service rule on mail voting. A different decision would have been a disaster, since 1 in 3 Americans votes with a mail ballot.
But on Friday, the justices let the administration use the “SAVE program.” This is a notoriously inaccurate and incomplete tool to verify citizenship status, which the Trump administration wants to use as a prod to purge voter rolls. The ruling will likely not affect this election. But this all augurs continued legal battles over voting in years to come, especially as the next presidential contest looms.
We want the justices, mostly, to stay out, and let state and local election officials do their work of protecting voters. At the same time, if politicians try to steal the election, crying “fraud” and “rigged,” we may need the Supreme Court to step up. Let’s hope it never faces that test.
The court’s term begins next Monday. It will hear major cases on the public funding of private religious schools, environmental laws, and more. Much of the most important work of the term has been done already with the emergency rulings on the “shadow docket” policing the elections.
But even if the Supreme Court does no further damage, it will have designed a dystopian political system where competition is scarce, billionaires dominate spending, and voters of color have little protection against abuse.
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NAACP Sues to Stop Trump From Sending Armed Agents to 'Intimidate' Minority Voters at Polls
"When the federal government puts fear between people and the ballot box, that is voter intimidation—plain and simple."
Sep 19, 2026
A coalition of civil rights and labor groups led by the NAACP sued the Trump administration Friday in a bid to prevent armed federal agents from being deployed at or near polling places during November's midterm elections, warning that the threatened presence of such officers could intimidate voters of color and repress turnout.
The lawsuit was filed in the US District Court for the District of Columbia by the NAACP, National Urban League, Mi Familia en Accion, OCA-Asian Pacific American Advocates, SEIU, American Federation of Teachers, International Union of Painters, and United Food and Commercial Workers International.
The complaint names senior Trump administration officials as defendants, including Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin, Attorney General Todd Blanche, FBI Director Kash Patel, and White House border czar Tom Homan. The lawsuit seeks an order barring the administration from "deploying agents in a manner that unlawfully intimidates voters or anyone urging or aiding voters."
The plaintiffs are represented by the Legal Defense Fund, Asian American Legal Defense and Education Fund (AALDEF), Brennan Center for Justice at NYU Law, LatinoJustice PRLDEF, National Immigration Law Center, Protect Democracy, and Democracy Defenders Fund. They argue that the administration's policies and statements have created a reasonable fear among Black, Latino, Asian American, naturalized, immigrant, and mixed-status voters that they could face questioning, surveillance, detention, or force while voting.
Asked in May whether he would send National Guard troops or ICE agents to polling locations, President Donald Trump refused to rule out such a move, saying that he would “do anything necessary to make sure we have honest elections.”
Other senior administration officials have similarly refused to rule out the deployment of federal forces to polling places in the name of fighting voter fraud—which is extremely rare.
The Justice Department, meanwhile, has denied that it is preparing to send agents to polling places. Spokesperson Kiersten Pels called such suggestions "fearmongering," while Mullin has said ICE would not patrol polling locations.
The coalition is suing under Section 11(b) of the Voting Rights Act, which prohibits intimidation, threats, or coercion of people for voting or attempting to vote, as well as those assisting others in voting.
“All American voters have the sacred right to have a voice in our democracy, and should be able to exercise that right freely and without fear,” said Janai Nelson, president and director-counsel of the Legal Defense Fund.
“Using federal law enforcement as a scare tactic to target and intimidate Black communities is illegal and antithetical to the promise of a multiracial democracy that was enshrined in the Voting Rights Act," Nelson added. "Neither Black, Latino, Asian, or any other voters nor any other communities should ever again face the threats of terror and intimidation at the ballot box that defined the Jim Crow era.”
“We are experiencing a level of voter intimidation like we haven’t seen since the civil rights era."
AALDEF executive director Bethany Li asserted that "when the federal government puts fear between people and the ballot box, that is voter intimidation—plain and simple."
“We are experiencing a level of voter intimidation like we haven’t seen since the civil rights era, when local governments and the KKK openly intimidated Black voters," Li added. "This time, it is the federal government ordering ICE and other federal law enforcement to intimidate naturalized citizen voters and immigrant communities. In 2026, voters should not have to choose between their safety and their right to vote.”
NAACP general counsel Kristen Clarke said the threatened deployment would turn polling places into "militarized zones."
"Turning the fundamental right of exercising our vote into a high-stakes encounter with the militarized strong arm of the current administration isn't protection and it isn't oversight; it's disenfranchisement, period," she argued.
The lawsuit comes one week after a similar challenge was filed by the League of United Latin American Citizens, UnidosUS, Common Cause, and the city and county of Denver, Colorado. That case cites an 1865 federal law that generally prohibits federal officials from bringing "troops or armed men" to places where elections are being held, except when necessary to repel armed enemies of the United States.
“The Trump administration has been waging a campaign to undermine American elections, and their insinuations that federal law enforcement agents might be at the polls this November are part of that effort,” Jasleen Singh, senior counsel and manager in the Brennan Center’s Democracy Program, said during Friday's announcement of the new suit. “We’re bringing this lawsuit so that voters are protected against intimidation and can have their voices heard.”
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Mail-In Voting Is Safe for Now; Let's Act to Protect Our Elections for Always
We can’t let vote deniers trash our elections, in Washington or in state capitols. Squalid moments like this one must be followed by reform and renewal.
Sep 17, 2026
Voters had a big win at the Supreme Court this week. What does it all mean?
On Monday, the court refused to allow the Postal Service to implement a new rule that would have curbed mail voting. But the one-paragraph ruling seemed to say more than “not yet.” The Trump administration, the justices ruled, was “unlikely to succeed on the merits.”
This was great news for the millions of citizens who rely on mail voting, the method now used by 1 in 3 voters. It was utterly bonkers that the White House tried to exert control over the election system. That’s illegal, a fact now confirmed over and over. The Brennan Center was proud to be part of the legal team representing voters before the Supreme Court.
We must never, ever get used to the idea that the president of the United States routinely denigrates our democracy. We should not have to wait with bated breath to see whether the Supreme Court will do the right thing.
President Donald Trump’s drive to undermine the election is failing. Time and again, his moves have been parried or blocked.
Voters, the coast is clear. You can vote with confidence. It’s five weeks until Election Day. Make a plan. Vote early in person. Vote as early as possible via the US Postal Service (USPS). Vote via a drop box. Vote on Election Day. Make your voice heard.
Yes, let’s exhale. But also let’s not lose sight of some bigger lessons.
Trump has not given up on trying to mess up and undermine the election. Repeatedly, courts have had to step in to protect the rule of law, blocking the executive order that mandated the USPS rule, the order before that, and very possibly whatever comes next. Whistleblowers keep popping up to reveal new depredations, such as the violations of state law by the Department of Homeland Security that were uncovered this week.
Just know that voting rights groups, state and local governments, election officials, and judges around the country have your back.
Then there’s the Supreme Court. It did the right thing here. But the situation should not have been this hard. This court helped create the chaos and confusion three weeks ago when it allowed Trump’s mail ballot plan to go forward.
And this whole election takes place in a political system transformed by the Roberts Court. A flood of billionaire funding and dark money thanks to Citizens United and other rulings. Frenzied gerrymandering. And, all too often, a green light for voter suppression. It has been two decades since the Supreme Court blocked a state from enacting a restrictive voting law. After the Louisiana v. Callais ruling in April that demolished what was left of the Voting Rights Act, Southern states rapidly redrew congressional maps to eliminate districts where Black voters had a fair chance to elect candidates who represented them. Expect more fights about district maps next year.
As for the states, there is some good news: In the recent mail balloting case, 24 state attorneys general filed litigation. Opposition to USPS’ antics did not fall strictly along party lines, with seven Republican-led states separately telling the court that Trump’s plan to disrupt the existing system was unworkable. That’s all encouraging.
But far too many states are colluding in efforts to take rights from their own citizens. In numerous states, our research shows, voters will go to the polls with restrictions put in place since 2024. Unscrupulous politicians have free rein to concoct new restrictive rules.
All this adds up to an argument for strong new national laws to ensure this doesn’t happen again. I’m done with trench warfare on voting. We can’t let vote deniers trash our elections, in Washington or in state capitols. Squalid moments like this one must be followed by reform and renewal.
On Wednesday the Brennan Center released Eight Solutions to Protect Voting Rights and Improve Representation, the most recent in a series of papers laying out solutions to our most pressing issues. Already we have published proposals on political corruption, Supreme Court reform, and congressional reform. This new raft of proposed actions would respond to the assaults on voting and representation still underway.
Congress can pass a national law, for example, banning partisan gerrymandering and barring mid-decade redistricting. That would significantly bolster competition and representation across the country, applying to red states and blue states alike. And it would eliminate the Supreme Court’s ridiculous rule in Callais that partisanship serves as an excuse for states drawing racially discriminatory maps.
What about the freedom to vote in the wake of the court’s other damaging decisions? Citizens should be able to defend their own voting rights in court when they are impinged upon. Surprisingly, no such law exists assuring access to the courts today. With the Voting Rights Act smashed to bits, an even broader statute would give voters the ability to protect themselves. Voters who have suffered racial discrimination should not face court-imposed barriers to vindicating their rights.
We also need national standards to ensure that citizens everywhere can vote by mail, vote early, be automatically registered, and take advantage of the myriad ways we have improved access. We should expand the size of the House of Representatives, a change conservative scholar Yuval Levin and others have urged, to widen representation. And it’s past time to admit the District of Columbia and Puerto Rico as states, as their citizens have repeatedly supported. And more.
Believe it or not, Congress has the power to do all these things. Yes, gridlocked, polarized, much-maligned Congress. The branch of government closest to the people should take the lead in restoring power to the people.
We must never, ever get used to the idea that the president of the United States routinely denigrates our democracy. We should not have to wait with bated breath to see whether the Supreme Court will do the right thing.
The law is clear: States run elections. But the Constitution gives Congress a role, too: It can pass national legislation. It should use that explicitly granted power to do what it has at other times, to lift the floor under voters and ensure protections. When it comes to voting rights, presidents should stay out. Congress should jump in.
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'Major Win' for Democracy as Supreme Court Rejects Trump Attack on Mail-In Voting
"This executive order was a blatant power grab designed to silence voters and undermine our elections, but it failed because the people and the law were on our side."
Sep 14, 2026
The US Supreme Court on Monday night rejected a bid by the Trump administration to keep onerous US Postal Service rules for mail-in ballots in place, which voting-rights defenders said risked depriving millions of people of the franchise in this year's midterm elections.
After a back-and-forth legal battle over the USPS rules that dragged on for months, the nation's highest court issued the 7-2 ruling without elaborating on its legal reasoning, though right-wing Justices Samuel Alito and Clarence Thomas issued dissents in favor of President Donald Trump's side.
The ruling in USPS v. California was in response to a legal challenge brought by the League of Women's Voters, the attorneys general of numerous states, and others who argued that newly-announced rules by the Postal Service regarding mail-in ballots, changes prompted by an executive order issued by Trump, would prevent people from having their ballots counted and cause chaos for those trying to administer this year's elections.
In response to the ruling, the plaintiffs' legal team said the decision was "a critical step to ensuring free and fair elections this November by maintaining access to mail voting for millions of eligible voters across the United States and lifting the dire threat that the Postal Service would disenfranchise them."
"Mail voting is safe, secure, and reliable—and the Trump administration has presented no evidence to the contrary, as the courts have repeatedly recognized," the statement continued. "We will remain vigilant in countering threats to free and fair elections and ensuring that every eligible voter is able to cast a ballot and have it count.”
“Today’s decision is a victory for our democracy and a powerful affirmation of the rule of law,” said California Attorney General Rob Bonta in a statement. “The stakes in this litigation could not have been higher.”
Virginia Kase Solomón, president and CEO of Common Cause, was among the other pro-democracy advocates who welcomed the decision.
“Today’s decision is a major win for the millions of everyday Americans who count on vote-by-mail—our seniors, service members, busy parents, rural voters, and voters with disabilities," said Solomón in a statement. "Vote-by-mail is safe, proven, and vital; even the president uses it. This executive order was a blatant power grab designed to silence voters and undermine our elections, but it failed because the people and the law were on our side. Our Constitution is clear: states run our elections, and voters choose their leaders—not the other way around. No administration can strip the people of their power.”
Michael McNulty, senior policy director for Issue One, a nonpartisan group that works to defend free and fair elections, also welcomed the ruling, but said vigilance would still be necessary going forward.
“The fight to preserve states’ authority to administer elections is far from over," warned McNulty.
"President Trump continuously and falsely claims fraud in mail-in voting without evidence," he added. "Despite voting multiple times with this method, he remains obsessed with centralizing control over elections to tilt the playing field. However, for now, one piece of that centralization effort is blocked, and it ensures that mail-in voting for the midterms won't be disrupted.”
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