US President Donald Trump wants to change the way Americans vote, and he hopes to do it by the 2026 midterm elections.
The president of the United States does not have the power to overhaul state election laws. The U.S. Constitution leaves election administration to the states and rule-making to Congress.
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Still, that hasn’t stopped President Trump from taking a top-down approach to changing election practices a year after the Nov. 3 election. The election will determine whether there is support in Congress for President Trump’s immigration enforcement tactics and policy agenda, including tax and spending cuts.
Here are some of the ways President Trump is pressuring states and Congress to change the course of the election.
President Trump has renewed his attacks on mail-in voting, threatening in August to use an executive order to create a legally unstable ban on the practice used by tens of millions of Americans. President Trump’s Department of Justice (DOJ) will require most states to submit voter data rolls to find ineligible voters, launching a legal battle that could jeopardize the rights of Americans eligible to vote. The Trump administration has scaled back efforts to improve voting site security and protections for mail-in voting. Mr. Trump successfully persuaded Republican governors to redistrict to give his party more seats in the House. In response, Californians will vote Tuesday on whether to redraw the state’s electoral maps and add Democratic-majority voting districts to balance Republican efforts.
Trump relied on falsehoods in his address to governors to call for changes in voting methods, reiterated statements that PolitiFact labeled “pants on fire” that the 2020 election was “rigged,” and threatened to jail those who say the election was rigged.
We asked the White House why President Trump wants an overhaul of the election. He won on legislation in 2016 and 2024, and his party won both houses of Congress in 2024. The White House referred us to the Department of Justice.
“Clean voter rolls and basic election security measures are essential for free, fair and transparent elections,” Assistant Attorney General Harmeet K. Dhillon told PolitiFact. “The Department of Justice’s Civil Rights Division has the legal authority to enforce federal voting rights laws, and ensuring the public’s confidence in the integrity of our elections is a top priority of this administration.”
President Trump’s actions have alarmed election officials who had promised to protect voters’ rights during the midterm elections.
“We are confident that we will have a safe, free, and secure election in 2026, but that will depend on state and local election officials, because the federal government is not being cooperative at this point and is actually targeting election officials,” said Maine Secretary of State and Democratic gubernatorial candidate Shena Bellows.
Gather state voter registration data, search for non-citizen voters
The Justice Department requested voter registration files from most states to identify ineligible voters.
Voter registration rolls contain sensitive personal identifying information. Many states have laws that prohibit the disclosure of information such as date of birth, driver’s license, and Social Security number. Election experts have raised privacy concerns about voters’ personal information being shared widely, and pointed to similar concerns about the Department of Government Efficiency’s use of Social Security data.
Some states provided only publicly available data to the federal government.
Bellows told the Justice Department to “jump into the Gulf of Maine.”
Maine was among the states the Justice Department sued in September for failing to submit certain voter list information.
In its lawsuit against the state of Maine, the department required Bellows to turn over all information in the state’s voter rolls, including Social Security numbers and driver’s license numbers. Bellows told PolitiFact that Maine opposes releasing that information because centralizing voter data increases the possibility of a breach.
“Voting in a democracy depends on free and fair participation without fear of reprisal or punishment from the government,” Bellows said. “If Congress thought it was a good idea to have a national voter registration list, they could approve it, but they haven’t done that yet.”
The Brennan Center for Justice at New York University School of Law found that nearly all states that responded to requests did not share their complete databases. States either omitted Social Security numbers and driver’s license numbers or did not provide a list. Only Indiana and Wyoming provided complete state-wide voter registration lists.
Across the country, state and local officials are responsible for maintaining voter rolls and regularly purge people who have moved, died or are otherwise ineligible. Meanwhile, federal law already prohibits noncitizens from voting in federal elections. But Trump has been spreading falsehoods about non-referendum votes for a decade.
Following reports from Reuters and the New York Times, a Department of Homeland Security spokesperson confirmed to PolitiFact that the agency is sharing information with the Justice Department to identify non-citizen voters.
The Trump administration has taken other steps to find non-citizen voters, including overhauling the databases election officials use to verify voters’ citizenship. Voting rights advocates have warned that the data could be outdated for immigrants who become naturalized U.S. citizens.
Threat to abolish mail-in voting
On August 18, President Trump said he would move to “remove mail-in voting” and sign “an executive order to bring integrity to elections in 2026.” Any attempt to eliminate or overhaul states’ mail-in voting programs would face legal challenges, which may explain why the order never materialized.
The next day, White House press secretary Caroline Levitt hinted that President Trump might pursue a legislative path, saying, “There will be a lot of discussion with our friends on Capitol Hill and with our friends in statehouses.”
President Trump has continued to threaten mail-in voting, pledging in September to “fix the system.”
“No mail-in or ‘early’ voting,” he said in an Oct. 26 Truth Social post criticizing California for sending out millions of mail-in ballots for redistricting.
The state is one of eight states that allow all-mail elections. Approximately 30% of eligible voters, or approximately 48 million people, will vote by mail in the November 2024 election, including the elderly, those who cannot drive, those who live far from a polling place, and those overseas. Voting by mail has existed at least since the Civil War.
In March, President Trump issued an executive order cutting off funding to election assistance commissions to states that count mail-in ballots received after Election Day. The order makes exceptions for military personnel and overseas voters, leading to multiple lawsuits.
According to the National Voting Institute, about 16 states allow officials to count ballots received after Election Day as long as they are postmarked by Election Day (or in Ohio, the day before Election Day).
The White House’s position is that federal law sets Election Day as the first Tuesday after the first Monday in November, and that should be the deadline for mail-in ballots to be received.
Nineteen states jointly sued the administration, arguing that the U.S. Constitution gives each state primary responsibility for regulating elections. Washington and Oregon filed their own lawsuits. A federal judge blocked the provision in advance at President Trump’s order.
Minnesota Secretary of State Steve Simon, a member of the Democratic-Farmer-Labor Party, said voters should be wary of President Trump’s attempts to expand his legal powers and intertwine with the state.
“I think the next six months or so are critical to getting us back on track and making sure our elections are fair, accurate, honest and secure,” Simon said.
Redistricting pressures in Republican-led states
President Trump has urged Republican-led states to begin unprecedented redistricting in mid-decade to maximize the party’s seats.
Texas Governor Greg Abbott signed a new map in August that he hopes will give Republicans five more seats. Missouri Gov. Mike Kehoe also signed the new map, but voters are collecting signatures in hopes of holding a referendum to overturn it in 2026. Ohio’s redistricting commission settled on new maps, and so did the North Carolina Legislature.
Other Republican-led states could follow suit, including Florida, Indiana and Louisiana.
Some Democratic leaders are considering redistricting the state to wipe out Republican gains. California voters will decide Tuesday whether they want redistricting in an effort led by Democratic Gov. Gavin Newsom. Democrats are also pushing for redistricting in Virginia, Maryland and Illinois.
If President Trump’s efforts to increase Republican House seats are successful, it will become more difficult for Democrats to flip the House.
Reducing election security assistance
President Trump created the federal Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) during his first term to protect critical infrastructure, including elections, from threats. CISA was targeted by President Trump after the agency certified the security of the 2020 election, which saw Trump lose the presidency to Joe Biden.
CISA has worked with election officials to provide training, threat intelligence, and physical and cybersecurity assessments of election facilities to improve voter security.
It is unclear what role CISA will play in the 2026 election. A decline in the federal government’s response to election security could undermine voter confidence in elections and encourage bad actors at home and abroad.
Former government officials told the Axios news site that by early June, about a third of CISA employees had left, months after the agency froze election security operations pending review and did not release results. The administration also cut funding for intelligence-sharing cooperation among local, state, and federal agencies. President Trump’s 2026 budget proposal calls for further cuts.
Because of their CISA security training, Rhode Island election workers knew what to do when an envelope containing white powder with a return address of “United States Traitor Removal Force” arrived at the state election board in September 2024. CISA had already distributed physical security and cybersecurity checklists with tips on how to respond to such threats.
The substance was not found to be dangerous, but the prompt security alert and information from CISA allows election officials to “know what’s going on in real time without having to wait for news reports or word of mouth,” Nick Lima, an elections official in Cranston, Rhode Island, told PolitiFact.
So far, John C. Ackerman, county clerk and recorder for Tazewell County, Illinois, said he has not seen a reduction in services from CISA. He told PolitiFact that officials still send out threat updates and monthly vulnerability scans of county websites.
When we asked CISA if it still provides security assessments and additional support for election officials, we received a statement that did not answer our questions.
The Trump administration has hired people to election-related positions who deny Trump’s loss in the 2020 presidential election or spread falsehoods about voting.
Heather Honey, the Pennsylvania activist who spread election falsehoods, now works in the Department of Homeland Security in charge of election integrity. Marcy McCarthy, now CISA spokeswoman, was the leader of the DeKalb County Republican Party, which lost a lawsuit alleging vulnerable voting machines in Georgia. As FBI director, Kash Patel, who has repeated President Trump’s falsehoods about 2020 election fraud, could oversee investigations into election crimes and election-related civil rights violations.
Michael Moore, chief information security officer for Arizona’s secretary of state, told PolitiFact in an email that CISA still has employees willing to help, but “doesn’t seem to have the resources or direction to effectively help.”
“I believe strongly in CISA’s mission and look forward to restoring our previous relationship and level of support,” Moore said. “We are the United States of America for a reason. In this current climate, it feels more like every state is ours.”
