Trump administration drive to seize election powers sparking ‘chaos’ despite pushback

The Trump administration continues to expand its authoritarian and radical drive to revamp voting rules and seize state election powers, though it faces growing resistance from US courts, state officials and Democrats, who warn the moves are sparking “chaos” and endangering voting rights and the rule of law.Donald Trump’s unprecedented drive to change election rules, which states legally set, is fueled by his obsession with his 2020 election loss to Joe Biden, which he falsely attributes to voting fraud, coupled with his fear that Democrats will “find a reason to impeach me” if they take control of the House in November’s midterms elections, say former election officials and legal experts.Given Trump’s dark mindset, his administration has used justice department legal moves and threats, FBI raids and investigations, and other federal agencies to coerce states to change voting rules in key ways, including curtailing voting by mail and machines that Trump and Maga allies have vilified, baselessly, as riddled with fraud.Legal experts say the administration is intimidating election workers and voters before the November elections, and laying the groundwork for potentially challenging election results where Republican candidates lose to ensure the GOP keeps control of Congress.In a conspiratorial 25-minute televised talk on 16 July, Trump presented a hodgepodge of selective intelligence and misleading allegations about Chinese efforts to influence the 2020 elections to hurt him, plus debunked claims of increased voting by noncitizens, flawed voting machines and other threats, to argue that the US elections system needs drastic changes.Trump asserted without hard evidence that American elections were rife with “hacking, manipulation and corruption. Great damage has been done to our country.”In a sharp rebuttal, the nation’s 24 Democratic governors said: “It’s deeply alarming that President Trump continues to try to undermine free and fair elections. No amount of lies and conspiracy theories can change the fact that our country’s elections have repeatedly been proven to be safe and secure.”Trump’s goal, say critics, is to instill fear in voters’ minds, and push for radical measures pre-election including congressional passage of the Save America Act, which would sharply limit voting by mail and require voters to present proof of US citizenship. It lacks the votes in the Senate to pass.Over the past few months, for example, the Department of Justice has demanded that 30 US states provide unredacted voter lists, which contain personal and sensitive information. In July, top justice department official Harmeet Dhillon threatened state election officials with criminal investigations and prosecutions if they knowingly permitted noncitizens to register to vote.The FBI has taken extraordinary steps to again investigate the Georgia election results in 2020 that Trump bitterly contested after his loss there: early in 2026, the FBI seized hundreds of boxes of 2020 ballots from Fulton county, and in July sent 200 agents there to investigate the 2020 results and election workers.The administration’s hardball tactics have sparked strong criticism from experts, and resistance including legal rebuffs from courts nationwide as well as state officials and Democrats.voting rights advocates and former election officials point out that courts have overwhelmingly rebuked justice department lawyers for their claims seeking to justify administration moves to obtain unredacted voting lists from the states and information about election workers in Georgia and other states.Eileen O’Connor, who spent eight years as an attorney in the justice department’s voting section in the civil rights division and is now with the Brennan Center for Justice, said: “[The] DoJ has had case after case seeking unredacted voter rolls from the states rejected by judges. The DoJ has filed 30 of these cases and has now lost 15 of them.”In another election-related matter where the Department of Justice sought detailed information on every election worker in Fulton county, Georgia, in the 2020 election, O’Connor noted the judge “openly excoriated the DoJ” and called the subpoena an “arbitrary fishing expedition”.Although the justice department is not winning in courts, O’Connor stressed, “they’re injecting chaos” into this year’s elections. More broadly, O’Connor said, the administration’s strategy was “to decrease confidence in the elections and possibly lay the groundwork for possible challenges” post-election.Former election officials are also raising red flags about Trump’s multiple moves to undermine confidence in the fall elections and intimidate voters and election workers.“Trump is trying to intimidate state election officials and threatening actions aimed at suppressing the Democratic vote,” said Larry Noble, a former general counsel at the Federal Election Commission who teaches law at the American University. “It’s also likely he thinks he’s laying the groundwork to claim that any Republican loss is due to fraud.”Noble said several of Trump’s recent actions – including his “firing the members of the non-partisan Election Assistance Commission, and suggesting he is open to possibly sending ICE agents and national guard troops to polling places” – were “a continuation of his efforts to exert control over the midterm elections”.He added: “It’s not clear what, if any, limits he has on how far he will go to prevent Democrats from gaining back power. I fear it’s even possible he will order actions to try to disrupt voting or vote counting during the election to avoid Republican losses.”Democratic and Republican election officials and congressional Democrats have been pushing back hard on the Trump administration’s multifront fight to change election rules.In a social media post, for instance, Deidre Henderson, Utah’s top election official and lieutenant governor, condemned the tone and tactics used by Dhillon in her threatening letter to states.“Got another love letter this morning from the DoJ, sprinkled throughout with threats of criminal prosecution,” Henderson wrote. “This is truly bizarre behavior by the federal agency that is supposed to be protecting civil rights.”In another pressure move, Dhillon told Michigan officials this month that the justice department plans to send federal monitors to three cities, including Lansing, that are Democratic-leaning while the state’s 4 August primaries are held.Likewise, the Federal Emergency Management Agency promulgated new rules late last month that demand states change how they conduct elections to avoid losing federal counter-terrorism funding from the Department of Homeland Security, Fema’s parent agency.Markwayne Mullin, in a press briefing the day after Trump’s speech, upped the ante by threatening local election officials with jail time if they failed to comply with the administration’s moves to change election policies. The DHS secretary reiterated several of Trump’s unsubstantiated assertions about the security of American elections.Voting experts and former justice department officials say the administration’s multifaceted blitz to overhaul voting rules is a dangerous political exercise aimed at boosting Trump’s powers and keeping the GOP in control of Congress.“Six years after the 2020 election, after audits, recounts, litigation and now internal investigation, Donald Trump has failed to produce any evidence of election tampering that changed votes,” said Barbara McQuade, a former US attorney who teaches law at the University of Michigan.“While foreign adversaries have conducted propaganda campaigns to influence public opinion, those operations have favored Trump as much as his opponents. Reducing foreign influence in our elections is a valid goal, but stopping voting by mail will not advance that goal. With an estimated one in four Democrats and one in five Republicans voting by mail, ending voting by mail has only one effect, and that is to favor Republican candidates.”McQuade added: “Trump’s speech revealed no new evidence and merely served to lay the groundwork for baseless claims of election fraud in November, when election outcomes will almost certainly be disastrous for a president with a dismal 37% approval rating.”Justin Levitt, a professor at Loyola Law School and a former top official in the justice department’s civil rights division, said: “The administration is trying desperately to project power that it simply doesn’t have. That includes trying to intimidate state and local officials who aren’t going to be intimidated.”Still, that intimidation drive is especially acute in the FBI’s efforts in Georgia.“The assignment of hundreds of FBI personnel to look at the 2020 election is doing nothing more than allowing a puppet FBI director to be dangled about by the president,” said Michael Moore, a former US attorney in Georgia.Some Republicans also worry that Trump’s obsession with his 2020 loss and his non-stop attacks on election rules and voting rights will backfire and hurt GOP candidates.“Trump simply has an unhealthy obsession with the 2020 election that he lost,” said Charlie Dent, the former Republican House member of Pennsylvania. “He’s using the levers of the federal government to investigate an election that’s already been well investigated.“Trump seems very determined to prevent losing congressional control by the GOP. But he’s doing so much that makes it difficult for the GOP to win.”In historical terms, some voting rights experts say the Trump administration’s attacks on voting rules are unprecedented and foresee other dangerous moves ahead.“The Trump administration is doing everything they can to stack the deck in their favor. This is the most hostile administration towards voting rights and democracy we’ve seen in our lifetimes,” said Jonathan Diaz, director of voting advocacy at the non-partisan Campaign Legal Center.Looking ahead, Diaz warned: “We have very real concerns that they’ll try to weaponize law enforcement either to disrupt or interfere with the elections while they’re in progress, or after ballots have been cast before they’re certified.”