President Donald Trump has no legitimate grounds to order the seizure of ballots or voting machines during this year’s midterm elections.
But the dismal reality is he may try anyway.
The potential illegal voting identified by the Department of Justice is painstakingly microscopic: just 0.00006% of all ballots cast in the elections at issue, or one alleged illegal vote for every 1.7 million votes.
The group argued that if the Supreme Court were to once again change New Hampshire’s rules around student IDs, it would create confusion about voting and disenfranchise voters.
Through its extraordinary lawsuit against California, the Justice Department is trying to bypass bans on last-minute registration purges by targeting voters’ ballots directly.
“This confirmation is necessary because Department leaders have been sending conflicting public signals,” the senators wrote in a letter to Blanche.
In public statements, the Trump administration misrepresented central allegations in its lawsuit seeking to bar California from counting ballots from tens of thousands of voters in the midterms.
The program is part of a DOJ campaign to obtain state voter roll data, as President Donald Trump aims to take control of elections.
President Trump threatened California election officials with jail time hours after the Justice Department warned that they could face “criminal exposure” if they do not disenfranchise thousands of voters the federal government has flagged as potential noncitizens.
Voting in Nevada’s 2026 midterms begins Saturday, with voters casting their ballots amid increased federal scrutiny of the state’s electoral process and an election denier on the ballot.
The Department of Justice dramatically escalated its confrontation with California election officials Friday, explicitly warning that they could face federal criminal exposure if they count ballots from voters the Trump administration has flagged as potential noncitizens.
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