After high-level Trump administration officials said they might send armed officers to the polls during the upcoming midterm elections, and after months of administration efforts to wrest control of some aspects of voting from state officials and limit how people vote, there’s a lot of fear that armed federal officials will disrupt voting and even seize ballots. A number of civil rights and voter advocacy groups and labor unions have filed lawsuits against the Trump administration to bar any such presence, with one suit claiming that “threatening messaging and violent enforcement actions” by administration officials “have created a climate in which voters, especially voters of color, are intimidated and fearful of engaging in the democratic process.”

The Conversation asked scholar Danielle Friedman, legal director of the State Democracy Research Initiative at the University of Wisconsin Law School, to answer four fundamental questions about the law protecting voters’ rights at the polls as well as the protection of their ballots.

What does the law say about armed officials at polling places?

Federal law directly prohibits federal troops or armed officers, including federal law enforcement agents, from appearing at polling places during an election.

Other federal laws, which more broadly prohibit any intimidation of, or interference........

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