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The upcoming midterm elections seem destined to serve as a bellwether for the state of democracy in this deeply fraught period of U.S. electoral history. The results will be interpreted as a referendum on the catastrophically unpopular second Trump administration and will determine much of the legislative landscape over the next two years. Substantial Democratic victories could significantly constrain Trump’s powers or even place his presidency in jeopardy, and the Election Day performance of crucial structures and procedures could attest to either a resilient democracy — insofar as the country’s very flawed but still-vital electoral institutions are worthy of the name — or, conversely, a system that has at last been compromised by years of right-wing attacks, leaving the integrity and legitimacy of future votes in serious question.

The Trump administration, keenly aware of the stakes, has gone to unprecedented lengths to exert undue influence on electoral procedures. Having mobilized the Department of Justice (DOJ), the FBI, and other arms of the federal government now radically subservient to Trump, the administration is pursuing numerous strategies, legal and extralegal, to bludgeon its way into sensitive databases, neutralize electoral safeguards, and disenfranchise legitimate voters, with the intent of negating the wishes of the U.S. public and illicitly enshrining their own power.

In reality, states are fully capable of maintaining their own rolls without the DOJ’s intervention (removing individuals who have died or moved out of state, for instance). And, more to the point, cases of “illegal voting” are extraordinary rarities, and have collectively had less-than-negligible — zero — impact on any real election results. Since the DOJ’s rationales are utterly fictitious, it’s not hard to imagine that there may be other motives underlying their aggressive nationwide efforts to access voter rolls, given that these initiatives originate from an administration led by and filled with election deniers.

Obtaining unredacted state rolls has not always been a simple matter, and the Trump Justice Department has in many cases resorted to strongarming, undermining, or otherwise attempting to manipulate state governments and other agencies to further its aims. Any plan to wrest election operations away from the states must inevitably find ways to circumvent the fundamental obstacle to federal control — Article 1, Section 4 of the Constitution, according to which elections are to be overseen solely by the states. Of course, questions of constitutionality have never burdened Trump’s conscience, and he has openly announced his desire to “nationalize” elections and place them under federal (i.e., his) jurisdiction. Were that to someday occur, unfettered voter roll access would be a boon for election manipulators.

Still — in court, at least — the Trump administration’s efforts to attain that level of nationwide control have been less than fruitful. The Trump DOJ has initiated numerous lawsuits that seek to force states to sign data-handover agreements: no fewer than 31 to date, with one of those filed against Washington, D.C., and the rest against states, most of them governed by Democrats. Of the remaining 20 states not sued, 16, all Republican-led, dutifully volunteered to submit their voters’ crucial personal data to Trump’s feds without a fight. Back in December 2025, the DOJ sent Republican governors a confidential deal to sign; it gave the federal government unprecedented roll access and also allowed the DOJ to share that highly sensitive personal data with the Department of Homeland Security (DHS). The text of those confidential agreements, Eileen O’Connor wrote in a Brennan Center report, “reveals both the DOJ’s plans to interfere with the states’ authority to run elections and how dangerously insecure the sensitive data will be in the department’s hands.”

Activists Are Preparing to Defend Elections This November

The administration is pursuing numerous strategies, legal and extralegal, to bludgeon its way into sensitive databases, neutralize electoral safeguards, and disenfranchise legitimate voters.

The administration is pursuing numerous strategies, legal and extralegal, to bludgeon its way into sensitive databases, neutralize electoral safeguards, and disenfranchise legitimate voters.

O’Connor then cited an especially troubling case in which a “Department of Government Efficiency,” or DOGE, employee working at the Social Security Administration (SSA) at the time of the former agency’s ransacking of the latter was found to have signed an agreement to illicitly funnel voter data to an external entity. The incident came to light in the course of a union lawsuit against the SSA and........

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