Everything is on the table: Officials prepare for Trump to try to steal the 2026 election

When the Justice Department raided election offices in Fulton County, Georgia, to seize ballots, tabulations and other materials related to the 2020 election on Jan. 28, it marked a new phase in President Donald Trump’s efforts to prove his conspiracy theory about voter fraud. It also raised new fears that this president, who already tried to steal one election, may be laying the groundwork to try to steal another.

That raid wasn’t just about settling old scores for Trump, it also seemed like “a test to mess with election administrators and vote counting in the 2026 midterms,” Richard Hasen, an election expert at UCLA School of Law, wrote in Slate in January.

Since entering politics in 2015, Trump has claimed, falsely, that every election he participated in was marred by fraud. In his second term, he has taken steps to weaponize the federal government against this imaginary fraud, attempting to restrict voting and wrest control of the electoral process from the states. This has led to growing fears that he will try to interfere in the 2026 midterm elections in various ways, including deploying the National Guard, surrounding ballot boxes with immigration agents, declaring a national security emergency and, following the raid in Fulton County, confiscating ballots and voting machines.

It’s easier said than done. First, any attempt to seize ballots on or after Election Day would be wildly illegal.

“There are almost no circumstances in which it is appropriate or legal to confiscate ballots or election equipment,” said Wendy Weiser, vice president of democracy at the Brennan Center for Justice, a progressive nonprofit that advocates for voting rights.

But observers remain deeply cautious. And, more importantly, there are countless ways that state election officials and the candidates themselves can counter this threat before or after any action by the administration.

Democratic secretaries of state say they are preparing for every possible form of midterm election interference by the Trump administration, such as confiscating ballots as it did in Fulton County.

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“If something like this were to happen in Colorado, the first thing we would do is immediately go to court to try to quash the effort,” said Colorado Secretary of State Jena Griswold. “We have been preparing for this event and many other scenarios of federal disruption in our elections.”

In Minnesota, Secretary of State Steve Simon said his office is working with national groups and other secretaries of state to plan how to respond if the federal government interferes in elections by trying to seize ballots or in any other way.

“We are actively looking at what these scenarios could be,” Simon said. “It’s sad that in 2026 we have to treat this like a bomb threat.”

Griswold said his office has hired additional counsel to prepare for potential post-election litigation and trained staff to respond to a search warrant seeking to seize ballots or other election infrastructure.

There are two legitimate ways the administration could seize ballots after an election: by issuing a court order or a subpoena to obtain them. Both must be approved by the courts.

“With a court order, there is prior judicial review,” Weiser said.

The raid in Fulton County, however, raises the specter that a judge could approve a warrant based on false information. The legality of that order, which was riddled with disproven conspiracies while omitting key facts, is now being challenged in court by Fulton County election officials seeking the return of seized records. The challenge specifically cites “Material Omissions and Misstatements” in the affidavit the government used as the basis for seeking the order. That may put judges on alert for misrepresentations by the administration in court orders in the future.

“Due to the actions in Fulton County, election officials, law enforcement officials and magistrate judges are well aware of the threat and can now prepare in advance for this potential abuse and ensure it is not harmful,” Weiser said. “I would be very surprised if another judge approved an order like the one in Fulton County.”

Ironically, another possible line of defense comes from Trump’s own allies.

It arises from a Supreme Court ruling that was handed down just a few months ago. In Bost v. Illinois State Board of Elections, the court, in an opinion written by Chief Justice John Roberts, ruled that Rep. Mike Bost (R-Ill.), who backed Trump’s 2020 voter fraud lies, had standing to challenge election rules (in this case, the timing of counting late mail-in ballots) before suffering any potential harm.

It’s a crucial distinction when it comes to potential electoral chicanery. Typically, those who file a lawsuit must be harmed first to have standing to sue. In electoral cases, that generally means that candidates cannot challenge the new electoral rules until the election has concluded and they perceive that the rules harmed the outcome of their race. But the justices ruled 7 to 2 that, even if they still win, “candidates suffer when the process deviates from the law” and that such a deviation can “deprive the candidate of a fair process and an accurate result.”

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It puts a potential new tool in the arsenal of those watching election denial in 2026 and beyond.

“By this standard, a candidate certainly has an interest in preventing the FBI from taking actions that would (in the words of the chief justice) ‘deprive the candidate of a fair process and an accurate result,'” said Edward Foley, director of election law at Ohio State’s Moritz College of Law. he wrote in a post for SCOTUSblog.

Seizing ballots, voting machines, tabulators, or any other piece of election infrastructure directly threatens a “fair process” and “accurate result” because it breaks the chain of custody required by state and federal laws. Under Foley’s Bost theory, a candidate could then file a lawsuit before the election seeking a court order prohibiting any executive branch agency from seizing election materials.

But even if candidates choose not to test the court’s Bost decision on the theory that it applies to threatened executive actions, states and election administrators can also intervene.

When asked about using the Bost precedent to obtain an injunction preventing federal interference in advance, Griswold noted that while he would not divulge his litigation strategy, states have used preemptive actions before: He pointed to Oregon and Illinois, which went to court to block National Guard deployments in 2025.

“So, absolutely, everything is on the table,” Griswold said.

Courts could also stop interference early by simply not approving Justice Department orders to request ballots or other materials. The warrant in Fulton County also targeted materials from an election that was already held six years ago, not an election that is underway or has just been completed. Any judge would be much more skeptical about a similar order for an ongoing election, Weiser said.

Similarly, a subpoena provides an opportunity to counter it: States and election officials can intervene and demand a court order before any materials are seized. And state election officials are already on high alert for the administration’s efforts to interfere in the election, having successfully worked to defeat Trump’s executive order on the election and lawsuits to seize sensitive voter registration records by getting judges to repeatedly block the effort in court.

“They are trying very aggressively to meddle in elections and expand inappropriate powers, but they have been very successful in controlling that,” Weiser said of the administration. “These are not paths that are viable for them.”