Manufacturing Doubt: How the 2026 Midterms Are Being Set Up for a Fight

Americans vote on Tuesday, November 3, with control of the House and Senate at stake. In the months leading up to Election Day, the Trump administration has taken an unusual number of actions aimed at how the election is run, who gets to vote, and how the results might be challenged.

Taken one at a time, some of these moves can sound reasonable. Nobody wants noncitizens voting, and nobody objects to clean voter rolls. But taken together, and measured against what we actually know about election fraud, they form a pattern that goes far beyond normal election oversight. The pattern points toward building public suspicion about the results before a single vote is counted, which could be used to challenge or delay outcomes if Democrats win.

Everything below comes from credible reporting, court records, or official statements. Where the administration has offered a defense, it’s included.

The starting point: fraud is rare

Any discussion of “election integrity” has to begin with the evidence, and the evidence is consistent. Voter fraud happens, but rarely, and it’s usually caught. Even a database kept by the conservative Heritage Foundation has collected more than 1,600 cases over 40 years, a tiny fraction of the votes cast in that time. A review by the nonpartisan Center for Election Innovation & Research found instances of illegal voting are “extremely small.”

The 2020 election, which President Trump still says was stolen, was examined by courts, state officials and recounts, and none found fraud that changed the result. Experts agree there’s no evidence of foreign interference in 2020.

That’s why the scale of this fall’s federal activity stands out. It’s aimed at a problem that, by every serious measure, is small.

Claims that collapse when tested

The administration’s central claim is that noncitizens are voting in large numbers. When those claims have been checked, they’ve fallen apart.

Nevada. In July, the Department of Homeland Security told Nevada that as many as 15,903 noncitizens might be registered there. Under questioning, the number fell to 185, and then to zero. Nevada’s secretary of state said DHS still hadn’t provided evidence to back its claims. The president had already cited the original number in a national address. The correction got far less attention.

California. In mid-October, after voting had begun, the Justice Department sued to stop California from counting ballots from more than 20,000 people federal agencies flagged as “likely” noncitizens. A federal appeals court declined to step in, and two of the three judges questioned the accuracy of the government’s list. One, a Trump appointee, wrote that the government’s arguments weren’t supported by the law. California’s attorney general noted that the 28 people actually charged were a tiny fraction of the state’s 23 million voters.

Lawsuits against the states. The Justice Department sued 30 states and the District of Columbia for their full voter rolls, including sensitive details like driver’s license numbers and partial Social Security numbers. As of late October, it had lost 26 of those cases and won none, with judges appointed by both parties, including several Trump appointees, ruling against it. The remaining cases, in Delaware, Hawaii, Idaho and Utah, were still pending.

Voter registration groups. Internal DHS reports show the department reviewed nonprofits that register voters and considered sending undercover agents into them. The New York Times reported more than 150 organizations were looked into. In some cases the reviews found nothing, such as research on about 41 New Jersey groups that turned up no negative information.

When a claim is announced loudly and withdrawn quietly, the announcement does the work. Voters remember “thousands of illegal voters,” not “zero.”

Breaking with how past administrations behaved

Many of this year’s moves have no recent precedent, under presidents of either party.

Prosecutions close to the election. For decades, the Justice Department has generally avoided public actions against political figures within about 60 days of an election, so it wouldn’t appear to be influencing voters. Attorney General Todd Blanche says the practice isn’t in the department’s written rules. This fall, Virginia State Sen. Louise Lucas, a prominent Democrat, was indicted 12 days before the election. Federal agents searched Rep. Ilhan Omar’s home in a case involving immigration paperwork her late father filled out when she was a child. A grand jury refused to indict Cassidy Hutchinson, the former aide who testified about January 6, a rare rebuke. The department also pushed prosecutors nationwide to bring more noncitizen voting cases before the midterms.

The attorney general campaigning. Blanche has spoken at Republican rallies and at the party’s convention. An October memo loosened the department’s rules on political activity for top appointees, dropping a stricter standard that, a former department ethics official said, past attorneys general had followed for more than 20 years. Eric Holder, for example, never spoke at the Democratic convention or at campaign rallies.

Election observers. For the first time since 2002, the United States did not invite observers from the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe, a 57-nation group that monitors elections. They were invited even during Trump’s first term, for the 2018 midterms. The Justice Department, meanwhile, plans its largest-ever monitoring effort, about 1,000 monitors, up from 86 jurisdictions in 2024. One person it reportedly sent as a monitor had pleaded guilty to illegally accessing government election websites.

Taxpayer-funded ads. The administration spent about $20 million in Homeland Security money on TV ads featuring the president in the weeks before the election, each ending with the line “Paid for by the U.S. Government.” The White House called them public service announcements. Republican Senate Majority Leader John Thune said they shouldn’t be paid for by taxpayers, and a federal judge ordered the remaining ads canceled.

Control of a super PAC. Federal law bars officeholders from directing super PACs, which can raise unlimited money. The president has called MAGA Inc.’s $400 million “my money that I control.” A watchdog group’s complaint is pending; MAGA Inc. says it follows the law.

Promises tied to the vote. The president told convention-goers he would give every adult a $5,000 “Trump dividend” if Republicans keep Congress, and it was unclear whether the payments would be legal. Federal law makes it a crime to promise a government benefit as a reward for supporting a party in an election. He also signed pardons onstage at an Alaska campaign rally while urging voters to back the state’s Republican senator.

Weakening the defenses while warning of attacks

If the administration truly believed elections were under threat, you’d expect it to strengthen the systems that protect them. It has done the opposite.

Over the past year, the administration cut staff and shut down offices that tracked foreign disinformation aimed at U.S. elections. ProPublica reported that early in the second term, DHS political appointees asked the agency’s cybersecurity arm to secretly buy and hack a voting machine, send the findings to the White House, and not alert the manufacturer about any flaws. Staff said it couldn’t be done, and no test took place. Former officials worried that such results could be kept in reserve to discredit outcomes they didn’t like.

Warning about danger while dismantling the defenses against it is hard to explain as a sincere concern for security.

Contradictions that reveal the strategy

Some of the clearest signals come from the president’s own shifting positions.

On mail voting. In March, the president ordered the Postal Service to deliver mail ballots only to voters on preapproved lists, a plan the Supreme Court blocked for this election. Then, with Republicans trailing in polls, he began urging supporters to vote any way they can, including by mail. He has voted by mail himself. If mail voting were truly a fraud risk, the president wouldn’t be encouraging his own voters to use it.

On cheating. At the Republican convention, the president led the crowd in a pledge that included the line “I’m going to try to cheat like hell like they do.” Supporters saw it as a joke aimed at Democrats. But it’s a strange line for a president who says protecting elections from cheating is a top priority.

On the 2020 election. The president told The New York Times in January that he “should have” ordered the National Guard to seize ballot boxes during the 2020 election. After the FBI raided Fulton County, Georgia’s election office this year, he said Republicans should “nationalize the voting” and “take over” elections in 15 places. States, not the federal government, run elections under the Constitution.

Laying the groundwork to contest the results

Several moves look aimed less at Election Day than at what comes after it.

Conditional acceptance. Asked whether he’ll accept the outcome, the president has said he will “if they’re honest.” He has spent years saying Democrats can only win by cheating, so that condition gives him room to reject results he doesn’t like. A Washington Post-ABC News-Ipsos poll found 7 in 10 Americans lack confidence he would accept a Republican defeat, including over a third of Republicans.

Alaska. The Justice Department sued to block certification of a possible win by Democrat Mary Peltola over a second candidate on the ballot named Dan Sullivan, the same name as the Republican senator. Courts had already ruled he could stay on the ballot. The New York Times later reported that Peltola’s campaign was involved in recruiting a same-name candidate, which is a legitimate ethics concern. But legal experts say the federal lawsuit itself has little legal basis, and it’s the first attempt this cycle to block a result in advance.

Talk of force. Some of the president’s outside allies openly discuss martial law if they believe the election is rigged. His childhood friend, attorney Peter Ticktin, told The Atlantic the president’s choice would be “Either martial law, or step aside.” A White House official said those allies have no role in election policy, and the president has announced no such plan. But election experts surveyed earlier this year mostly thought it likely the president would ask federal agents to seize voting equipment after the election, and some FBI agents have told reporters they fear being ordered to do it.

The administration’s side

The administration says its goal is simple: making sure only citizens vote and that results can be trusted. It points to real cases of noncitizens registering, often by mistake through driver’s license offices, and says states haven’t done enough to clean their rolls. It says monitors won’t interfere with voting, that the ads promoted the country rather than candidates, and that prosecutors follow the evidence regardless of timing. Blanche has said the department doesn’t do “political paybacks.”

Those arguments deserve a hearing. But each one has been tested, and each has come up short.

On noncitizen voting, the administration’s own numbers have collapsed under scrutiny. Nevada’s supposed 15,903 noncitizen voters turned out to be zero, and the Justice Department has lost every voter-roll lawsuit decided so far, often before judges appointed by Trump himself. The mistaken registrations it points to are mostly clerical errors made by state offices, not fraud by voters. Even inside the department, senior officials have questioned how prosecutors can prove criminal intent when thousands of lawful residents were registered by accident.

On monitors, the first test came during this year’s primaries. Wyoming’s Republican governor said the behavior of two Justice Department monitors was “a bit aggressive,” and a county clerk said they arrived intending to interview voters, which her office didn’t allow.

On the ads, the strongest rebuttal came from the president’s own party. The Senate’s top Republican said taxpayers shouldn’t pay for them, and a federal judge ordered them stopped.

On prosecutions, the results speak for themselves. A grand jury of ordinary citizens refused to indict Cassidy Hutchinson. The prosecutor hired to lead the “grand conspiracy” case quit without charging anyone.

An administration acting in good faith would adjust when its claims kept failing. Instead, each failure has been followed by a new claim, a new lawsuit or a new investigation, while the underlying message, that the election can’t be trusted, stays the same.

Why it matters, and what voters can do

Each of these actions alone might be explained away. Together, they create a steady drumbeat telling Americans that the election can’t be trusted, without the evidence to back it up. That doubt is the point. A public primed to believe in fraud is more likely to accept delayed certifications, lawsuits to throw out ballots, or federal interference after Election Day.

We don’t have to guess where this kind of campaign can lead, because the country has seen it before. After losing the 2020 election, Trump claimed it was stolen, his allies filed dozens of lawsuits that failed in court, and state officials were pressured to change the results. On January 6, 2021, a mob of his supporters stormed the Capitol to stop Congress from certifying his loss. He was later indicted for allegedly scheming to overturn the election, though the case was largely dismissed after he won a second term. On his first day back in office, he pardoned the rioters, including those convicted of attacking police officers. This year, he said he “should have” ordered the National Guard to seize ballot boxes in 2020.

That history doesn’t tell us what will happen this November. It does explain why election officials, judges and voters are taking this fall’s warning signs seriously.

The good news is that the system has held so far. Courts have blocked the mail ballot rule, the taxpayer ads and the California ballot challenge. Grand juries have refused weak cases. State officials of both parties have pushed back, as many did in 2020. The basic rules haven’t changed: states run elections, federal troops can’t be stationed at polling places, and an eligible voter’s ballot counts.

Voters can help by making their own vote hard to challenge. Check your registration on your state’s official election website. If you vote by mail, send your ballot early or use an official drop box. If anything goes wrong at the polls, ask for a provisional ballot and call your county election office or the nonpartisan Election Protection hotline at 866-OUR-VOTE.

Sources

Background reading

This article used Seth Abramson’s Proof series as a starting point for research. All facts above were independently checked. Readers who want his full analysis can find the series on his Substack, Proof: Part I; Part II; Part III; Part IV; Part V; and Part VI. (Part VII will be released later.)

How rare fraud is

Claims that collapse

Breaking with past practice

Weakening election defenses

Contradictions

After Election Day

The 2020 precedent

Manufacturing Doubt: How the 2026 Midterms Are Being Set Up for a Fight