Democracy Docket: State election chiefs are huddling to plan responses to Trump’s expected interference in midterms

Democracy Docket "Democratic state election chiefs have for months been meeting privately for planning exercises, including tabletop simulations, gaming out their response to expected election interference by President Donald Trump and his administration…. the potential nightmare scenarios being envisaged range from Trump sending armed federal agents to polling places, to efforts to disrupt mail-in voting via the U.S. Postal Service, to attempts to meddle with voting machines or to block election certification.“

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Democracy Docket

Exclusive: State election chiefs are huddling to plan responses to Trump’s expected interference in midterms
By Matt Cohen

February 25, 2026

Democratic Secretaries of State, Sarah Copeland Hanzas, Vt., left, Shenna Bellows, Maine, center, and Gregg Amore, R.I., speak with reporters during the National Associate of Secretaries of State Conference in Washington, Friday, Jan. 30, 2026. (AP Photo/Cliff Owen)

By phone, over Zoom and in person at a recent Washington, D.C. conference, Democratic state election chiefs have for months been meeting privately for planning exercises, including tabletop simulations, gaming out their response to expected election interference by President Donald Trump and his administration.

According to interviews conducted by Democracy Docket with six Democratic secretaries of state, the potential nightmare scenarios being envisaged range from Trump sending armed federal agents to polling places, to efforts to disrupt mail-in voting via the U.S. Postal Service, to attempts to meddle with voting machines or to block election certification.

“Part of that’s a litigation response, part of that is a communications response, part of that is a purely administrative response,” Minnesota Secretary of State Steve Simon told Democracy Docket. “But we’re planning out what we would do if certain things happen.”

That the conversations are happening at all is a stark sign of how Trump’s relentless threats to undermine the vote have already changed election planning beyond recognition.

“It used to be that the things we’re saying out loud were unthinkable,” said Vermont Secretary of State Sarah Copeland Hanzas. “That it was thought to be a little bit loony and out of touch with reality, if you even considered the idea that the President might mobilize the National Guard to patrol elections.”

The extraordinary planning sessions, organized in part by national democracy advocates, come as fears mount that Trump will try to use the federal government to restrict voting or otherwise rig the outcome in the GOP’s favor — despite the U.S. Constitution’s clear direction that only states have the power to run elections.

The effort started in earnest in September, when the DOJ sued six states for access to their full, unredacted voter rolls.

“I think that sort of sent up alarm bells the DOJ is now an adversary rather than a support,” Maine Secretary of State Shenna Bellows said.

But the conversations between state election leaders about how to confront the various ways in which Trump might try to meddle in the midterms intensified at the beginning of the year, when the president repeatedly called for taking control of elections.

“You take that in conjunction with efforts to pass the SAVE Act, and then the ICE presence in Minnesota and Maine, and I think all of that really came to a head at the NASS conference,” Bellows added, referencing the annual winter gathering of secretaries of state in Washington, D.C. in late January. “Suddenly secretaries are talking to each other about, ‘Okay, how are we going to confront an ICE presence at the polls? How are we going to confront federal attempts to take over elections?’”

The signs that Trump will try to intervene are too many and too big to ignore: the FBI raiding an election hub for 2020 ballots in a key Georgia county; an unprecedented effort by the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) to obtain private voter data from every state, and the GOP’s all-in push to pass new voter suppression laws.

Perhaps most worryingly: Trump has openly said the federal government ought to wrest control of elections from the states and take control of voting.

All of the secretaries Democracy Docket spoke to emphasize that interference from Trump isn’t guaranteed to happen — and the preparations aren’t meant to worry voters.

“[This is] not a prediction,” Simon said. “I’m not prepared yet to say I’m predicting it will happen. But as with any category of hazard, whether it’s a bomb threat, or power outage, or a weather event, we have to plan for that stuff. It would be irresponsible for us not to.”

‘The DOJ is now an adversary rather than a support’

Election disaster preparedness is an essential job function for secretaries of state. Even when it’s not an election year, state election chiefs are deep in planning for the next one, working with state and local authorities to prepare for all the different ways an election could be disrupted.

“Several times a year — oftentimes every other month — we’ll bring together local clerks, law enforcement, and first responders to go through different potential scenarios, from fires at the drop boxes to other types of disasters that could have occurred that could impact our elections,” said Michigan Secretary of State Jocelyn Benson.

But since 2020, disaster preparedness among Democratic election officials has evolved to include legal challenges and federal interference from the Trump administration, which tried to overturn that year’s presidential vote — and has since worked to sow doubt in the election process.

“Election officials are the world’s best contingency planners,” Bellows said. “As we plan for 2026, unfortunately, our plans have started to include the unthinkable: How do we safeguard our election from federal interference? The Constitution places the states, not the federal government, in charge of elections.”

Bellows emphasized that both federal law and Maine state law prohibits armed federal agents at the polls.

“Should the federal government come in to try to seize ballots and equipment, we would have the tools to fight them in court and to do everything in our power to prevent that from happening,” Bellows added.

Democratic election chiefs aren’t working alone — they’re coordinating with their state attorneys general on the legal response to various scenarios, they say. The AGs reportedly have been gaming out their legal response if the Trump administration were to confiscate ballots and voting machines, delay mail ballot delivery, or block election certification.

“This is the ongoing reality of what running elections unfortunately is these days,” Benson said. “But it’s something that has enabled us to be continually prepared for anything that this presidential administration throws at us, or others, who are trying to disrupt our elections.”

Preparing for everything

Oregon Secretary of State Tobias Read noted that states have different election laws, which will require different responses.

“It’s going to look different in each state,” Read told Democracy Docket. “In Oregon, I feel like we have some significant advantages because of the way we run elections. If the president were to try to send the National Guard — as inappropriate and illegal as that is — to interfere in elections, where do they go? We don’t have polling places. We have vote-by-mail. So intimidation doesn’t work the same way in Oregon as it would elsewhere.”

But Read stressed the importance of state election leaders being in constant communication with each other on disaster preparedness, even if their state election laws differ.

“We share the lessons that we have,” Read added. “There are some other states, of course, that do their elections all by mail — and virtually every state has some connection to ballots cast by mail. And every state is dealing with the U.S. Postal Service…. We can’t rely on them in the same way that we might have in the past. So we got to talk about all those things and share our ideas and there’s nothing to be taken for granted.”

Dax Goldstein, the senior counsel & election protection program director at States United Democracy Center, emphasized to Democracy Docket that planning for worst-case scenarios is what secretaries of state and local election officials are trained to do best.

“Before a voter walks into a polling place or mails their ballot, there’s been months of planning, prepping, and performing under pressure,” Goldstein said. “And right now, they’re doing what they do best: getting ready to ensure another free, fair, and secure election.”

Goldstein noted that election officials aren’t just trained for disaster preparedness but regular duties like list maintenance, training election workers, and testing voting machines.

“But like the good contingency planners they are, they also have to consider threats to our elections,” they added. “And right now, that means considering the efforts from the federal government to take power away from states and undermine our elections.”

Bellows echoed Goldstein’s concerns. “What’s new in 2026 is a president who is terrified of huge political losses in November and can’t get over his loss in 2020 intent on reshaping the electorate by restricting who gets to vote, interfering with state sovereignty over election and threatening the integrity of the election itself,” she said.

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