Protecting the Vote

By Jessie Seigel / March 30, 2026

If the 2026 midterm elections are held fairly, freely and without voter suppression and intimidation, the Democrats may well win both houses of Congress big time.

Various special elections around the nation suggest that the American people are fed up with Mr. Trump and his abuses of power. Thirty such seats have flipped to Democrats thus far. One, a Florida state House seat, even includes Trump's Mar-a-Lago.  

Trump and his cabal recognize that if the Democrats win control of the Congress in the November 2026 election, they will have to answer for their many abuses of power and other illegal acts. For Mr. Trump and his minions, losing this election would not be a matter of “we’ll get ‘em next time” but, rather, a matter of life and death.

But though the Republican machine may be frightened, it is not running scared. Instead, the Trumpers have decided to rid themselves of the inconvenience of a fair and free election.

With every word coming from Trump’s mouth and every power at his command, he is out to steal it.

The Trump regime is conducting its war against democratic rule on multiple fronts, among them: trying to pass the SAVE ACT (to severely suppress voting rights, especially those of married women); trying to obtain state voter rolls ( to purge them); advocating partisan gerrymandering before the accommodating right-wing Supreme Court; directing the Department of Justice’s (DOJ) Civil Division to stop protecting voters’ rights; seizing ballots and taking control of locally elected Democratic enclaves (like Fulton County, Georgia); and proposing, illegally, to nationalize elections.

Many of these tactics are being fought in the courts by organizations like the American Civil Liberties Union and the Marc Elias law firm. In the lower courts, they are winning most of those battles. This is encouraging. Of course, they are still up against a president who ignores court orders, as well as a Supreme Court majority intent on completing the installation of a permanent oligarchy.

There are also Democratic senators and representatives who are trying their best to oppose these undemocratic actions in Congress. (Unfortunately, there were four who, shamefully, broke ranks to help the House Republicans pass the voter suppressing SAVE Act. They were: Hawaii Rep. Ed Case; Texas Rep. Henry Cuellar; Maine Rep. Jared Golden; and Washington Rep. Marie Gluesenkamp Perez. Frankly, these representatives should be primaried and drummed out of their party.) 

Fulton County, Georgia has filed a motion under the Federal Rules of Criminal Procedure to force DOJ to return the 2020 ballots and other records it has seized from the county. The degree to which Trump can feel emboldened to seize midterm ballots may depend on the outcome of this case.

If some of these challenges to the regime ultimately fail, it will make voting much harder, but with organization and numbers, the obstacles created can still be overcome. To prepare for that possibility, Joyce Vance, a former US attorney, MSNBC legal analyst, and author of the Substack column Civil Discourse, recommends that one:

(1)  plan now, so they are able to register to vote, stay registered, vote, and make sure their vote is counted. Vance notes that she has written about this in detail in her book, Giving Up is Unforgivable: A Manual For Keeping A Democracy);

(2)  Use one’s financial resources to obtain, and if one can, help others, to obtain the ID they need through groups like VoteRiders; and 

(3) Get involved with one's local League of Women Voters to help spread advance education about polling places and voting requirements in one's community. This is important because in the primaries, Republicans have changed some voting venues at the last moment, a tactic they may well use in the general election.

While Vance’s recommendations will be helpful, voters still must face the most dangerous obstacle of all: an apparent plan to place armed federal personnel at polling places.

As recently as February, the Arizona Senate attempted to pass a bill that would require all of the state’s 15 counties to authorize ICE to provide a “federal immigration law enforcement presence” at every polling location. Perhaps due to large-scale grass-roots opposition, the bill was pulled at the last moment, but it may be back.

Former Trump adviser Steve Bannon has called for ICE to “surround the polls come November.” 

The Bulwark has pointed out that such action:

would mean armed immigration agents stationed next to ballot boxes in immigrant neighborhoods and communities of color. Masked officers in tactical gear observing voting lines. It would mean citizens, especially those who look or sound Hispanic, forced to weigh whether casting a ballot is worth the risk of being questioned, harassed, or detained.

As the Bulwark added, this constitutes “voter intimidation at gunpoint."

Bannon has also said the presence of ICE at airports can be treated “as a test run, as a test case to really perfect ICE’s involvement in the 2026 midterm elections.”

The Trump regime has White House “border czar” Tom Holman doing public relations to prepare MAGA and others to accept the plan. In an appearance on the Charlie Kirk Show, Holman asked what the Democrats are afraid of, falsely claiming that “…part of DHS’ job is to secure elections.”  He added, “I’m not going to say, you know, you know, what our plan is going forward, but if only U.S. citizens can vote, I don’t see the issue of what [the Democrats are] concerned about.”

In addition, during his confirmation hearing, the new Homeland Security Secretary, Markwayne Mullin, claimed, “The only reason why my officers would be there [at polling places] is if there was a specific threat for them to be there, not for intimidation.” He added, “There will be a reason for us to be there, and it’ll be known why we’re there.”

What do you want to bet that Mullin, at Trump’s behest, will “find” a reason to be there?

Clearly, Holman and Mullin neither know nor care about the laws of this land. Federal law   bans “any troops or armed men at any place where a general or special election is held,” unless to “repel armed enemies of the United States.”

Prominent Democrats clearly are aware of the coming dangers to the midterm election. On ABC’s This Week, California Senator Adam Schiff stated, “we have to prepare for the worst.” He added, “I think [Trump] intends to try to subvert the elections. He will do everything he can to suppress the vote…And if he loses the vote — and I think the Republicans now expect they’ll get a real drubbing in the midterms — he’s prepared to try to take some kind of action to overturn the result.”

At the federal level, Democrats considered including among their demands for reforms to the Department of Homeland Security a requirement banning ICE agents from polling sites. Ultimately, they did not include it. Why? According to Politico, it was omitted to avoid a partial government shutdown.

So, the Democrats, as a national party, still need to locate their guts. Pick those guts up from the floor and stuff them back into their bodies. It is long past time they did.

On the other hand, a number of Democratic states, including California, Connecticut, New Mexico, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, Virginia and Washington, are acting to bar federal immigration agents from being near polling places and other election sites.

According to STATELINE, in California, Democratic State Sen. Tom Umberg, has introduced legislation that would prohibit federal immigration enforcement within 200 feet of polling places. 

Virginia is considering a bill that would prohibit federal civil immigration enforcement within 40 feet of polling places and vote counting sites.

New Mexico legislation would go even further, prohibiting the military as well as any other armed federal personnel from polling locations.

Sean Morales-Doyle, director of the Voting Rights and Elections program of the Brennan Center for Justice has stated that if ICE agents are, despite Constitutional prohibition, deployed to polling places, federal prosecutors would have five years to bring charges against ICE personnel under the statute of limitations. Thus, even if Trump's administration would not bring charges, the next administration could.

But if armed Trump agents are permitted to prevent citizens from voting, there is no cure that can be effected afterwards no matter what a court finds after the fact. In any event, Trump’s DOJ surely would not bring charges. And without serious legal consequences, who is to say that there will be a new next administration?

If Trump sends armed persons to the polls in the blue states that have banned armed agents, it could result in a Federal-State standoff—not just in court but a physical stand-off at the polls. If need be, it should. Citizens going to vote need to know that their local police, state police and state national guard will protect them and their rights—most especially their right to vote.

But what can be done in red states whose Republican-controlled governments will go along with the Trump cabal’s efforts to place armed ICE agents at the polls?

If local governments are willing, citizens should begin to consult and coordinate with them now in order to obtain protection of voters at the polls in November. If local governments are not willing, then citiizens need to coordinate with others in their community to go to the polls in groups. Follow the old adage that there’s safety in numbers. This might well discourage ICE action.

At a minimum, if ICE attempts to stop people from voting or tries to detain them, they will not be able to take people away one by one. The media will be forced to cover their actions. The Trump regime will not be able to pretend that it has conducted a free, fair election. Where democracy stands in this country will be entirely clear to all the country and all the world.