Jack-o-Lan-Turn-In-Your-Ballots

Since President Trump returned to office, the federal government has attempted to exert unprecedented control over American elections. From executive orders targeting mail voting, to investigations based on debunked theories about the 2020 election, to spreading false claims about the equipment that has accurately counted Americans’ ballots for years, our democracy has been tested in new ways.

But elections are run by states, not the president—and states have been fighting back. Time after time, state officials have taken the administration to court to defend their authority to decide the best way to run their state’s elections. And in case after case, judges have ruled in their favor, upholding that fundamental feature of our Constitution.

It may take time to get final results next week, especially in close races. That’s normal. It’s a sign that the election process is working, and that officials are working hard to make sure the results are accurate. (Americans overwhelmingly agree that getting vote counts right is more important than getting them done quickly, according to a States United survey.)

Here’s the bottom line: Thanks to the hard work of state and local election officials, Americans can trust that they can cast their ballots safely, that all eligible votes will be counted, and that the results will be fair, secure, and accurate. Nobody—not even the president—can stop Americans from making their voices heard next week.

Judge rejects DOJ’s request to set aside some California ballots
A federal judge denied the Trump administration’s effort to stop California election officials from counting 20,000 ballots in next week’s elections. The Justice Department has appealed.

The administration filed the case two weeks ago, alleging that the state’s voter registration list contained noncitizens. But after investigating a sample of the names identified by the administration, county election officials found that roughly a quarter of them were born in the United States.

“Never before in American history has the federal government, on the eve of an election, sought to coerce a state and local government to abandon their own Constitutional elections procedures and bend to the will of the Executive Branch,” the judge wrote in his ruling.

The Justice Department also issued grand jury subpoenas to election workers in Los Angeles County as part of an expanding criminal investigation into alleged noncitizen voting, with employees ordered to appear in court the day after Election Day.

➡️ MORE: What’s Breaking Through About False Claims of Noncitizen Voting

The Justice Department alleges noncitizens on Washington state’s voter rolls
Federal prosecutors wrote to Washington Secretary of State Steve Hobbs, providing a list of hundreds of names that they alleged are noncitizens registered to vote in the state. The prosecutors asked Hobbs to order election officials to temporarily set aside their ballots in next week’s elections, too.

But Hobbs said that his office reviewed the list of names and found that many were U.S. citizens. “It is almost certain more people named on this list are also United States citizens,” Hobbs wrote in his response to the prosecutors, adding that setting aside ballots would risk wrongfully denying Americans of their right to vote.

Separately, a federal judge ordered the Trump administration to disclose which states have received Justice Department demands to remove voters from the rolls, withhold ballots, or set aside votes from alleged noncitizens.

The Trump administration charges James Comey, again
Federal prosecutors charged former FBI Director James Comey for a third time, in the latest effort to bring criminal charges against one of the president’s political rivals.

The first case against Comey was dismissed after a judge ruled that the federal prosecutor who led the case was not in office lawfully and did not have the authority to bring charges. Comey’s attorneys asked a judge to dismiss the second case, too, arguing that the charges are based on President Trump’s personal animus toward the former FBI director.

➡️ MORE: How Politicized Prosecutions Undermine the Rule of Law

In Arizona, Maricopa County Recorder Justin Heap restored 25 voters’ registrations after Arizona Attorney General Kris Mayes and Secretary of State Adrian Fontes sued.

Heap’s office deregistered the voters after using a faulty federal database to attempt to identify noncitizens on his county’s voter registration lists. Heap flagged 60 people who had voted for investigation, 25 of whom had their voter registrations canceled. But the county’s investigation found that just eight of the 60 were, in fact, noncitizens; the rest were Americans.

The federal database—called Systematic Alien Verification for Entitlements, or SAVE—was originally designed to verify the citizenship status of people applying for benefits like food stamps and Medicaid, but the Trump administration expanded its use last year to check voters’ citizenship in bulk.

“It should not have taken litigation to make Justin Heap follow the law—that is his duty and the duty of all election officials,” Mayes wrote in a post on social media. “The Arizona Attorney General’s Office will continue to enforce our voting laws and protect the sacred constitutional rights of every eligible voter in our state.”

➡️ MORE: Sharing the Facts About Using the SAVE Citizenship Check Program for Elections

In California, a federal judge ruled that the top federal prosecutor for the Los Angeles area was serving in his role unlawfully. The Justice Department said it would appeal.

Bill Essayli was first appointed by the Trump administration last year to be the U.S. attorney for the Central District of California on a temporary basis. Federal law allowed him to stay in that temporary role for 120 days. But after those 120 days were up, then-Attorney General Pam Bondi newly appointed him as the office’s “first assistant,” its second-highest position. This move kept Essayli in charge of the office without the approval of Congress. This important part of the process serves as a check.

The administration has used similar strategies to keep its preferred prosecutors in charge of federal prosecutors’ offices across the country, circumventing checks and balances and undermining the rule of law in the process.

➡️ MORE: The Trump Administration’s U.S. Attorney Strategy, Explained

MS NOW: As the DOJ amps up threats against noncitizen voting in California, the number of cases remain low

Those five individuals now appear to be charged only with the crime of making a false statement under oath in a naturalization application, not with unlawfully registering to vote or voting, said [States United Rule of Law Program Director] Samantha Trepel, a former Justice Department prosecutor, who reviewed some of the charging documents.

… But the small number of charges brought to date in California and across the country compared with the more than 150 million Americans who voted in the last presidential election “shows that noncitizen voting is not a widespread problem,” said Trepel, who served as a Justice Department prosecutor in the Civil Rights Division across Republican and Democratic administrations.

“States already have multiple safeguards in place to ensure only eligible citizens can vote, and there continues to be no evidence that noncitizen voting poses a meaningful threat to election integrity,” Trepel said. “Efforts to exaggerate the issue risk undermining public confidence in our elections and could be used to justify removing eligible voters from the rolls.”

The Guardian: Judge rebuffs Trump DoJ’s bid to force California to set aside 20,000 ballots

The justice department separately has threatened to prosecute election officials in the state if they tabulate ballots from non-citizens. Such a move would be without a legal basis, [States United Rule of Law Program Director] Sam Trepel, a former prosecutor at the justice department, wrote in a blogpost this month. After filing the lawsuit, the Trump administration began providing lists to other counties of suspected non-citizen voters. When election officials began reviewing them, they found the department had flagged voters who were not on the rolls and had provided insufficient information to verify their citizenship status, according to CalMatters.

MS NOW: The Arizona governor’s race is a fight over who certifies 2028

For Arizona Republicans, refusing to accept elections their party loses has proved to be valuable currency in primaries. In general elections, it has been harder to spend. In an October 2024 survey by the States United Democracy Center, a group that tracks election deniers, just over a third of Arizonans said they would be less likely to back a candidate who claimed the 2020 election was rigged against Trump.

Bloomberg (Opinion): Send the Election Deniers Packing, Once and for All (gift link)

This movement will continue if Americans elect candidates who support Trump’s 2020 lies. According to an interactive list compiled by States United Action, a nonpartisan, pro-democracy organization, there are 163 election deniers running for Congress and 30 seeking statewide office. The organization defines an election denier as someone who “either participated in spreading his false claim that the 2020 presidential election was stolen, who refused to certify the legitimate results of that election, or who attempted to overturn those results.”

In a new piece for Nonprofit Quarterly, States United CEO Joanna Lydgate and Joe Goldman, president of Democracy Fund, urge philanthropists to make long-term commitments to fund the pro-democracy movement.

“If pro-democracy candidates ultimately succeed in November, donors with an interest in protecting democracy may feel relief on the morning of November 4,” the pair write. “But it would be an error to mistake relief for long-term security.”