Since President Trump entered national electoral politics in 2015, a core part of his political strategy has been undermining confidence in election results.
Before the 2016 election, for example, Trump posted on Twitter, “Of course there is large scale voter fraud happening on and before election day. Why do Republican leaders deny what is going on?” Trump has also repeatedly claimed that mail-in voting leads to rigged elections and that voter fraud by noncitizens is rampant.
This strategy allows Trump to either declare victory or, as with the 2020 election, declare the election was stolen.
The reality is that there is no evidence of widespread voter fraud in United States elections. Studies have also shown that noncitizen voting in the U.S. is “extremely rare.”
Nevertheless, when asked if he would respect the upcoming midterm election results regardless of the outcome, Trump responded, “I will, if they’re honest elections.”
Trump and Republicans seem particularly worried about a bad election result this year, as Republicans fight to retain control of both the House and the Senate. A recent PBS News/NPR/Marist poll found that “Democrats hold an 8-point lead among likely voters.” Trump’s approval rating has also plummeted. Earlier this month, Trump’s approval rating reached a record low of 31%, according to a Reuters/Ipsos poll.
As a result, the Trump administration has made multiple moves to potentially cast doubt on the outcome of the midterm elections.
The Alaska lawsuit
Last week, Trump’s Department of Justice (DOJ) filed a lawsuit in federal court seeking to block certification of the results of a U.S. Senate election in Alaska if Democratic candidate Mary Peltola wins. The DOJ is taking issue with a Republican candidate, Daniel J. Sullivan, who shares the same name as the current Republican incumbent, who is also on the ballot. The DOJ’s lawsuit argues that “the sole purpose of his candidacy is to benefit the Peltola campaign.” The DOJ’s challenge was filed less than two weeks before the election.
Sullivan, a former teacher, has said that he is not running to confuse voters. The state has already made efforts to distinguish the two candidates on the ballot. For example, it lists Senator Dan Sullivan as a Republican incumbent, while the newcomer is listed without a party affiliation. Senator Sullivan is also listed as Dan, while his challenger is listed as Daniel. Each candidate is also listed with their middle initial. According to the AP, Alaska’s “Republican officials made the decisions about how to list him on the ballot.”
On Wednesday, the New York Times reported that operatives aligned with Peltola tried to recruit the new Sullivan to run. Peltola’s campaign has denied any involvement in the new Sullivan’s campaign. The Times reported that Peltola was “not directly involved,” but was “definitely aware.”
The results of the Alaska election could have a big impact on which party controls the Senate. The DOJ is asking that the results of the election not be certified if the incumbent Sullivan loses within a margin where he would have won with the inclusion of the votes for the other Sullivan.
Trump told reporters that he was the one that told the DOJ to file the lawsuit. Republicans attempted to remove the new Sullivan from the ballot earlier this year, but the efforts were rejected by the Alaska Supreme Court.
Experts have said that the DOJ’s lawsuit “has no merit.” A motion to dismiss the lawsuit was filed by lawyers for Peltola and Senate Democrats. The state has also asked the court to dismiss the lawsuit.
$1 million bounty
Trump is also encouraging people to come forward with claims of voter fraud. On Monday, Trump announced in a post on Truth Social that he would be offering a $1 million reward to people who successfully report voter fraud leading to an arrest and conviction. “Anybody reporting Voter Fraud in the past Elections, or the upcoming 2026 Midterm Election, will be paid $1,000,000 upon the arrest and conviction of those that created the Fraud! Thank you for your attention to this matter,” Trump wrote.
Trump did not offer any additional information about the reward, including where the money for the rewards would come from.
Disqualifying tens of thousands of voters
Over the last year, the Trump administration has sued 30 states and the District of Columbia in an attempt to access their unredacted voter rolls and look for noncitizen voting. So far, the administration has lost in 27 of those cases — most recently in Utah, where the state’s Republican lieutenant governor has resisted sharing voter data.
Despite these losses, the Trump administration has continued to claim it identified noncitizen voters in some states. Over the summer, the administration told Nevada it found up to 16,000 noncitizens on the state voter rolls. A month later, the administration revised that number down to just 185. When Nevada officials looked into those voters, they found that all of them were citizens.
Earlier this month, the DOJ made similar claims in California, saying it had identified 20,000 noncitizen voters. The DOJ gave California election officials 48 hours to review the names, and when they refused, Trump threatened them with jail time. He wrote on social media that the officials “will all go to jail for a long period of time!!!” The Trump administration sued the state, demanding that a federal court prevent the state from counting the ballots of those voters. An appeals court ruled against the Trump administration on Monday.
Late last week, Attorney General Todd Blanche told reporters the DOJ was considering bringing similar cases against other states. “There’s a number of states that we’re looking at,” he said. On Monday, the DOJ asked the state of Washington to set aside the ballots of 400 voters it claims are noncitizens.
Threatening local election officials
Over the summer, the DOJ sent letters to election officials in all 50 states and Washington, D.C., warning that they “could face criminal charges for allowing noncitizens to remain on their lists of eligible voters.” The letters were sent by Harmeet Dhillon, who heads the DOJ’s Civil Rights Division.
“Any election officer, including the chief election officer of the state, who knowingly retains noncitizens on the state’s SVRL [state voter registration list] or facilitates noncitizens in receiving and casting ballots could be subject to criminal liability,” one letter said, according to Reuters.
The letters gave state election officials five days to say how they would comply with federal voter laws.
Filling the Department of Justice with election deniers
Trump has also stacked his administration with election deniers who could potentially validate conspiracies about election results. During the 2020 election, for example, Dhillon pushed for donations to Trump’s legal defense fund. “We’re waiting for the United States Supreme Court, of which the president has nominated three justices, to step in and do something,” Dhillon said in an interview on Fox Business after the election, Democracy Docket reported.
In August 2025, the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) appointed election conspiracy theorist Heather Honey as Deputy Assistant Secretary for Election Integrity. After the 2020 election, Honey falsely claimed that she had discovered that, in Pennsylvania, more votes were reported than voters. Trump cited the false claim to justify his denial of the election results, and repeated the claim to the crowd on January 6, 2021.
Eric Neff, the acting chief of the Voting Section at the DOJ, was formerly a Los Angeles County prosecutor, and “was put on administrative leave in 2022 after he based a prosecution around tips from a right-wing group that has promoted election fraud conspiracy theories,” Mother Jones reported.
Gutting election security
The second Trump administration has also made major cuts to the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA), which provides states with support for election security efforts. According to September reporting by the AP, the Trump administration “cut some 1,000 employees from CISA and slashed $10 million from two cybersecurity initiatives, including one dedicated to helping state and local election officials.”
The agency, which was created during the first Trump administration, did not release an election infrastructure security plan until 40 days before the midterms this year. Election officials in multiple states have said that the agency “provided them no assistance — and no explanation for its absence — during the most critical planning stages for the upcoming midterms,” ProPublica reported.
Lie, cheat, steal. I'd expect nothing less from the Bully-in-Chief.
Republicans are smart enough to know that on a level playing field they will get creamed, so they have no choice but cheat. That 33% supports this is really scary.