Subject to Approval: 2026 Midterms Edition

TUESDAY, OCTOBER 27, 2026

Regardless of the direction the challenge or disruption originates, the question is whether eligible citizens can cast a ballot and have it count.

In the sketches of Saturday Night Live’s Celebrity Jeopardy, Will Ferrell’s Alex Trebek got laughs as he struggled to run a simple game of Jeopardy! Guests would buzz in before questions were even asked, get it all wrong, and still choose the next clue as if the rules didn’t matter. The Trump administration seems to be emulating this skit in the upcoming midterm elections, buzzing in and challenging results before voting is finished.

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1962

Similar names are nothing new in American elections. In the Massachusetts Democratic primary for state treasurer in 1962, John F. Kennedy (not that JFK, though) and John M. Kennedy both ran against incumbent John T. Driscoll, who defeated them. This example can’t settle Alaska’s issues, or offer evidence of intent, but it demonstrates that American voters actually can distinguish between two nearly identical names.

The administration has spent months aiming to change the conditions under which voters’ choices in the midterms will count. It has focused on districts, records used to judge eligibility, delivery of ballots, and acceptance of results. Alongside these actions, President Trump has repeatedly insisted that the voting system itself cannot be trusted.

An October 24 article in The New York Times itemized his false claims about ranked-choice voting, voting machines, and ballot counting. The article outlines how he has treated California’s slower counting as evidence of cheating or Alaska’s ranked-choice system as a Democratic scheme, even though Republicans, including himself, have won because of it. His many claims, the article points out, invite suspicion of wrongdoing before election officials complete their work, and in some cases before they can even get started.

This is something a bit new in the history of federal election enforcement. Congress passed the Voting Rights Act in 1965, giving the government the tools necessary to intervene if state and local authorities prevented eligible citizens from registering and voting. Back then, the government’s role was confronting racial discrimination. Today, we may find ourselves invoking those protections against federal officials themselves.

The many efforts to shape this election began well before these final weeks. In July of 2025, Trump asked Texas Republicans to redraw congressional districts in an effort to help gain five House seats for Republicans. His DOJ upped the pressure by mentioning potential litigation over voting districts with Black and Hispanic majorities. Trump has been blunt and outspoken about these partisan efforts.

Additionally, his administration has sought control over how ballots reach voters. In March, Trump ordered new federal citizenship lists and restrictions on mail ballots. The Postal Service sought to comply and created a new rule requiring special envelopes, unique barcodes, and uploaded voter information, with any noncompliant ballot being returned to the state. In September, the Supreme Court left the block on this change in place, and Justice Kavanaugh said officials did not have enough time to implement them before the November election. Kavanaugh, a Trump nominee, earned his public ire for ruling against this policy.

The DOJ has also demanded states’ voter rolls, including personal information, for a nationwide eligibility review. Michigan complied, but refused to hand over confidential identifiers, such as partial Social Security numbers. In June, a federal appeals court upheld the dismissal of the administration’s lawsuit seeking those records.

The department has a broader policy involving comparisons of voter rolls against Homeland Security’s database known as SAVE. This checks immigration and citizenship status, but the risk of using the database is that outdated records might pinpoint someone as a noncitizen after attaining their American citizenship. On October 9, a federal judge in Washington struck down the DOJ’s voter-list policy, citing unlawful use of personal data, along with the danger of removing eligible citizens based on flawed data.

Pressure has even been applied to those responsible for voter records, with Assistant Attorney General Harmeet Dhillon notifying state election officials that DOJ could pursue criminal prosecutions. In September, the DOJ informed Utah’s Republican lieutenant governor, Deidre Henderson, she was under investigation for refusing demands for private voter information. In essence, Henderson’s decision to defend voters’ records left her defending herself, and the lawsuit against her was dismissed.

In essence, Henderson’s decision to defend voters’ records left her defending herself, and the lawsuit against her was dismissed.

In August, Homeland Security directed agents to emphasize voter-eligibility field investigations in nine states: California, Connecticut, Georgia, Missouri, Nevada, New York, Pennsylvania, Washington, and Wisconsin.

This had an immediate impact on nurses who help people register to vote, and who began withdrawing from that work out of fear for themselves and their families. In California, nurses relied on the Voting Rights Act to combat the intimidation, and a federal judge found reasonable fear and disruption to their outreach and issued a preliminary order restricting certain investigations involving U.S. citizens in the nine states, but still allowing lawful fraud investigations.

Three days later, prosecutors pressed county election officials, giving them 48 hours to provide identifying information and requested that they set aside ballots when citizenship could not be confirmed. Twenty-eight people were also charged by federal prosecutors with voting-related offenses. If officials are acting on inaccurate records, and these policies hold, valid ballots could be withheld while government errors are corrected.

In Alaska, the administration is seeking to challenge conditions under which election outcomes would be deemed official. Republican Dan S. Sullivan and Daniel J. Sullivan are competing against Democrat Mary Peltola for one of Alaska’s U.S. Senate seats, and on October 22, the Justice Department requested a federal court block certification of the election if Senator Sullivan loses.

It is somewhat more convoluted because ranked-choice voting comes into play, and the administration has asked the court to delay making the election’s results official if Senator Sullivan loses and votes cast for the other Sullivan could account for the loss. President Trump has said he directed the filing asking for an investigation into possible voter confusion before the state confirms the winner.

The stakes extend well beyond any one state. Democrats need a net gain of four Senate seats, with opportunities in Iowa, Maine, North Carolina, and Ohio. House control sits with individual districts that include highly competitive seats in California, Michigan, and Pennsylvania. And a state doesn’t need to be evenly divided politically for a small number of ballots to matter at the national level.

There is not a single national midterm for the president to approve or confirm, nor does the evidence establish a plan for negating election results. A former DOJ voting-rights attorney, David Becker, told The New Yorker that he doesn’t see a “coherent strategy” behind the many competing efforts at play by the administration. And the courts keep rejecting many administration demands and suits, but not all of these efforts need to succeed in such a close race.

If there is a bright side, it is found in what the administration’s losses reveal: defenders of the election. In Utah, voters’ private information was protected. Just as significantly, their Lieutenant Governor’s refusal to surrender the details also forced the administration’s demands into the public eye. Facing criticism and reported threats of violence, she also saw the lawsuit against her dismissed by a federal judge appointed by Trump.

Repeatedly, and at every level, people are acting while outcomes are uncertain and refusal or resistance may carry a cost. Their actions, whether it is nurses relying on the Voting Rights Act, officials refusing to hand over private information, or judges appointed by the president ruling against him, reinforce hope that election protections can hold up against challenges coming from many directions.

While state and local officials work through these gambits, ballots sit uncounted, and potentially eligible voters are denied their civil rights. Regardless of the direction the challenge or disruption originates, the question is whether eligible citizens can cast a ballot and have it count. Any government claiming to protect that right must answer for how its actions affect the people exercising it.

So, we’ll take “Who Gets to Decide?” for $1,000, Alex. The correct response is: “Who are the voters?”

Faithfully,