Exclusive: State election chiefs huddling to plan responses to Trump’s interference in midterms

Wednesday, February 25

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

In exclusive interviews with Democracy Docket, Democratic secretaries of state say they’re doing planning exercises, including tabletop simulations, to prepare for potential nightmare scenarios. Those include President Donald Trump sending armed federal agents to polling places, efforts to disrupt mail-in voting via the U.S. Postal Service, and attempts to meddle with voting machines or to block election certification.
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Fulton County officials argue FBI agent misled judge to seize ballots from 2020 election

Court filings already indicate that the raid on a Fulton County, Georgia, election center is legally and politically suspect. Now, county officials are arguing that the affidavit justifying the raid violated the Fourth Amendment.
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Trump DOJ’s own goals could stymie its efforts to undermine midterms

Trump will probably use the DOJ to undermine the 2026 midterm elections. But there’s a problem: Since he returned to office, the department has become understaffed, incompetent, and downright crazy.
“The quantity of litigation isn’t all that frightening when the quality is crap. And the quality is crap,” constitutional law professor Justin Levitt said.
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In State of the Union, Trump lied about most restrictive voting bill in U.S. history

While demanding Congress pass the SAVE America Act, Trump exaggerated the bill’s provisions and included restrictions he would like to impose, but that would imperil his own party.
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With SAVE America Act stalled, Florida House passes its own version

The Florida House of Representatives has passed its own version of the SAVE America Act. If enacted, the bill would require extensive citizenship verification to vote and could potentially disenfranchise tens of thousands of Floridians.
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What’s the state of our union?

We asked participants in an anti-Trump rally on the National Mall to answer that question.
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Here we share noteworthy briefs on all things voting rights and democracy. Have a footnote for us? Send them to news@democracydocket.com.

Comedian John Oliver skewered DOJ Civil Rights Division head Harmeet Dhillon on his show Last Week Tonight, taking aim at her reliance on right-wing social media provocateurs for news, her online clout-chasing, and her obsession with knitting. Dhillon — a reader of Daily Docket — is currently leading the charge to gain access to state voter rolls.
Speaking of Dhillon, she made an ominous comment on a recent podcast appearance while encouraging lawyers to come work for the DOJ. “There are quite a few untapped areas the DOJ can get into under the Voting Rights Act,” Dhillon said. Yikes!
Get out your popcorn! Anti-voting activist Cleta Mitchell attacked her counterpart Scott Presler on X/Twitter over the Save AMERICA Act. Presler has been hounding Senate Majority Leader John Thune (R-SD) to bring the bill to a vote. So when Thune announced there would be a Senate vote, Presler was overjoyed. But Mitchell — more astute than Presler — argued the vote would kill the bill. Though the SAVE America Act has 50 supporters in the Senate, it would need 60 to overcome a Democratic filibuster. We love to see it.
The Virginia legislature has passed a bill on joining the National Popular Vote Compact. If Gov. Abigail Spanberger (D) signs it into law, Virginia will become the latest state to agree to award its Electoral College votes to the candidate who wins the most votes nationwide. The compact does not come into effect unless the participating states control at least 270 electoral votes. They aren’t there yet. Seventeen states and the District of Columbia are currently party to the compact.
Weeks after Trump posted a racist video on social media depicting Barack and Michelle Obama as monkeys, Rep. Al Green (D-Texas) showed up at the State of the Union last night with a sign that read: “BLACK PEOPLE AREN’T APES.” Before he was expelled from the building, a photographer managed to capture this incredible image.