Election and Politics #197 | Nate Iglehart | September 19, 2025
With only nine months of his presidency in the books, President Donald Trump has undertaken a radical reshaping of American democracy. From its courts to its liberties, Trump is actively pushing for an American society that serves him and his movement.
This push, however, has a price that he and his supporters are beginning to see on the horizon; the possibility of a blue wave in the 2026 midterm elections. Historically, the opposition party in the U.S. tends to gain ground at the midterms, with 20 of the last 22 adhering to this trend.
Trump and the Republican Party know this well, and are taking steps to ensure as large of an advantage as they can ahead of time. But they aren’t the only ones, as foreign interference has been a consistent electoral threat since the 2016 election. In order to secure safe and fair elections, the United States needs to empower poll workers, ensure election rules are set and enforced, and prevent the moves by actors, both domestic and foreign, directed at weakening the electoral process.
Analysis
To begin, it is important to lay out the threats facing the prospect of fair 2026 midterm elections. Donald Trump has already laid out his plan to overhaul the electoral process in this country.
The plan is multifaceted. One of his first targets its mail-in balloting, a method used by nearly one in three Americans. Over the years, Trump has attacked the method, saying it is “horrible”, “corrupt”, and “dangerous”, despite little evidence that widespread voter fraud via mail-in ballots actually occurred in the last few elections. Right now, he announced that his lawyers are drafting an executive order to end mail-in voting, alongside banning voting machines and tabulators.
Experts say that this would be disastrous for states. Removing these three tools for voting would result in a massive influx of voters in-person as almost a third of voters used mail-in ballots.Their banning would cause chaos for the already underfunded and extremely stressed poll workers.
But Trump doesn’t stop here. He also has demanded voting data from at least 19 states for the expressed purpose of weeding out ineligible voters, he’s said he wants to mandate voter IDs, and he has promoted gerrymandering seats to maintain republican power in Congress, breaking from standard redistricting schedule that aligns with the censuses each decade.
Practically all of these efforts have been or will be challenged in court, but relying on the courts to protect elections is not a surefire bet, especially if the cases end up in the Supreme Court.
So, what can be done at the state and federal levels to ensure free and fair elections? Short of simply winning all of these cases, there are some actionable steps to be taken.
Because it is the states that decide how states are run according to Article I, Section 4, Clause 1 of the Constitution, there is a lot of power that lies in the hands of state legislatures. However, the federal government does have some influence through a network of agencies, committees, bureaus, departments, and institutes.
What states can do is pass laws that empower local election systems to prepare for the huge logistical burden of a wave of voters arriving in person. This can be done by simply increasing the funding and training of poll workers, as well as creating state interagency working groups on election security.
These agencies can then do the training and vulnerability assessments for election offices that the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) previously was responsible for at the federal level. But CISA is currently out of the picture due to DOGE firings and budget cuts.
The aforementioned vulnerability assessments point to another issue facing the safety of the 2026 midterms; physically protecting voting places. The 2024 saw 227 bomb threats and multiple drop box fires, but despite this none were allowed to cause too much damage to the voting process thanks to advanced coordination and preparation between law enforcement and election officials.
With tensions as high as they are right now with political assassinations and protests growing in number, there is no telling how dangerous voting in person might be. That is why physical safety at the ballot box must be priority number one, as it allows people to express their right to vote without fearing for their lives and without outside pressure, such as if militias arrive to “safeguard” the elections in lieu of police officers.
On the gerrymandering front, it is safe to say that that the practice itself is dishonest and can dilute the vote for many U.S. citizens, especially minority groups who have historically faced widespread gerrymandering. That being said, getting rid of the practice at all, let alone before the midterms, is practically impossible due to its entrenchment in our political system and use by both parties.
Additionally, the tit-for-tat battle to balance out redistricting advantages between states like Texas and California should not be allowed to spiral too far out of control across the country. While it certainly could be argued that if one state steps out of line, another should step out as well to counter the impact an unfairly redistricted map could have, that is a slippery slope.
Not every state will be able to pass a new gerrymandered map, and any gains might be uneven across states while also fueling tensions and igniting lawsuits that could extend up to and through the elections. That being said, there are reforms that can be made.
One avenue is freezing maps as they are, to prevent rapid redistricting in the runup to the election, but this is not a guaranteed fix. The other would be to pass parts of the Fair Representation Act, a law in Congress at the moment, but to pass its core components at the state level. The bill focuses on creating multi-member districts for congressional elections, ranked choice voting in these elections, and new requirements for congressional redistricting.
It is unclear if the FRA will pass at the federal level, so taking steps to make reforms at the state level have a chance at leveling the playing field.
Now, there are also steps to be taken at the federal level besides canceling or undoing undemocratic election reforms. In addition to passing the FRA and giving states more funding and training for poll workers, there is an opportunity to create a national nonpartisan system of election administration. This agency or collection of boards could act to entirely focus on election safety, administration, and coordinating state level systems to help them succeed.
There is one final threat posed to the 2026 elections, one that the federal government is the only actor in a position to counter; cyberattacks. Successful cyberattacks can take down or slow voter registration portals, along with practically every electronic voter check-in system and election reporting outlet on election day.
The federal government needs to take cybersecurity seriously, as every foreign adversary will be looking to sow discord through interference and misinformation. Rejuvenating our cybersecurity defenses, as well as protecting poll workers from doxxing and outlets from hacks, is a necessary step that this country needs to take.
All of these steps, from protecting the system from further attacks under this administration, to ensuring the safety and training of poll workers and voters, will work in conjunction to achieve the most important part of elections: trust. Trust in the electoral process is a core element of democracy, and we have already seen how distrust can swiftly lead to violence when protesters stormed the capital in 2021.
These next midterms are perhaps the most important. They will determine the ability this administration has already flexed to change the American political system at every level. With how fast the Trump administration, the 2026 elections will either act as a brake-check or a blank check for Trump to continue his policies. But the election needs to take place as fairly as possible, or else American democracy will truly be on its last legs.
Engagement Resources
- The Fair Elections Center is a nonpartisan voting rights and election reform organization based in Washington, D.C.
- The S. Election Assistance Commission is an independent, bipartisan commission focused on improving the administration of elections.
- The Brennan Center for Justice is a nonprofit law and policy institute, think tank, and advocacy group at the New York University (NYU) School of Law.