GOP election officials say they’re quietly ignoring Trump’s threats

President Donald Trump checks his hair before sitting down for a podcast interview at the Varsity restaurant, in Rome, Georgia, February 19, 2026. REUTERS/Kevin Lamarque

Annoyed election officials are speaking out amid President Donald Trump's ongoing efforts to tamper with rules and ballots ahead of the 2026 midterms.

CNN reported on Thursday that during a conference of election officials, even Republicans are frustrated.

"You've got to be kidding me," one GOP election official said anonymously to CNN.

According to reporter Marshall Cohen, these officials are the ones who know elections the best and they're ignoring Trump's conspiracy theories and demands.

"The president's big prime time address really landed with a thud," said Cohen about the consensus among the election officials.

The reporter said that among the officials in Boston for the conference, Trump's big speech "was kind of shrugged off" and wasn't seen as anything "serious."

Speaking to more than a dozen officials, Cohen said they had their own fact-checks for the president and that there was no new information Trump presented that exposed voter fraud during the 2020 election.

One Republican election official from a state that Trump won three times explained, "I read the documents. It was old. I've already seen this stuff. It wasn't new to me."

The administration has threatened noncitizens on the voter rolls, saying that they're handing over hundreds of thousands of names that must be removed immediately.

Sam Hayes, the top election official in North Carolina, explained, "There's nothing we accept at face value and just start removing folks. We've got to make our own independent assessment."

He also said that meeting Trump's demands before the election is going to be a heavy lift, as there simply isn't the time. In the past week, the administration has threatened election officials that if a noncitizen votes they will not only hold the voter accountable but the election official who allowed it to happen as well. Those same officials are the ones who generally refer voter fraud to prosecutors.

The threats were certainly noted by the officials of the 37 states in attendance, Cohen said.

In private, Republican officials said that they didn't want to be made an example of under Trump's threats.

"We all know elections aren't rigged, but we have to keep our heads down and do our jobs," said one Republican election official.

The general counsel for Georgia's secretary of state issued a statement to the administration that it long ago ensured the security of the election and continues to do ongoing maintenance, ensuring things are updated.

In his speech last week, Trump said that China obtained the voter data of 220 million Americans, though all of that data is publicly available information, fact-checkers noted. Having that data doesn't mean that they can change the election outcome, CBS News pointed out.

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