January 6 defendant Jacob Chancey, a.k.a. The QAnon Shaman, at the Phoenix Convention Center in December 2023 (Gage Skidmore)
To mark the fifth anniversary of the Jan. 6 Capitol riots, MS NOW's Ryan Teague Beckwith spoke with various experts about what threats to free and fair elections they are most concerned about. The results, Beckwith wrote, were 12 major points of concern, which all point to the next attack on election integrity being a far cry from the attack on the US Capitol.
Speaking with Beckwith, Chioma Chukwu, the executive director for American Oversight, expressed concern over major political players normalizing election denial during Donald Trump's second presidency. She warned that this kind of normalization could make "bending the rules, laws, and processes" behind our elections "easier to justify." On a similar note, Matthew Weil, the vice president of governance at the Bipartisan Policy Center, expressed concern over the "high turnover among election officials," which could "make election outcomes vulnerable to distrust."
"I worry Trump administration authorities will abuse power to interfere in and undermine elections," Wendy Weiser, the vice president for democracy at the Brennan Center for Justice at NYU Law, added. "President Trump has already issued an executive order purporting to rewrite election rules — blocked by courts — and brazenly claimed that states are his agents when it comes to counting votes. Administration officials are trying to collect and centralize sensitive voter file information, using federal agencies to stoke conspiracy theories, hinting they will prosecute election officials, and more. It’s all unprecedented, improper, and mostly unlawful, and must be thwarted to protect the integrity of our elections.”
David J. Becker, the executive director and founder of the Center for Election Innovation & Research, expressed concern over the Trump administration's unprecedented efforts to seize control of election processes from the states and concentrate them with the federal government. On a similar note, Marc Elias, the founder of Democracy Docket and partner at the Elias Law Group, expressed concern over Trump's attempts to collect sensitive voter data from states, "including their Social Security numbers, partisan affiliation and voting histories," and to sue those states that push back.
Charles Stewart III, director at the MIT Election Data and Science Lab, worried "that lots of congressional elections will be challenged because of mail ballots received or counted after Election Day," with close elections potentially being thrown one way or the other based on late-arriving votes being tossed out.
"What concerns me most about future elections is the wave of voter suppression laws enacted in recent years," Lauren Kunis, executive director at VoteRiders, told Bethwick. "Nearly 60 million Americans live in states that passed new voting restrictions in 2025 alone, meaning the rules will have changed when they head to the polls this November."
Jennifer Morrell, the CEO and co-founder of The Elections Group, expressed concern over "the knowledge gap that still exists between how elections are actually secured and how the public believes they work," which makes it easier for election deniers to sow doubt about election integrity. Joanna Lydgate, CEO for the States United Democracy Center, had similar concerns about the continued "public mistrust of elections." Anna Baldwin, director of voting rights litigation at the Campaign Legal Center, expressed concern that "officials at the DOJ and FBI will use their enormous powers" to prey on this distrust to cast doubt on "legitimate election results if they don’t go their way."
Marisa Kabas, creator of the "Handbasket" newsletter, was most concerned about the fact "that we don’t have an actual opposition party," warning that despite the many lawmakers, activists and individuals working to oppose Trump, "there is no unified resistance to stand up to the Republican party if they decide not to honor the results of free and fair elections."
“The greatest fear I have about this coming year is that the intentional chaos-making and intimidation by the president and his administration will cause the American people to give up the fight for our democracy, believing we as people do not have it within our power to defend it," Skye Perryman, the president and CEO of Democracy Forward, added. "It will be incumbent upon all of us to refuse to allow the president and his allies to cause us to believe that we lack power, and to do all within the power we have to oppose extremism and advance democracy.”
