State officials wargame how the Trump admin could impact the midterms

Election administration isn’t what it used to be.

This article was originally published by Votebeat, a nonprofit news organization covering local election administration and voting access.

When Minnesota Secretary of State Steve Simon first took office in 2015, he used to have to explain to people what the duties of his office were.

Not anymore, he says, thanks in large part to President Donald Trump.

Simon, a Democrat, and former Alabama Secretary of State John Merrill, a Republican, joined Votebeat editor-in-chief Carrie Levine Wednesday to discuss the ways the Trump administration has been reshaping elections and what impact it could have on the 2026 midterms.

If you missed it, you can catch a rerun of it here, but one of the main takeaways was that, while ordinary citizens know a lot more about elections than they used to, the nuances of how they work — including the laws surrounding them, and the balance of priorities that running them well requires — aren’t at the forefront of the conversation as much as they should be.

“That’s the most important thing that has happened, is that the president has brought what many had considered a mundane, almost perfunctory task into light,” Merrill said.

Trump’s second term began much in the way his first term ended: with the president intent on reshaping electoral procedures to his liking. This time around, that’s taken the shape of his March 2025 executive order and his aggressive push to get Congress to pass the SAVE America Act, which seeks to implement aspects of the executive order that courts have halted, like requiring registering voters to provide proof of citizenship.

Simon said Minnesota was one of a number of states that sued over the proof-of-citizenship requirement in the president’s executive order, and the states won by pointing out that — merits of the policy aside — the Constitution simply doesn’t give the president authority over elections.

“Our Founding Fathers delegated the authority for elections at the state level to our individual member states,” Merrill said. “That’s where it should remain.”

However, it may be that the White House understood the executive order was on shaky legal ground, Simon speculated, but is trying to test the limits of election law and the Constitution through these actions.

And the executive order is not the only way the administration is trying to involve itself in how states are administering elections. The Justice Department has sued 29 states, including Minnesota, for unredacted versions of their voter rolls, ostensibly to see if the states are properly complying with the Help America Vote Act, a 2002 law that overhauled voter registration and election administration.

Many states, like Minnesota, are arguing that privacy laws prevent them from handing over the records. So far, no court has ordered a state to turn over its voter rolls, although one state (Oklahoma) last week consented to handing over the data as part of a settlement agreement. Three of the cases have been dismissed, although appeals are working their way up the court system.

The day after the Votebeat event, CBS News also reported that Simon’s office had received a subpoena from the Department of Justice and Department of Homeland Security ordering it to turn over the records of more than 125 Minnesota voters.

But regardless of whether a proof-of-citizenship requirement is ultimately enacted or the Justice Department succeeds in its lawsuits, the federal government is already leaving its mark on how the 2026 midterm elections will be administered. States have followed Trump’s lead and passed their own proof of citizenship requirements (a new state, South Dakota, joined the rapidly growing list last week) and rolled back mail voting options. (Simon also noted that a lawsuit over the legality of mail ballots that arrive after Election Day, which the U.S. Supreme Court heard arguments in last Monday, shared a lot of DNA with Trump’s executive order.)

States are also girding themselves for other ways the Trump administration may try to interfere in elections in ways that go beyond lobbying for the president’s preferred policies. Simon said election officials are always preparing themselves for a myriad of possible disruptive scenarios that may never materialize — everything from bomb threats to weather events. Now, part of that list is federal agents showing up at voting locations, a scenario he said had a “nonzero chance” of happening.

“We’re gaming out what in our heads could that look like,” Simon said, adding that his office has been reviewing Minnesota laws regarding law enforcement at polling places and whether they apply to federal agents.

“We believe the answer is yes and we’re prepared to enforce that.”

He isn’t alone. Responding to those same concerns, New Mexico recently passed a law outright barring federal law enforcement from voting locations.

But, as Simon noted, election officials are having to thread a needle. How do they prepare for this possible interference, and inform the public, without being alarmist and discouraging them from voting?

“We want to call it out and name it and not avoid it but in the same breath tell people what the workarounds are,” he said.

In general, it’s a positive that as a result of Trump more people are paying attention to election administration issues, Merrill said. But what’s missing from that conversation is knowledge.

Merrill expressed frustration that some of the loudest voices weighing in on election administration issues have had no interaction with the electoral system other than as a voter.

“They’ve never worked in the polls and they’ve never been part of the process and understanding how it’s set up, how it’s broken down, what the individual procedures are.”

To fix that, people should contact their local officials and see the process for themselves, Merrill said. He’s found that, when people do that, they often see how well the system runs.

There’s certainly no lack of need for election workers, and perhaps if more people followed Merrill’s advice, there would be less friction in the wheels of democracy.

Carter Walker is a reporter for Votebeat in partnership with Spotlight PA. Contact Carter at cwalker@votebeat.org.

Votebeat is a nonprofit news organization covering local election integrity and voting access. Sign up for their newsletters here.