Inside Trump’s Escalating War on Elections

President Donald Trump’s recent calls for nationalizing elections offer insight into how the administration plans to disrupt U.S. elections. Voters and other affected citizens should disregard these claims as mere talk or dismiss them as things the president presumably can’t do.

Over the past year, federal courts have overwhelmingly rejected the Trump administration’s efforts to interfere with state election administration. From his March 2025 Executive Order aimed at elections to the Department of Justice’s overly broad demand for unredacted voter rolls, the federal courts have stood firm in upholding the law as it currently exists.

But as the Voting Rights Lab recently reported, despite court rulings, confusion remains among many state and local officials.

“[I]t is a clear directive to the states about how the president wants them to change their laws,” read the report. “If states take President Trump’s cue, it will create administrative chaos and have astounding impacts on the ability of American citizens to register to vote.”

Hannah Fried, co-founder and CEO of All Voting is Local, echoed those sentiments in a recent statement. “Trump is testing what he can get away with in our elections in a pathetic attempt to rig the system,” Fried said in a statement. “Nothing Trump and his allies are doing will make our elections safer.”

It’s like an arsonist setting a building on fire and then leading the charge against fire safety. Nse Ufot, a Southern-based strategist and notable democracy champion, told DAME that Trump’s comments embody the worst elements of far-right fear-mongering under the guise of election “security” or “integrity.”

“In America, brave, committed, state and local elections administrators are preparing to make sure that millions of citizens can vote, and have those votes counted,” she said. “Donald Trump knows he’s losing.  So instead of earning votes, he’s reaching for violence, intimidation, and backroom control of elections.”

Post-2013 voter suppression laid the groundwork

Trump’s comments are deeply rooted in conservative and far-right voter suppression efforts and election denial over the past decade. Following the Supreme Court’s 2013 decision in Shelby County v. Holder, which nullified major enforcement provisions of the Voting Rights Act of 1965 (VRA), state officials enacted numerous laws that impede voting under the guise of election administration.

Take Georgia, for example. In 2017, then-Secretary of State Brian Kemp ordered local boards of election to send purge notices to an estimated 380,000 voters.

According to the notice, voters were deemed inactive and had 30 days to update their voter registration. If they didn’t, they might not have been able to vote in upcoming elections.

It’s estimated that nearly half of these voters should never have received a notice in the first place. Many of them had moved within the same county but had not updated their addresses. Attorneys for the ACLU cited a provision of the National Voter Registration Act of 1993 (NVRA) that required registrars to update the addresses of voters who remained in their jurisdiction.

Kemp, who oversaw his own 2018 election for governor, conceded that about 160,000 people should not have received notices. The vigorous advocacy of pro-democracy attorneys and concerned voters also helped highlight the potential disenfranchisement from a “routine” administrative practice.

Another review of Georgia purges found that over 340,000 voters had been erroneously removed by Kemp’s office ahead of the 2018 election. Georgia’s 2018 election was decided by fewer than 55,000 votes.

After a very close race in 2018, newly elected Gov. Brian Kemp and his Lt. Gov. Geoff Duncan oversaw a Republican-controlled state legislature that enacted a massive overhaul of Georgia election law, including the installation of new voting machines and accompanying equipment.

Despite being credited for refusing to bow to Trump’s unfounded claims about the 2020 election, Georgia Republicans passed another sweeping law impacting election administration and setting the stage for the far right’s capture of the state election board. It also included provisions allowing the removal of local election board members or the takeover of local election boards.

The pattern has continued each year since, with elected officials codifying debunked allegations into the law. The recent incursion by the Trump administration against Fulton County’s election board is no accident. And Georgia’s not alone.

As the Brennan Center outlined in an August 2025 brief, the Trump administration has already taken critical steps that impact the system of elections. Many of the checks and balances built into our electoral system have been replaced. It’s within this calculated practice in the states that we must consider the DOJ’s alarming request for full, unredacted voter rolls. A February 2026 analysis reviewed allegedly “confidential” agreements between the Trump administration and a handful of states that handed over their full voter files.

“The agreement explains that the DOJ plans to conduct its own analysis of states’ voter files and then instruct the states to remove specific voters, which the federal government has never done before,” read the analysis. “The agreement says nothing about how the DOJ will examine the voter rolls, nor does it say states would be given any reasons for demanded removals.”

New front in the battle to protect voting rights

Now, almost 20 years after the VRA was last reauthorized, Republicans in Congress are gearing up for sweeping changes with three laws that could effectively hand American democracy to Trump on a platter. At the end of January, House Republicans introduced the Make Elections Great Again Act of 2025 (MEGA) and the SAVE America Act.

Coupled with former Trump advisor Steve Bannon’s calls for ICE to be deployed to polling locations, Trump’s election commentary raises genuine concern about voter intimidation. In 2018,  a federal judge lifted a ban on so-called ballot security measures orchestrated by the Republican National Committee.

“The Republican efforts to federalize elections and send ICE to polling places are not ‘security’ or ‘integrity’—that’s fear politics, and it’s as unserious as it is dangerous,” Uot said. “But here’s the problem for them: Americans are still here. Still exercising our First Amendment rights to petition our government. To assemble. To speak. And we’re still voting. The 25th Amendment is still the law of the land, and if the House won’t impeach, and the Senate won’t remove, the American people will vote for ones who will.”

In many ways, the current far-right attack on voting rights and election administration adds new contours to an old problem. The continuous encroachment on hard-fought rights dating back to Reconstruction-era amendments makes defending the right to vote a recurring fight.

It also reflects a pattern employed by conservative legal officials and policymakers that has helped lay the groundwork for Trump’s expansive abuse of power:just keep throwing stuff at the wall until something sticks. In the years after the passage of the Voting Rights Act of 1965, anti-democratic factions continued to sue to release themselves from the obligations to uphold the act’s tenets.

Meanwhile, voters and voting rights advocates across the country await the outcome of the Supreme Court case Louisiana v. Callais. Despite recently upholding the validity of Section 2 in the 2023 case Allen v. Milligan, SCOTUS could change course in a decision that could severely hamper, if not outright eliminate, Section 2 of the VRA—the last remaining enforcement mechanism of the landmark law.

As Black Voters Matter’s National Legal Director, April England-Albright shared in a previous interview with NewsOne that, in addition to challenging racial gerrymanders, impacted citizens and advocates have used Section 2 to challenge discrimination in election administration.

Now, instead of a government for the people, by the people, we are witnessing, in real time, a government trying to rule by force and fiat.

The rule of law alone has never been enough to protect our rights and freedoms or to hold those who abuse power accountable.  As a collective, concerned citizens need to engage in yet another fight for our fundamental rights and freedoms.

“Now is a moment to connect the dots, to make clear that the attacks we see across the country are a part of a desperate authoritarian takeover,” Fried said. “It’s time for everyone who cares about free and fair elections—from state and local election officials charged with running our elections smoothly to voters making their voice heard—to unify and make it clear that our freedom to vote will not be seized from us.”