Democratic state attorneys general, top state officials and civic organisations have accelerated planning to thwart any federal meddling in the November midterm elections by Donald Trump. The preparations come as the president continues to repeat false charges of widespread voting fraud and issues veiled threats of interfering in the process.
Since early this year, 24 Democratic attorneys general have expanded coordination with about a dozen Democratic secretaries of state and several civic groups. The participants have used weekly Zoom calls and in-person tabletop exercises to strategize about countering any federal intervention in the elections.
The enhanced cooperation is led by the Progressive State Leaders Committee, which is the public policy arm of the Democratic Attorneys General Association. Secretaries of state are responsible for supervising elections, while state attorneys general are charged with defending the laws governing them.
The Democratic attorneys general say they are especially worried about interference in the elections by the Department of Justice and other parts of the Trump administration. Trump falsely called the 2020 election rigged on his first day in office last January and has made similar claims hundreds of times since losing the election to Joe Biden.
Nick Brown, the Washington state attorney general, said that the justice department and the Trump administration were the biggest adversary to a smooth election. He added that Trump lies about the election on a regular basis, noting that truth is not a goal of his and that this creates a whole host of concerns.
The Department of Justice announced plans this summer to deploy 1,000 poll monitors. That prompted the NAACP to file a lawsuit on 4 October seeking details of how the monitors will be deployed, compared with 289 monitors deployed in 2022 according to CBS News.
Also, Harmeet Dhillon, who heads the civil rights division at the justice department, wrote to state election officials this summer threatening prosecutions if they did not cooperate adequately in hunting for voting fraud. To counter these threats, Brown has led weekly Zoom calls with partners including offices of secretaries of state and key civil society groups such as the Democracy Defenders Fund, the States United Democracy Center and the Brennan Center for Justice.
Brown, a former federal prosecutor who chairs the Progressive State Leaders Committee election protection working group, said the Zoom calls focus on general election security issues and potential event scenarios. These include the possibility of Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents showing up near polling places and ballots being seized in some races. Brown also led two in-person tabletop exercises in Milwaukee in May and Detroit in September.
Oregon attorney general Dan Rayfield shares Brown’s concerns about the threat posed to elections by Trump. Rayfield said that Trump has been taking dead aim at elections from day one and that officials are trying to dispute misinformation put out by the administration about the dangers of voting by mail.
Adrian Fontes, the Democratic secretary of state for Arizona, said the increasing cooperation with attorneys general represents an all-hands approach to cope with federal interference. Fontes stated that officials have an unexpected adversary in the form of the administration and expressed concern that constant lies would suppress the vote.
