President Donald Trump is escalating his efforts to reshape how American elections are run within the law and on the ground. How will his pressure campaign impact voters ahead of the 2026 midterms?

Guest

Thomas Hicks, former chair of the U.S. Election Assistance Commission. He was fired by President Trump in July.

David Becker, Executive Director and Founder of the nonprofit, nonpartisan Center for Election Innovation & Research

Also Featured

Kris Warner, West Virginia Secretary of State

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Transcript of Full Broadcast

The version of our broadcast available at the top of this page and via podcast apps is a condensed version of the full show. You can listen to the full, unedited broadcast here:

Part I

MEGHNA CHAKRABARTI: On the evening of July 9th, Thomas Hicks received the email that no employee ever wants to get. He’d been fired. The email read, “On behalf of President Donald J. Trump, I am writing to inform you that your position as commissioner of the Election Assistance Commission is terminated effective immediately. Thank you for your service.” End quote. It was signed by Morgan DeWitt Snow, deputy director of presidential personnel in the Executive Office of the President. Well, the bipartisan Federal Election Assistance Commission was created after the disputed 2000 presidential race between George W. Bush and Al Gore.

Some of you might remember the debacle of hanging chads and repeated vote counts in Florida. The Supreme Court brought that debate to an end when it decided the landmark Bush v. Gore case in 2000, effectively giving the presidency to Bush. But that controversy was enough for Congress to decide that the states needed some federal assistance with their election systems and thus created the Election Assistance Commission The Supreme Court played a role in the creation of Thomas Hicks’s job.

Well, it also played a role in his firing. Because on June 29th of this year, the court issued yet another landmark ruling in a case called Trump v. Slaughter. The court overturned a 90-year-old decision that had limited a president’s ability to fire staff at independent agencies. This court, the Roberts Court, ruled six to three that the president can fire agency staff at will.

So a week later, President Trump used his newly expanded power for the first time in the form of that email that landed in Thomas Hicks’s inbox. Trump also fired Commissioner Benjamin Hovland. Both Hicks and Hovland are Democrats, and the third commissioner, Republican Christy McCormick, was reportedly allowed to resign.

And earlier, in April of this year, Republican Donald Palmer resigned to join the conservative Heritage Foundation, which means that right now, just four months before the 2026 midterms, the Election Assistance Commission has no commissioners at all. Thomas Hicks joins us now. Mr. Hicks, welcome to On Point.

THOMAS HICKS: Thank you for having me.

CHAKRABARTI: Now, you were chair of the EAC, and you have been on the Election Assistance Commission since January of 2015. I’m wondering if you had any kind of indication that you were soon to be fired by the President of the United States.

HICKS: No, I did not have any indication that the president was going to fire me or my fellow Democrat, or basically allow the Republican to resign.

We knew that this could be a possibility with the Slaughter case, but we were still gonna continually do our jobs as best we could. So it remains a surprise.

CHAKRABARTI: Have you heard subsequently from anyone in the administration about why the com- the commissioners were basically all let go?

HICKS: No, I have not. I did not hear from any of the folks in the administration prior to that email on the 18 months that they’ve been in the White House or after.

CHAKRABARTI: Okay. Well, as you well know, following that email and, and your firing, the White House actually did release a press statement in which it said, quote, “The president and head of the executive branch reserves the right to remove individuals that may not be totally aligned with the important task of securing America’s elections and ensuring every legal vote is counted.

The Slaughter decision gives the president precedence to do so.” End quote. How do you respond to that, Mr. Hicks?

HICKS: I am proud of the work of the agency, and our work was to help the states with the administration of elections. Our agency did not run elections. The states run the elections.

And so we worked with the states to ensure that every eligible voter was able to cast a vote and have that vote counted accurately. We did that through a number of different ways, whether or not going out to the states to give them more information, provide them with additional funding so they can purchase new voting equipment, or changing rules to allow for testing of other systems. Basically, things like e-poll books, which are what people use to lock in to say that they are in the right place to, to vote at that time.

CHAKRABARTI: If I just may press the point a little Mr. Hicks, this statement from the White House, it doesn’t necessarily question the work of the EAC, but it talks about individuals who are not aligned with the task of securing America’s elections. I mean, that would include you. And how do you respond to that?

HICKS: Well, I would say that I was a federal employee working towards the ensuring that Americans could vote. And I’ve done that for nearly 30 years. I think that my work speaks for itself, but it was not about me.

It was about making sure that Americans can vote, and I want to make sure that people realize moving forward that they still have, um, the ability to cast their votes in November and have those votes counted accurately. So I dispute basically saying that I was not aligned with ensuring that people could vote because I feel that I did my job well.

CHAKRABARTI: Just to take a step back because you know how I mentioned that the EAC was created by Congress after the 2000 election, and I think one of the important things to note is that the idea was and is that states could use some assistance from the federal government, as you pointed out.

But the, the purpose of the EAC is to assist without federalizing elections, and that’s actually a really important distinction. I wonder if you wanted to comment on that.

HICKS: That’s true, and as I said earlier, the states run the elections. So what we would do is a carrot and stick approach. So we would help develop help states with the requirements for HAVA, but provide the money to meet those requirements. We would have with the voluntary voting system guidelines, which were used to certify voting equipment, we would serve as a national clearing house, basically gathering information and getting that information out to the states so that they could better run the elections overall.

And we would maintain the national voter registration form. So basically, to answer your question a little bit more in depth, we would say that we would go to the states, provide them with resources so that they could better perform their functions, but not require them to do so. But if they took the money, then they would have to basically adhere to certain standards.

CHAKRABARTI: Hmm. So let’s talk a little bit more about that federal voter registration form. Or actually even, sorry, let me shift gears a little bit to voting system standards that the EAC helps set. That, that includes certifying things like voting machines, right?

HICKS: Correct. Correct.

CHAKRABARTI: And even certifying places that test those machines?

HICKS: Correct. So there were two testing labs that we certified. One was in Colorado and the other one was in Alabama, and they test those machines very rigorously, similar to the way that cars are tested, to ensure that they’re safe, that they function well, and that they provide the functions that they were designed to do.

Basically count voting votes count those votes accurately and under numerous conditions, whether or not it’s too cold, whether or not there’s condensation. Because as you know, there’s different climates to every part of the country, and so we would test those to ensure that they would function well And over time-

CHAKRABARTI: And so was there any such testing going on now? Are there new voting machines that some states are waiting for certification so they can use even in the 2026 midterms?

HICKS: That’s a great question. There are no, there’s testing going on now to the new standards that we put in place in 2021, the VVSG 2.0 standards.

But mostly states are gonna use the same equipment that they have already for this coming November’s election, because no one wants to confuse and, and roll out new voting equipment right before a major election.

CHAKRABARTI: Okay, great. And about the federal voter registration form, tell me more about that and what the EAC does and why it’s important.

HICKS: I would say that, so before we go into that, that there are voting systems that are being tested currently that meet those new standards, but they probably won’t be deployed until 2027 or ’28 or possibly ’30. One of the things the states have constantly told us is that they need more additional funding to purchase those machines, and so we were basically the three, the four commissioner, well, three commissioners at that time, Donald Palmer had already resigned, had gone to Capitol Hill to basically ask Congress for additional funds for the funding of elections overall.

And then your next question was on the voter form?

CHAKRABARTI: The federal voter registration form.

HICKS: Okay, so that, most people know that as “motor voter.” But basically you go to your DMV and so forth, and you register to vote, but we maintain a form on our website that allows for people to register to vote.

It’s sent into the states, and then they are put on the rolls once things are verified. I would say that there’s a lot of information on the eac.gov website for voters who may want to have more information, whether or not they have questions about the security of voting machines, whether or not they want to become a poll worker.

I would say whether or not they want to check to make sure their voter registration is up to date, to go to their states and do that sort of thing as well.  But the form itself we maintain, but not so many people use that form as much anymore because they go into their public service offices like a DMV or other aspects and register to vote, or they register to vote when they turn 18 or so.

CHAKRABARTI: Hmm. Okay. From what I understand because the EAC is the sort of regulatory body around things like voting system standards, that without commissioners in place though, changes can’t be made to those standards. So even if the president wanted to make changes to the registration form or how voting machines are tested, right now he could not do that, correct?

HICKS: Correct. Those standards cannot be changed because they can only be changed by the commissioners themselves. And there’s a process for replacing.

CHAKRABARTI: Well, actually Mr. Hicks if you could just wait for a second. I’m so sorry to cut you off. We just have to take this quick break, and I’ll let you finish that thought when we come back.

Part II

CHAKRABARTI: And I’m sorry to had to interrupt you before the break there, Mr. Hicks, but we were talking about how now with no commissioners on the EAC, I mean, is the agency’s work effectively frozen, or can it still function?

HICKS: The agency can still function, but there are certain things that it can’t do. So I want to ensure that the American people know that they can cast their votes and have those votes counted accurately.

I worry about what happens after November in terms of if there are problems in the election where the Election Assistance Commission would work with states to rectify those problems to ensure that they didn’t become… that nothing else happened moving forward. But also, when we were looking at, we had a meeting scheduled for December to talk with stakeholders about changes to the voluntary voting system guidelines, because those things are looked at every single year, and minor changes are made to improve the elections process.

But things like that can’t go on because there’s no commissioners there to basically approve those changes.

CHAKRABARTI: Wait. Can you tell me a little bit in more detail, Mr. Hicks, about if there’s a dispute in the, at, at any level, I guess in the 2026 midterms the EAC could not assist states on that?

Like, what would the EAC do ideally?

HICKS: So, let me give an example of in 2020. Right when the pandemic started happening in March of 2020, the EAC gathered stakeholders, basically the CDC, the US Postal Service, local election officials, and state election officials, to come together to see how we would still have an election move forward, where voters would be able to vote safely and have their secure votes counted accurately and ensuring that the right people got the right ballots.

So the EAC brought those people together. What I’m saying now is that if there’s any sort of issue that occurs in the 2026 election, like there’s gonna be — and I use the example of we have these highway systems, and you’re gonna have a car accident somewhere along the ride. That doesn’t mean that you get rid of the entire highway system.

It means that you get that car off the road, and you fix it and then get the system back up and running as, as quickly as possible. What I’m saying is that if there are issues that occur in the 2026 election, the EAC would look at that and work with states to see, to make sure that those issues do not go forward in any subsequent elections.

CHAKRABARTI: And these issues could be what?

HICKS: Anything. Vote count machines. It could be anything. Vote count machines, registration. Voter registration to election night reporting. We had worked towards our E-step program, which is the basically looking at poll books. We were looking at electronic data delivery systems.

We were looking at election night reporting. And we were gonna make changes to those things to ensure that the elections ran smoothly. One of the best programs that I think that we implemented recently was our field services program, where we would allow for experts in our office to go out to the states and test them and basically hash validate the systems, the voting systems.

And what that means is run the software that’s on those systems against the software that we have in our labs to make sure that that was the same, to make sure that there’s been no funny business going on with the machines overall. And so we wanted to expand that program, but now we don’t have three commissioners there to approve expanding that, or getting more or more information out there as well. But all those things can be found at EAC.gov as well, for folks who want more information.

CHAKRABARTI: So just two more quick questions, if I may. You’ve been really generous with your time, Mr. Hicks. On the other hand, I was I noted that the EAC has actually been without commissioners before in its, roughly 23-year history, right? It was without a quorum of commissioners from December of 2010 to January of 2015, also from March of 2018 to February of 2019. And then there was this long period where all four seats were vacant from December 2011 to January 2015, and I don’t recall any sort of concerns about the EAC’s ability to assist states during those long periods of time when there weren’t an adequate number of commissioners seated.

HICKS: Well, there’s been a number of state election officials who’ve raised concerns about the lack of commissioners being at the EAC and the lack of progress being made, and I gave an example of the voluntary voting system guidelines.  It took basically 10 years or so for those guidelines…They were in place, but they were not approved by by the commissioners until we were reconstituted, as you said, in January of 2015.

So there are a number of things that did not move forward, and I believe that a number of the members of Congress didn’t feel that the agency was functioning well at that time, so they did not confirm commissioners, and the commission did not function well. And I do believe that there was a number of things that were done, and particularly President Obama put up a new commission to look at voting at that time because the commission wasn’t there to do those functions.

And so I kind of dispute that the agency wasn’t needed. I think that it was a little bit more of you don’t know what you got until it’s gone. And when the agency was reconstituted, it built a great reputation with the state and local election officials to the point where every week I was on the road basically going to a new conference to talk to election officials about improving their process or to other stakeholders as well, and I think that that is one of the best things that has happened with the EAC.

And I do wanna end on the fact that the world is watching us in terms of when the U.S. coughs, the rest of the world gets a cold. And so if we are doing things to our elections process that is looked at as undemocratic and nefarious, that other countries may look at that and not want to do some of the things that we do as well.

So I want to ensure the American people that their votes will count if they go and cast those votes in November, and because we have great state and local election officials who are out there ensuring that their votes will count despite some of the threats that have been made to them. And I want to give them full kudos to all the work that they’ve done and continue to do.

CHAKRABARTI: With that in mind, I have one last question Mr. Hicks, because you do bring up a point an excellent point about the health and wellbeing of America’s voting systems overall, election systems overall, because this, the firing of the commissioners by the president, and your firing isn’t happening in a vacuum, right?

I mean it’s interesting, I was just noting that in May of this year, at a congressional hearing, former Commissioner Palmer, who we said had resigned and has gone to the Heritage Foundation, he actually testified to Congress that the EAC had to expand some of its offerings in response to what he called, “Notable changes in the federal space supporting elections, particularly with the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency reducing its footprint in the election administration space.”

Now, that’s government talk for CISA having been cut, and the president himself making decisions to to pull back what CISA is doing to protect digital systems during our election, and the EAC has had to step up. So there are multiple changes or efforts to change things at the federal level going on by the president of the United States, and I’m just wondering, big picture, how do you view that?

HICKS: I don’t view that in a positive light. I think that with CISA being cut and other aspects, that the that it breeds doubt into the process of how our elections are being run. The president talked the other day about how China and other organ or other states were trying to infiltrate our voting system processes.

Two things. One, that means that we should get CISA back up and running as soon as possible so that they can defend, but also know that none of those machines are connected to the internet, and therefore no votes were changed. They were trying to get into other aspects of it as well, from what I understand.

So, I think that there needs to be a wholesale movement towards getting back to ensuring that bipartisanship is back in place because the Help America Vote Act was passed with 357 members of Congress and 92 members of the Senate in a bipartisan way, and signed by a Republican president because it was looked at as no party was getting a distinct advantage over the other.

So it was what’s best for the American people.

CHAKRABARTI: Thomas Hicks, until July 9th of this year, he was chair of the Federal Elections Assistance Commission, a bipartisan commission. Thomas Hicks, thank you so much for joining us today.

HICKS: Thank you for having me.

CHAKRABARTI: As Mr. Hicks just mentioned, last week President Trump gave a primetime address where, once again, and without evidence, he claimed that the US election system is in grave danger.

Americans were blatantly lied to about the security of our election infrastructure, including electronic voting machines and ballot counting systems. Dishonest, almost all. Trump announced the release of declassified intelligence documents that he claims show China sought to influence the 2020 presidential election, and that China acquired 220 million U.S. voter files containing personal information.

That information includes names, addresses, phone numbers, political party preferences, and other sensitive data that would be needed to register to vote and engage in other nefarious activities, which is exactly what was happening In truth, that data is already publicly available. It’s either online or available for purchase from the states, and in the days after the speech, both Democratic and Republican state elections officials countered what the president said.

ADRIEN FONTEZ [TAPE]: Nothing I heard last night is gonna make a hill of beans of difference here in Arizona, nor anywhere else in the country.

STEPHANIE THOMAS: We do not run Connecticut elections on vibes. We run them with trained people, paper ballots, and results that can be checked and verified. Fear is not evidence. Repetition does not make something true.

FRANCISCO AGUILAR: Americans have spoken. They do not want chaos. They don’t want the federal government intimidating elections officials.

GABRIEL STERLING: This kind of stress causes a problem for election administrators who should be doing the blocking and tackling of getting elections done.

CHAKRABARTI: So you just heard Republican election official Gabriel Sterling from Georgia, Democratic Secretaries of State Adrian Fontes from Arizona, Stephanie Thomas from Connecticut, and Francisco Aguilar from Nevada.

Now, as for the president himself, even though he had levied those very serious charges against China last week, this week he told reporters in the Oval Office that he’s just not inclined to do anything about it.

REPORTER [TAPE]: Mr. President, are you planning on putting any pressure or consequences on China for what you announced about them meddling in the 2020 election?

DONALD TRUMP: Well, we’re gonna talk to them about it. It took place a long time ago. I think China’s maybe a little bit different today than it was then. But look, they’re, they do things and we do things to them. I’ll be honest. We do things to them, too. It’s not a one-way street. But we’ll be talking to them.

CHAKRABARTI: Let’s turn to David Becker. He’s executive director and founder of the nonprofit, nonpartisan Center for Election Innovation and Research. David, welcome to On Point.

DAVID BECKER: Great to be with you, Meghna.

CHAKRBARTI: Okay, so we’re gonna talk big picture in a second about, the pressures that the Trump administration is putting on the U.S. election systems, but can we just stick with this China thing for one second here? Just what’s your response to what the president said last week versus what he said this week?

BECKER: Well, it’s remarkable. I mean, I’ve reviewed all the documents, and I’ve talked to many people in the media about this, and talked with a lot of election officials, and it was really remarkable that the president chose to start off that whole press conference with this claim that there were 220 million voter records in the possession of China, and kind of ominously stating that the name, address, and party affiliation of these individuals was in China’s hands.

That data’s in everybody’s hands, as you mentioned. It’s available. Literally, the states of North Carolina and Ohio put it up on the web where anyone can get it for free. Many other states make it widely available for a very small fee. For a long time, we’ve always either assumed or actually had intelligence that not only China, but Russia and many other countries were likely collecting this data for a variety of purposes.

In fact, despite the idea that this was some great big cover-up that was kept from the president during his first term, there are multiple documents from within the administration, and public documents, that point out that China is likely collecting this data on American voters. All they had to do was use Google.

They didn’t need to use any sophisticated intelligence-gathering tool. And then, furthermore, the president made claims, and some of his some of his staff later, that with this information in your hands, you could change or delete someone’s voter registration. You could change their vote.

This is ridiculous. Of course that’s not true. If that were true, then the Secretary of State of Ohio is somehow complicit with China, and he is not. You can’t do anything with this data. You need very sensitive, personally identifiable information to even get into a voter’s record to register to vote in the first place, because we have ID required under federal law for voter registration, and you definitely can’t do anything with anyone’s vote.

And so to make this allegation and to raise China as a specter here, I mean, the documents they released actually were much more effective at demonstrating Russia tried to influence the election in 2020.

CHAKRABARTI: You were just getting to something, but go ahead and finish your thought.

BECKER: No, I was just gonna say, and then the next week to say, “Hey, you know, forget about it, China, it’s totally fine.” I mean, it really it really raises some serious questions. And we should remember, as you’ve mentioned earlier, this is the same president who in his first months of office completely dismantled the cybersecurity expertise in elections that he had built up in his first term at the Cybersecurity Infrastructure and Security Agency, CISA, within DHS.

And so I think one of the big questions is, if everything you said was true, Mr. President, didn’t you make a huge mistake earlier in your administration by dismantling that that capacity? And furthermore, I think what he did by dismantling that capacity is he signaled to the states that you’re on your own.

And to some degree the and the states have responded. The states have filled the gaps. There’s not a state that’s looking for federal assistance in any way in this election. They’ve got it covered. So I think in some ways he, he, if he was going to dismantle that capacity and leave us open to foreign interference, he did it early enough that the states were able to compensate.

Part III

CHAKRABARTI: David, before we get to survey of the other pressures that the Trump administration is putting on states regarding elections, I just wanted to follow up quickly with something you said about the document dump that the administration released last week. I mean, I’ve got I’ve got a couple of pages here of it in front of me, and these were formally classified.

At, at the top of the documents it says in big red letters, “Declassified by President Trump on July 3rd 2026.” And some of these documents come from the National Intelligence Council, and as you were saying, what they do is almost show that China was not guilty according to our own intelligence assessments of the things that the president accused China of last week, but rather Russia was guilty of it.

I mean, I just want to read you something here really quickly. So there’s a chart that says things that may have happened in the 2020 election, and they include publicizing information gathered through intelligence operations to damage a U.S. political figure or organization, targeting, accessing, or manipulating elections processes or election-related systems, influencing U.S. law enforcement investigations, prosecutions, or other aspects of the U.S. legal process.

And there’s no check mark under China, but Russia has check marks on all three of those activities. And then there’s… I mean, you’ve read these documents, but just for listeners to know, there’s another really interesting portion where the National Intelligence Council says that President Putin and senior Russian officials are overseeing efforts by proxies to do things such as spread claims about former Vice President Biden, and then also advancing narratives with U.S. officials and other prominent persons online, including through personal interactions and documentary film releases, and that they want to orchestrate a highly a high-profile corruption scandal implicating former Vice President Biden. Now, these are things that our own intelligence assessment have said that Russia was doing in this document dump. We’ve known it for a long time. I guess what I’m wondering is, it makes me wonder if the president or anyone in the White House actually even knew what’s in the documents that they released.

BECKER: It’s a really good question because, again, I’ve reviewed those documents and I found the same thing you did, Meghna.

And if you listen to the president’s speech, he mentioned Russia once just in passing. And the fact is that we know Russia was heavily engaged in influence operations. China was possibly engaged in influence operations. Iran was a player as well. This was in a National Intelligence Council assessment.

It was declassified in March of 2021, which was during the Biden presidency, but the classified version of that was presented to President Trump and in his presidential daily briefing on, of all days, January 7th, 2021. We have multiple public statements given by the head of CISA in 2020, a President Trump appointee, Chris Krebs, in September and otherwise talking about these issues both with China and Russia.

There were things that were said publicly in January and April of 2020. We’ve known this to be true. Now, we should also note these are influence operations. These are largely disinformation. Right. They’re an attempt to hack into the minds of the American voter to feed them enough disinformation that might cause them to change their minds in a variety of ways.

There’s no evidence of any kind of interference with technology that would’ve changed the outcome by any player, Russia, China, or anyone else. And in fact, the pre- the head of the presidential task force who presented a lot of this information admitted on Thursday night that they don’t have any evidence of any kind of stolen election or election theft or anything that would’ve altered the election in 2020.

And we should remember also, this is 18 months into this administration where they focused so many, so many federal resources to try to find evidence of this alleged election theft that we know didn’t happen. They set the date of this speech. This was going to be the big reveal, the bombshell, and they had nothing.

And then we still see allies of the president claiming, “Oh, tomorrow the evidence will come.” It’s always tomorrow. But the fact is the 2020 election was the most scrutinized in world history probably, and it withstood all that scrutiny, and we know the 2022 and ’24 elections were secure as well.

CHAKRABARTI: Yeah. Okay, so let’s look ahead to 2026 because you heard we started off the show talking about the Election Assistance Commission, but I’m wondering beyond that sort of headline-grabbing clearing out of the commissioners, what do you think are actually the most significant pressures on the ground that the Trump administration is putting on states right now regarding the administration of the midterms?

BECKER: I think first we should note that the, the Election Assistance Commission is a small agency with a very limited mandate. It has assistance in its name. All of its work is advisory or voluntary. It is gone without commissioners, as you noted, for some time, and I actually thought as I’m talking to election officials, I don’t know of any election official over the last 18 months, and especially now, that is looking to Washington for assistance.

They expect they’re not gonna get that assistance, and in fact there were commissioners at the EAC Republican appointees who were caught on tape saying denigrating things about election officials and other things, which also led to some of, some of these problems.

There are so many other things, as you alluded to, that raise bigger concerns. The president has tried to sign two executive orders dictating election policy to the states, radically changing election policy. Those have been blocked by the courts. The DOJ is seeking sensitive voter data from all of the states, data like Social Security numbers, driver’s license numbers, and dates of birth, what I call the holy trinity of identity theft, that the states are required by their state laws to protect, and they’ve sued 30 states and DC over this data, and not just blue states, but also red states.

And to date, 16 courts have heard those claims and rendered decisions, and to date, 16 courts have ruled against the DOJ. They’re literally 0 and 16. Seven of those judges were appointed by President Trump himself. We see investigations of past elections. We remember the Fulton County warrant that was issued and attempts through subpoena to gain sensitive information on poll workers who worked in 2020 during a pandemic, things like their cell phone numbers and addresses and email addresses.

But those have been blocked as well. Although the warrant was executed, a Trump-appointed judge raised, brought up that that was very troubling. They haven’t been able to get another warrant since then, and the subpoena for poll worker information has been blocked by a Trump-appointed judge in Georgia. So we’re seeing these efforts.

We’re seeing threats from people like the assistant attorney general for civil rights and the secretary of Homeland Security threatening to arrest and imprison election officials. But I’ll tell you, when I talk to election officials all over the country, Republicans and Democrats, all of these things have become almost a running joke.

There are no arrests coming. The efforts to intimidate are so transparent, and they have nothing behind them. And look at the primaries that we’ve seen so far. Arizona just held their primary yesterday. We saw unprecedented disinformation aimed at California and their primary, but these primaries are going off very well with very high turnout.

And despite all the disinformation aimed at California, the people who won that election advanced to the general election in November. There aren’t any challenges going on. Those elections have held. And so the real lesson I’m seeing is we’re seeing unprecedented attempts to interfere with the election, to nationalize the election, to put unconstitutional power in the hands of the president, but those efforts are all failing, thanks to the public servants at the state and local level who run our elections.

I’m actually very confident that despite these ongoing pressures, and we know there’s gonna be more disinformation down the road, that the elections will go off very well. They’ll be convenient, they’ll be secure, and it’ll be thanks to those public servants that we rely upon in the states.

CHAKRABARTI: Okay, so let’s focus for another second on, as you said, the pressure that the Department of Justice, and actually, DHS also, is putting on state election officials to hand over voter rolls.

Because last Friday, Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin did exactly what we’ve been talking about. He threatened state elections officials with fines, penalties, or even prison time if they do not turn over their voter rolls to the federal government. We have red states participating with us.

We have some red states that aren’t. Every state that’s not participating with us should be asked the hard question, why not? What are you afraid of? All right. We spoke with a state-level elections official, Kris Warner. He is a Republican and is West Virginia’s Secretary of State.

KRIS WARNER [TAPE]: We had not received a call from the White House or from the intelligence community, no federal agency, FBI, CIA, alerting us to any real or existing threat to our 2026 election.

CHAKRABARTI: So Warner is resisting the demand from the government to hand over those voter rolls, and it’s not his first dispute with the Trump administration. Last fall, in fact, the Justice Department demanded those voter roll databases, and as David Becker said, including birth dates, driver’s license, and Social Security numbers, and Warner refused last year, citing privacy law.

WARNER [TAPE]: We offered to redact, that information and provide the list the same that we do to any, statewide candidate that wants to purchase the list, but it would not have the Social Security number and driver’s license number. The federal district court, sided with us and confirmed by dismissing the Department of Justice’s case this last week.

CHAKRABARTI: Warner told us that he anticipates an appeal, but in the meantime, he is moving forward with midterm elections in West Virginia as planned, and in the past decades, he also removed hundreds of thousands of names from West Virginia’s voter rolls to keep those rolls clean. His office cross-checks voter data with the state’s Department of Motor Vehicles, Social Security Administration, and Department of Health.

WARNER [TAPE]: Some people might use the, the term interference, and I think it’s become more common for the president’s actions to be labeled as interference, but I don’t know that I agree with that characterization. The, the US Constitution has not changed. the time, manner, and place of elections is left to the states and the US Congress, full stop. I think what the president’s done and other presidents have done as well is attempted to use every tool in their, their belts to implement their policy initiatives.

CHAKRABARTI: Warner also says that West Virginia’s voting machines are not connected to the internet, and they include a paper record that can be audited.

He says he has been hearing from voters who actually are continuing to be concerned, though, about election security, and for those voters who are concerned, he invites them to get involved in the midterms, maybe as poll workers.

WARNER [TAPE]: What’s important is educating the public and being as quick as we can to respond to the news that might be spun inaccurately.

CHAKRABARTIL So that’s West Virginia Secretary of State Republican Chris Warner. David, let me ask you, you said a couple of times, and we actually also heard Warner there saying right now the states are doing a great job by, Republicans and Democrats in running their local elections. And you had mentioned that at the federal level, even though there’s a lot of threats coming from DHS or DOJ they’re all toothless. So I wonder, it seems like maybe there’s actually not that much to be worried about regarding the administration of elections, but should the concern be on the side of voter confidence in the elections?

BECKER: I think that’s a really good point, and you heard Secretary Warner there, such an important voice, who runs very good elections in his state, answer Secretary Mullin’s question very well. Why not? Well, because you know have no right under the law to do it, and we know how to run elections in our state. And so if all of these things are doomed to fail, as you suggest, Meghna, and I think they are, what is behind the administration’s efforts? They weren’t serious about holding China accountable.

We see that. They’ve made claims about paper ballots and audits. One of the documents they released was a recommendation from the Secretary of Homeland Security that we move to paper ballots and audits, and I thought to myself when I saw that, “Wow, you’re only 10 years behind all of the states.”

Because we have paper ballots in all of the states, with the exception of Louisiana, who’s moving there in 2028. Literally every other state. We have audits in every single state. What Secretary Warner said about West Virginia, about machines not being connected to the internet, and the paper ballots, and the audits is true in every state, again, with the exception of Louisiana.

So if this isn’t about election policy, because they can’t get these things changed and moved, these aren’t good election policies, then what is this all about? And I think when I talk to election officials, and I tend to agree, I think a lot of this is all aimed at what we’ve seen in the past, which is delegitimizing elections where the president and his party might not do as well as he hopes.

I don’t know who’s going to win the election in 2026. I couldn’t possibly predict that. But I think we can predict that if Republicans do poorly, we’re going to hear the same lies that have been debunked over and over and over again, including by members of his own party come from the White House, and that’s incredibly damaging.

I don’t think it’s going to affect the voting process itself. Voters are gonna find a very safe, convenient, accessible, secure voting process like they’ve come to expect, no matter which state they go to vote in, because of those professionals, those public servants. But in the aftermath of the election, I think we are gonna see attempts to undermine elections that are valid, where there’s a legal process to challenge close elections, trying to undermine that, and that is very concerning.

I still believe our institutions will hold, though. And again, I get inspired by our public servants, from the secretaries of state all the way down to volunteer poll workers who are going to ensure that every American’s voice is heard this coming fall.

CHAKRABARTI: You just said something that’s almost identical to what Thomas Hicks said earlier. His concern is what happens after Election Day in November. If there are disputed races or if there’s continuous pressure to undermine confidence in the outcomes. I’m just wondering at, since we’re focusing on the states, at the state level what could happen if there are disputes or if there’s, some could states themselves and legislatures step in and say, “Well, we’re not confident in the outcome of these elections, so we’re not going to certify them or allow the people that voters chose to take office”?

BECKER: I think we can all think about all kinds of crazy hypotheticals, and I don’t think there’s any question the President doesn’t have many lines he won’t cross when it comes to legitimizing our elections. But our institutions are really strong here, and certification is a great example.

Certification is a ministerial act. It is the act of giving the final election a legal effect, and different states have different certification deadlines, but they always come after the the initial unofficial countings, the recounts, the reconciliations, the audits, a lot of legal processes that come before that.

If, in a close election, people want to challenge that, they have a process. But we might see that, but our institutions are going to hold. We’re seeing that with the courts right now, and I’m confident that the duly elected individuals will be certified and will take office.

This article was originally published on WBUR.org.