Election workers prepare for midterms and ... armed agents? | Opinion

There is a troubling question that looms over the Nov. 3 midterms: Will President Donald Trump's continuing attempts to exert unconstitutional control over elections include sending armed federal agents or troops to polling places?

The Trump administration's answer to that question so far has been to ask: Why would that be a problem?

Lawyers have an answer: It's against the law. And election administrators have another: Sending armed agents or troops into polling places would cause chaos, confusion and concern for voters.

Federal law makes it illegal to station "troops or armed men" at polling places "unless such force be necessary to repel armed enemies of the United States."

Three federal lawsuits – filed on Sept. 24 by Democratic Party officials, filed on Sept. 18 by civil rights groups and labor unions, filed on Sept. 10 by Latino groups – all ask the same federal district court in Washington, DC, to block Trump from sending armed agents to polling places.

Election administrators across the country, now deep into planning for the midterms just five weeks away, are closely watching those lawsuits as they are forced to prepare for the possibility of armed federal agents at polling places.

Francisco “Cisco” Aguilar, Nevada's secretary of state, told me that he thinks the threat of federal agents is specifically aimed at the 30% of his state's voters who are Latino, as a way of saying, "Hey, think twice about voting."

A New York Times/Sienna University poll released on Sept. 15 found that more than 65% of Hispanic voters were unhappy with Trump's administration, and that nearly 4 out of 5 want Democrats to win control of Congress in November's elections.

Aguilar, who chairs the Democratic Association of Secretaries of State, sees federal aggression now as a message for the 2028 presidential election: "We know the road to the White House runs through Nevada. And we know that Latinos have an important say in who's going to be in the White House."

Election administrators like Aguilar and Paul Lopez, the elected Clerk and Recorder in Denver, are now talking to state and local law enforcement agencies about how to respond if armed federal agents try to enter polling places.

Lopez told me such a move would be "simple dictatorship behavior." And he thinks the appropriate response would be to have local law enforcement agencies in Colorado arrest any federal agent who violates local, state or federal laws.

"They're trying to discourage people from voting in this country, and I don't put it past them to use every tool that they have," Lopez said. "I personally think that if somebody tried to test us on that, as the independent Clerk and Recorder here, would expect that person to be arrested."

Election workers in Denver, he said, are not intimidated. Lopez's message to voters: "Don't let these thugs scare you."

David Becker, a former Department of Justice lawyer who founded The Center for Election Innovation & Research, runs webinars for hundreds of election administrators from more than 40 states. They are planning for the "wild possibilities" of armed agents at polling places, but Becker told me he doesn't think that will happen.

"When we look back on the 2026 election cycle, we're going to see that there was an attempt to create an environment or a perception of chaos and confusion and fear, but that was mostly noise and there wasn't any meat behind it," Becker said, adding that Trump has created an atmosphere where the federal government is now seen "as a potential adversary" in elections.

"That is not normal," Becker said. "It should not be normalized."

Celina Stewart, CEO for the League of Women Voters, said the Trump administration's "blurring the lines" between normal election security efforts and armed agents at polling places could "discourage participation" by voters.

"No one should think that this is by accident," Stewart told me. "This is absolutely intentional. And it's harmful, and it's shameful."

If by now you're wondering how serious the threat of armed federal agents at polling places is, ask yourself, has Trump in his second term as president obeyed federal law when it constrained what he hoped to accomplish?

Trump in the past year has repeatedly justified his unconstitutional attempts to seize control of elections as a way to make sure Republicans never lose another election. Sometimes he says that will last 50 years. Sometimes it's 100 years.

The president urged his supporters at the recent Republican midterm convention in Dallas to "cheat like hell" to win the midterms.

It's a lot. And that's on purpose. Trump's tactic has always been to overwhelm, to paralyze norms and protocols, to get away with something before he can be stopped.

Consider Aguilar's perspective in Nevada. He's not just running an election. He's on the Nov. 3 ballot, seeking a second four-year term as secretary of state.

And the U.S. Department of Justice has informed Aguilar that he is under investigation for resisting their demands to turn over the Nevada's voter rolls, despite a federal judge's ruling in August that the DOJ lacked the authority to enforce its demands.

"These things, it's like lasagna," Aguilar told me. "It's layer after layer after layer. And, after a while, you have something pretty substantial."

Follow USA TODAY columnist Chris Brennan on Bluesky, @bychrisbrennan.bsky.social, and on X, @ByChrisBrennan. Sign up for his weekly newsletter, Translating Politics, here.