THE BLOCKADE BRIEF: October 14, 2026

THIS WEEK’S BLOCKADES

North Carolina Republicans Question 1,400 Voters’ Citizenship on the Eve of Early Voting

North Carolina Republicans are mailing letters to 1,392 voters questioning their citizenship, based on junk data from Trump’s overhauled SAVE database. The letter pressures recipients to prove they’re citizens or take themselves off the rolls. Republicans know the data is junk: the board already admitted 200 North Carolinians were flagged by mistake, and in Texas the same system falsely flagged at least 578 citizens. Meanwhile, just 41 noncitizens turned up among 4.8 million North Carolina voters in recent elections.

Texas Left 500,000 Voter Registrations Unprocessed, and Knew About the Problem Since March

More than 500,000 voter registrations submitted through Texas’s Department of Public Safety portal were never processed, some dating back to October 2025. State officials knew the portal had problems as early as March, and county officials say the state’s registration system is making the backlog even harder to clear. Voting rights groups are now suing to force Texas to fix it, weeks before Election Day. Eligible Texans did everything right, and the Republicans running the state left their registrations sitting untouched for a year.

Election Deniers Escalate From Voting Machines to Martial Law

Last week, Cleta Mitchell and Tina Peters wanted the Commerce Department to regulate voting machines. This week, Peters’s attorney Peter Ticktin floated declaring martial law, saying federal forces should seize machines wherever the count is in question, while Mike Lindell is pushing Trump to declare a national emergency and ban electronic voting machines outright. Trump has left the door open to an emergency declaration. But he has zero authority to ban voting machines or order hand counts, and courts have already blocked his earlier attempts to take over how states run elections.

MALLY SMITH, Try And Stop Us Senior Adviser:

“Trump and his allies are trying every trick they can find: bogus citizenship letters in North Carolina, half a million registrations left unprocessed in Texas, and now open talk of martial law. They’re desperate because they know they can’t win a fair fight. Courts have already struck down Trump’s attacks on mail voting and proof of citizenship, and every one of these schemes will meet the same fate, because states run our elections and the law hasn’t changed just because Trump is headed for a shellacking in three weeks.”