Try and Stop Us Digest — November 2, 2026

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Courts Move To Stop DOJ's Pressure Campaign On Election Officials And Voters

A federal judge imposed a sweeping emergency order barring DOJ and DHS from pressuring election officials in any state, including with threats of criminal prosecution. CNN / Democracy Docket / New York Times / Democracy Docket / ABC News: U.S. District Judge Trina Thompson granted a temporary restraining order Friday evening in a suit brought by labor unions and civil rights groups including the NAACP and the League of United Latin American Citizens, barring the agencies from demanding that election officials in any state segregate ballots, purge voters from the rolls or halt ballot processing. The order also blocks threats of criminal prosecution against election officials and any other action that would "threaten, intimidate or coerce" them over ballots from voters the administration alleges are ineligible. Thompson is also requiring the administration to tell her about any "search warrant applications, grand jury subpoenas, or other demands to access election materials or ballots" tied to its lists of supposedly ineligible voters. She has scheduled a hearing for Monday, and DOJ appealed the order to the 9th Circuit on Saturday afternoon. In court filings supporting the suit, San Benito County Registrar Francisco Diaz said that after DHS officials delivered a letter threatening him with prosecution, he had to make an emergency plan for how his office would run "if I were not there," and that four of his poll workers didn't report to work Friday.

A federal appeals court rejected DOJ's bid to set aside more than 20,000 California ballots for the second time in a week. NBC News: A 9th Circuit panel ruled 2-1 Friday that DOJ "has not made the required showing that such extraordinary relief, during an ongoing election, is clearly required by law." The majority agreed with the district court that "there is no feasible way to identify and segregate the ballots of specific individuals without potentially catastrophic effects on the entire system." Judge David Carter had ruled Wednesday that if DOJ got what it wanted, "either party could create chaos for their own political purposes to disrupt the election process," and that he "cannot conclude that Plaintiff's process is credible" given "the unreliability of its similar claims in other states." NAACP general counsel Kristen Clarke said the decision means "our elections must be governed by facts, law, and constitutional principles, not political interference or voter suppression."

A federal judge suggests DOJ's noncitizen voter lists target minorities, as groups race to block them before Tuesday. Democracy Docket / Democracy Docket / New York Times / Axios: U.S. District Judge Tanya Chutkan heard arguments Saturday on a request from LULAC and the Electronic Privacy Information Center to immediately block DOJ from sending the lists to state officials, and said she will rule as soon as possible. She said past efforts to purge the rolls "have resulted in U.S. citizens being swept up into this law enforcement dragnet," and that this one "looks like it's targeting states with higher numbers of maybe citizens of certain descent." DOJ disclosed in court Friday that it has sent letters to officials in California, Washington, Pennsylvania, New Jersey and Nevada, asking some of the states to segregate mail ballots from suspected noncitizen voters, and a DOJ attorney told Chutkan, "We have no information about the intentions of the government with respect to issuing additional letters." In a separate case, the League of Women Voters and other groups have asked a court to immediately block the DHS voter data policy used to build the lists, calling them "demonstrably unreliable," and a DOJ attorney could not say at a 9th Circuit hearing whether the latest lists were compiled using the SAVE program. In Washington, advocacy groups sued late Friday in Seattle to stop DOJ from forcing officials to set aside ballots from nearly 400 residents, saying the list "is not evidence of anything."

DOJ Escalates Threats Against Election Officials As Its Noncitizen Voter Lists Fall Apart

DOJ sends election officials in all 50 states a letter threatening prison for failing to preserve records, and serves grand jury subpoenas on Los Angeles County election workers. Votebeat / Politico / New York Times / Bloomberg / California Post: The letters, dated Thursday and signed by acting Deputy Attorney General Trent McCotter, say it is a crime to willfully fail to preserve election records, punishable by "up to a year in prison and a $1,000 fine," and cite a preservation requirement dating to 1960 without identifying any violation or pending investigation. Justin Levitt, a former DOJ official and Biden White House voting rights adviser, knew of no precedent for such a nationwide reminder and said it "certainly looks like it's meant to intimidate rather than to inform." DOJ addressed Oregon's letter to "Tobias Reed," and Secretary of State Tobias Read replied that his name is "spelled R-E-A-D, as in 'read the Constitution.'" Meanwhile, at least two employees of the Los Angeles County registrar's office were subpoenaed by a grand jury for a Nov. 4 proceeding, seeking their internal communications about DOJ's demands. County Registrar Dean Logan called the subpoenas "intimidation." Gov. Gavin Newsom has now warned the chief judges of California's four federal district courts that the administration may seek warrants to "seize ballots, election records, or certified voting technology" before results are certified, writing that "the only reason to do so would be to interfere in a State's lawful counting of ballots." Trump praised Los Angeles's top federal prosecutor, First Assistant U.S. Attorney Bill Essayli, as "one of the best, EVER!" on Saturday, even though a federal judge ruled Tuesday that Essayli is unlawfully serving in the job.

DOJ's noncitizen voter lists keep falling apart, from California to Nevada. Associated Press / Democracy Docket / New York Times / All Rise News / Democracy Docket: After a federal judge ordered DOJ to hand over its list of alleged noncitizen voters in California to an immigrant-rights group, UCLA analysts found that 8,880 of the 20,930 names, or 42%, don't match anyone in the state's voter file. At least 22 are citizens, and nearly 7,500 naturalized citizens were "highly likely" to be wrongly flagged. Trump responded by claiming DOJ found "20,000, but potentially Hundreds of Thousands, and maybe even Millions" of fraudulent votes. DHS Secretary Markwayne Mullin now says DHS is investigating 300,000 potential cases of noncitizen voting, though his Nevada claim of nearly 16,000 noncitizens shrank to 185 names, and all of them turned out to be citizens. Attorney General Todd Blanche then personally signed misdemeanor charges against four people in Nevada, which former federal prosecutor Mimi Rocah called "extremely rare if it has even ever been done before."

Judge Tosses DOJ's Alaska Lawsuit, But Its Criminal Probe And Republican Pressure Continue

A federal judge threw out DOJ's lawsuit to segregate Alaska's ballots and delay certification of the Senate race. CNN / Democracy Docket / Democracy Docket / Anchorage Daily News: U.S. District Judge Sharon Gleason ruled Sunday that the federal government doesn't have standing to force Alaska to segregate ballots, that doing so would violate voters' right to a secret ballot, and that it's too late for courts to order such a change on the eve of an election. "The United States provides no workable plan as to how it proposes to segregate ballots cast for Daniel J. Sullivan on Election Day and then conduct a court-ordered unspecified 'investigation' of those ballots in a manner that would preserve voter secrecy," she wrote. DOJ had asked for the order Friday, and the state of Alaska's lawyers answered Saturday that the demand was "inappropriate and not even possible given Alaska voters' vital right to ballot secrecy," since ballots aren't marked with voter names and are commingled. Democrats had argued that segregating ballots would violate Alaskans' "constitutional right to a secret ballot," and the League of Women Voters of Alaska and Common Cause, represented by the ACLU, warned that DOJ's theory would let a president "pluck a few words like 'election integrity' from some statutory preamble and, on that basis alone, bend the machinery of state elections to his will."

FBI agents are knocking on the doors of Dan J. Sullivan's donors to ask whether they were misled. Associated Press: Agents have contacted donors in at least two remote Alaska communities and in Massachusetts, and Alaska's U.S. Attorney says the probe has brought a "significant surge of law enforcement assets to Alaska." In Petersburg, an agent visited a boat dealership and left a business card for Charles Flint, who gave $500, and asked his son whether Flint felt "misled" about which candidate he was supporting. Flint said, "I don't feel like I've been misled at all," and, "Everybody knows who the incumbent is." In Massachusetts, donor Pat Campbell said agents told her husband they were "investigating fraud in election contributions," and she said, "No, we had not been defrauded. We knew to whom we had contributed."

DOJ's Alaska criminal probe still has no named crime, and Republicans pile on with dozens of subpoenas, demands for criminal prosecutions, a House inquiry and an FEC complaint. Associated Press / New York Times / Washington Sun / Semafor / RealClearPolitics: Asked what crime is being investigated, Alaska U.S. Attorney Michael Heyman answered, "You're assuming that there is a crime being committed," while Karen Loeffler, who served as Alaska's U.S. attorney from 2009 to 2017, said, "There is no crime here that I can see." DOJ has issued dozens of subpoenas to people believed to be connected to the plan and House Oversight Chair James Comer requested interviews with two of them. The National Republican Senatorial Committee has asked the FEC to investigate DSCC and Peltola's campaign, though the DSCC points out that the FEC doesn't currently have a quorum. The New York Times found no evidence of illegal activity, and notes that ballot-stacking is an age-old practice used by both parties, including by Republicans in Alaska's Senate primary this year. At a Friday rally, Trump said Peltola and Dan J. Sullivan should be prosecuted, told Attorney General Todd Blanche, "Todd, please make your own" decision, and then announced, "OK, he said 'yes.'" At a Halloween party at Mar-a-Lago on Saturday night, Trump said that Schumer and Democratic lawyer Marc Elias "should be held criminally responsible" for what he called a "Democrat con job."

Alaska's governor says certification of the state's election could be "stopped or changed" depending on the outcome of his investigation into the Peltola campaign. The Hill / New York Times / Wall Street Journal: "If we find out there's wrongdoing, and if that means that the certification then is stopped or changed, then that's what happens," Gov. Mike Dunleavy told NewsNation, and when pressed on whether that was a legitimate possibility, he answered, "Depending upon the outcomes of this investigation, yes." Sen. Dan Sullivan, whose race is the one in question, said Sunday on CNN that he will accept the results even if he loses: "No, I'm going to accept the election results." Alaska lawyer Scott Kendall, a former Republican operative, said that even if Peltola's campaign did recruit Dan J. Sullivan, "according to our Alaska Supreme Court, which is empowered to interpret Alaska law, it is not illegal." Dunleavy's term ends Dec. 7, so a protracted legal fight could leave the state's role to the next governor.

Republicans in Congress refuse to commit to seating Peltola if she wins. Democracy Docket: Asked on Fox News Sunday whether it's possible Peltola won't be seated, House Oversight Chair James Comer said, "It's a big possibility," though the House has no say in seating a senator. Sen. Tim Sheehy wrote Saturday, "Under no circumstances should Mary Peltola be seated if she wins an election in a fraudulent manner," and Sen. Tim Scott wouldn't commit to seating her on Meet the Press. Asked Thursday whether Republicans should refuse to seat her, Trump said, "Well, you're going to have to see what happens." Legal experts say Alaska's governor and lieutenant governor have a legal duty to send certified results to the Senate.

Election Officials Brace For Post-Election Fights, Even Rehearsing Their Own Arrests

Schumer launches a post-Election Day “war room” to fight Trump’s efforts to challenge the results, vowing Democrats will be ready “every step of the way.” Semafor / Democracy Docket / Schumer op-ed / The Bulwark: In a letter to the Democratic Caucus, Schumer said the war room will coordinate “the post-Election Day overarching campaign against Trump’s effort to steal the election,” adding, “We cannot just sit back and wait for him to concede. We need a unified team.” Senate Democrats will speak with Democratic lawyer Marc Elias this weekend about the legal response, a Democratic election task force will update the caucus throughout Election Day, and the Senate Rules Committee will send the chamber reports from Democratic election observers. Schumer wrote that “whether it’s a few days, a few weeks or several months, we will be ready to fight him every step of the way.” In an op-ed, he said Democrats expect Trump to try to “interfere with the vote counting and certification process around the country, even by illegally seizing polling machines and ballots.” Outside the Senate, the ACLU walked about 250 of its lawyers, policy experts and staffers through 25 election-meddling scenarios in April, and Indivisible co-founder Ezra Levin says groups are ready to call for mass protests if there is a “verifiable instance of sabotage” swaying the election.

DOJ's failing lawsuits appear designed to keep fights alive after Election Day, and election officials are already planning for certification battles and even their own arrests. Wall Street Journal / Washington Post / Zeteo / New Republic: DOJ's lawsuits and investigations have mostly failed in court, including all 27 of its suits over state voter rolls decided so far, but appear designed to give the department more time to contest results after the election. Texas Republicans have asked a federal court to stop the state from certifying its results unless every ballot is first counted by hand. The Heritage Foundation and the Center for Renewing America have argued that newly elected Republicans can and should object to the seating of Democrats when Congress convenes Jan. 3. Election law expert Rick Hasen says the Senate could theoretically vote to postpone Peltola's swearing-in regardless of the certification Alaska sends, and while he expects such a fight would likely be resolved, "it could get ugly." Maryland's elections administrator, Jared DeMarinis, ran a simulation in which 70 officials planned for his arrest on Election Day, and Michigan Attorney General Dana Nessel said her lawyers have drafted briefs "for virtually every set of circumstances we could think of, except the zombie apocalypse."

Federal help for election officials has broken down just as suspected Russian operatives push AI fakes about Democratic candidates. CNN / The Atlantic: Election experts say the channels for federal agencies to warn officials about foreign threats are at their weakest since 2016, after the gutting of CISA. Former Justice Department attorney David Becker said, "I don't know a single election official — Democrat or Republican — who is actively sharing cybersecurity information with the feds this time around." Suspected Russian operatives have posted a wave of AI-altered videos on X attacking Democratic candidates, including a fabricated sexual assault claim against James Talarico. NewsGuard found that 93% of false midterm claims on X did not get a Community Note.

DOJ Plans A Record 1,000 Election Monitors, Mostly In Democratic Strongholds

DOJ will send a record 1,000 monitors to the midterms without saying where, but the locations reported so far are almost all Democratic strongholds. Democracy Docket / Votebeat: DOJ says it won't release the full list until Election Day, but locations reported across 21 states center on the largest cities and counties and on competitive districts, including Philadelphia, Detroit and six Georgia counties including Fulton and DeKalb. DOJ is drawing monitors from beyond the Civil Rights Division, including agencies like DEA, and six criminal prosecutors and an FBI employee served as monitors in the Arizona primary. Wyoming's Republican governor, Mark Gordon, called for a state investigation into the "irregular" conduct of two Civil Rights Division attorneys who monitored his state's primary. In some places DOJ has sought permission to enter polling places instead of observing from the standard 100-foot distance, and Colorado, Indiana and Wyoming have said they won't let monitors inside a set distance of polling places. Senate Democrats are sending more than 100 staffers to monitor elections in nine states, with Sen. Alex Padilla saying, "Congress will be watching."

DOJ's monitors include 2020 election deniers, and Arizona's top election official asked whether they could be called as witnesses. The Atlantic: Monitors sent to the primaries included Chris Gardner, who represented the Fulton County Republican Party in 2024 as it backed an election-board member who refused to certify the primary results, and Joseph Voiland, who represented the Trump campaign when it tried to overturn the 2020 results in Wisconsin. Maricopa County told DOJ last week it won't allow David Levin, who pleaded guilty in 2016 to hacking two Florida election websites, to monitor its elections, and a DOJ spokesperson now says he is "no longer with the department." In a recorded meeting, Arizona Secretary of State Adrian Fontes told DOJ lawyers sending roughly 20 monitors to the Phoenix area that a "lawsuit filed based on a political outcome puts the department in a compromised position," citing the Alaska suit. Fontes also asked if monitors could be called to testify in court as witnesses, and the acting chief of DOJ's Voting Section answered that such a "speculative" scenario would be "assessed on a case-by-case basis." DOJ says monitors won't question voters about citizenship, but a spokesperson added that "if our monitors uncover evidence of such crimes while monitoring, we will use it."

Early Voting Surged As Trump's Attacks Push Voters Away From Mail Ballots

Early voting is surging in Texas and across Senate battlegrounds, and Trump's attacks on mail voting are pushing more voters to cast ballots in person. Associated Press / Votebeat: More than 6.3 million Texans had voted early as of Wednesday, up 50% from 4.2 million at the same point four years ago, while early voting is up 83% in South Carolina and more than 30% in Maine, Michigan, North Carolina and Kansas. In North Carolina, Georgia and Wisconsin, early in-person voting is up an average of 35% from 2022 while voting by mail and drop box is down about 35%. "There's a lot of cheating in vote by mail," Trump said earlier this month, even though he has cast ballots by mail himself. Political scientist Paul Gronke of Reed College says Trump's messaging, amplified by others, has "moved many Republicans away from voting by mail / absentee voting." Democrats are pulling back too, with Pew finding Democratic confidence in voting by mail fell from 85% in 2024 to 64%, as budget cuts at the Postal Service have led to a spike in mail ballots rejected because of delivery delays.

In The States

ALASKA — Rural voting sites the state advertised never opened. Democracy Docket: A nonprofit that does voter education in rural Alaska sued Lt. Gov. Nancy Dahlstrom and the Division of Elections, alleging at least 18 absentee in-person voting locations listed on the state's website weren't operating the week of Oct. 19. The list includes Chignik Bay, Holy Cross, Pilot Station, Mountain Village, Alakanuk and Gambell. Some local officials say they never received the materials to run the sites, and others got materials but no training. In Toksook Bay, a flight to the nearest confirmed site costs roughly $450. The suit asks a judge to order every listed site opened.

ARIZONA — A U.S. attorney opens an FBI investigation into three Arizona voter-registration groups days before the election. AZ Family: Timothy Courchaine, the U.S. attorney for Arizona, announced Friday that his office is investigating Stand Indivisible Arizona, Worker Power and When We Count, which it accuses of registering noncitizens to vote, and has handed the matter to the FBI. The office cites unspecified "written and video reports." It also sent letters to the Maricopa County recorder and the secretary of state's office urging them to review the groups' registration practices.

FLORIDA — Broward County's elections chief says USPS delays are "serious" and tells voters not to mail their ballots. New York Times: Supervisor of Elections Joe Scott said his office has received dozens of reports of returned ballots taking more than two weeks to arrive, when delivery should take "two days tops." Florida only counts mail ballots received by 7 p.m. on Election Day, and Scott told voters, "even if the mail was running normal — which it's not — it's way too late to put your ballot in the mail." He says nearly all mail ballots for Hallandale Beach, a city with more than 25,000 eligible voters, were significantly delayed, and a USPS liaison he alerted said the agency would look into it but nothing came of it. Scott believes the problem is worse than the reports suggest: "For every person that's saying this, there are 50 or 100 who aren't."

GEORGIA — A printing vendor's delay left thousands of metro Atlanta absentee voters without ballots days before the election. CBS Atlanta / WAGA / Democracy Docket: Civil rights groups including the SPLC, the ACLU of Georgia and the Legal Defense Fund filed an emergency suit Friday alleging ballots haven't arrived for more than 1,800 registered Gwinnett County voters. The vendor, Fort Orange Press, also serves Cobb and DeKalb counties, and the groups estimate nearly 10,000 voters across metro Atlanta could be affected, and the vendor also serves counties in Colorado, Pennsylvania and New York that have complained about undelivered ballots. Only 28.3% of Gwinnett's ballots issued Oct. 6 through Oct. 16 had been returned when the suit was filed, compared with a statewide average of 67.1%. They want Gwinnett to notify affected voters, send ballots by overnight mail, and accept them through Nov. 6 if postmarked by Nov. 3. Cobb is overnighting replacements to voters who request them, but those ballots are still due by 7 p.m. Tuesday with no extension.

TEXAS — Democrats move to fight a Republican bid to block Texas certification unless every ballot is hand-counted. Democracy Docket: The DSCC and DCCC asked Thursday to intervene in the suit, which was filed by Houston attorney Jared Woodfill in Amarillo, where Judge Matthew Kacsmaryk is the only federal judge. The suit's only defendant is one small county's elections administrator, and it cites AI-hacking fears from a 2024 report. Democrats argue it's "not possible to accurately hand count millions of ballots under Texas's post-election timelines" and would mean a "compressed, 254-county recount" that threatens timely certification.

TEXAS — Harris County pulls targeted voter ads after Paxton's office sued, calling the ads racial targeting. Houston Public Media / Texas Tribune: The Texas attorney general's office sued Harris County Clerk Teneshia Hudspeth and her communications director over Facebook and Instagram voter-awareness ads that allegedly targeted "certain racial and ethnic groups," saying the clerk's office spent more than $40,000 on such ads in the last 30 days. Paxton, who is running for Senate against Democrat James Talarico, says he recused himself from the investigation. The clerk's office removed the audience targeting Thursday night and then agreed at a Friday hearing to keep it off through Election Day, an interim deal that doesn't resolve the suit. Both sides claimed victory, and Hudspeth maintains the outreach was lawful.