Try and Stop Us Digest — November 3, 2026

Must Read

It’s Election Day Today! Here's What We’re Watching

Voting experts are watching five trouble spots on Election Day, but courts have already thwarted most of the Trump administration's plans. ProPublica: The five questions are whether there will be federal interference, what effect noncitizen voter challenges will have, whether there will be problems at the polls, how secure the election will be, and where postelection challenges will come from. Washington Attorney General Nick Brown leads a group of Democratic state officials and voting rights advocates that has "war-gamed" how to respond if federal agents try to commandeer voting equipment or ballots. A federal judge has also limited a multistate DHS door-to-door search for suspected noncitizen voters, at least through Election Day, saying it was illegally intimidating legal voters. It's against the law for federal law enforcement to be near polling places, though the administration hasn't explicitly ruled out sending agents to the polls or seizing ballots or voting machines. In Tarrant County, which includes Fort Worth, polling sites were cut by almost a third, which could mean long lines and confusion.

Late-counted ballots, "suspected noncitizens" and refusals to certify are the lies to expect on Election Day and afterwards, and none is evidence of fraud. Democracy Docket: The White House's Rapid Response account answered a PolitiFact explainer saying it's normal not to know a winner on election night with "No, it isn't," but the U.S. Election Assistance Commission says election-night results are "unofficial and never final." Fifteen states and Washington, D.C., accept some on-time ballots that arrive after Election Day, a practice the Supreme Court upheld in June, and in Michigan the later counts come from slower-reporting, Democratic-leaning areas like Detroit and Ann Arbor. The Trump administration says its investigations have led to about 160 arrests since January 2025, a tiny fraction of the more than 200 million active registered voters, and a UCLA analysis found 42% of the names on DOJ's California list didn't match anyone on the state's current voter file. Certification is typically a mandatory, ministerial duty, and claims of fraud are handled through recounts, election contests and court challenges. There were at least 17 attempts to interfere with certification in 2024, and none succeeded.

Election officials say they're scared and exhausted by the federal threats, but they plan to do their jobs anyway. Votebeat: Santa Clara County registrar Matt Moreles said in a court declaration that the federal government's conduct has had "a severe chilling effect on my staff and me." Contra Costa County clerk-recorder Kristin Connelly said in a declaration that two DHS officials showed up at her office unannounced on Oct. 23 and gave her 48 hours to set aside as many as 407 ballots. Tammy Patrick, chief program officer at the Election Center, said officials "have a job to do, and they will do it while drowning out the noise and distractions to the best of their ability."

DOJ's Demands To Set Aside Ballots Keep Losing In Court

The Supreme Court rejected DOJ's push to set aside ballots from about 20,000 California voters, with no justices publicly dissenting. AP: The justices refused Monday to intervene in the case and did not detail their reasoning. California officials said the list appeared to be filled with errors and that setting the ballots aside could effectively disenfranchise legal voters. U.S. District Judge David O. Carter, who first denied the request, wrote that "If the Executive can discount votes and threaten an ongoing election due to unproven allegations, then our democracy is in danger," and a 2-1 appeals court panel upheld his order. Hundreds of thousands of California ballots have already been processed, and election officials say finding and setting aside the challenged ones now would be logistically impossible. The justices also rejected Trump's push to restrict mail ballots around the country in September, even though they have sided with his administration in a series of other emergency appeals.

District Court James Boasberg ruled Monday that DOJ has likely violated the Constitution with its demand that California set aside ballots. Politico: Chief U.S. District Judge James Boasberg wrote Monday that "The Executive Branch has likely violated the Constitution's Elections Clause, which commits authority over election rules to the states and Congress alone." He added that "California may decide for itself what procedures to use for verifying the citizenship of registered voters and for deciding whether to count their mail-in ballots," and that "Defendants' flawed lists risk chilling or preventing lawful votes from being cast and counted." The ruling came in a lawsuit by the Coalition for Humane Immigrant Rights, which won access to the list, and two data scientists the group tapped concluded it included a significant number of erroneous names. It overlaps with Judge Trina Thompson's Friday order barring DOJ from demanding that any state separate ballots based on claims that voters are ineligible.

In a shocking admission, a DOJ lawyer told a judge it’s “fair” to say the government’s “likely noncitizen” list has a high error rate. Law Dork / Politico: Hours after Solicitor General John Sauer asked the Supreme Court to order California to segregate ballots from more than 20,000 people on the list, Assistant U.S. Attorney Kenneth Kao told Judge Trina Thompson, “It may not be a perfect list.” Thompson, who was weighing DOJ’s request to stay her restraining order in a lawsuit by unions and civil rights groups over threats to prosecute election workers, asked, “Would you agree there’s a high error rate?” and Kao answered, “I think that’s a fair statement.” Thompson said, “If I’m hearing that the list is flawed and it’s overinclusive and includes individuals who are eligible to vote, that’s a problem.” Kao’s statement was the most direct admission yet from DOJ that it has little to back up its use of the list, and that it will have ripple effects in the California case and other litigation over the lists.

DOJ gave a court a stripped-down version of its California list, then suggested the group that exposed the list's errors could face criminal contempt. Democracy Docket / AP: Experts working with the Coalition for Humane Immigrant Rights say the file DOJ produced Friday under Judge Boasberg's order had just eight data fields and omitted the voter identification number, which they called the "single most critical column," while federal officials earlier described a spreadsheet with roughly 30 fields. UCLA political scientist Matt Barreto and data scientist Michael Rios wrote that it "does not appear to be the identical file produced to Los Angeles County and the State of California," though they did not assert that DOJ violated the order. DOJ responded Sunday by defending the list, calling the group's analysis "political grandstanding," and suggesting Boasberg refer the group and its lawyers for possible criminal contempt, while UCLA's Voting Rights Project says its lawyers and experts "fully complied with the Court's orders."

Washington groups sued over DOJ's demand that the state set aside 405 voters' ballots, after a federal prosecutor said election workers who process them could face charges. KING 5: OneAmerica Votes, the Latino Community Fund of Washington State and the United Food and Commercial Workers International Union filed the suit Friday in federal court in Seattle. DOJ told Secretary of State Steve Hobbs on Oct. 26 that it wanted the ballots set aside, gave him 48 hours to comply, and said it expected to provide more names before Election Day. According to the lawsuit, Hobbs' initial review found the list included many U.S. citizens, along with people who weren't registered or whose registrations were inactive. Asked whether county election workers could face charges for processing ballots from people on the list, Acting U.S. Attorney Neil Floyd said laws covering assistance in committing a crime could apply. The groups want a judge to block those directives and stop threats of prosecution against workers who process the ballots under state law.

A grand jury refused to indict a voter fraud case DOJ pursued days before the election, adding to a string of losses in its push to prove Trump’s claims of rampant fraud. New York Times: A federal grand jury in Washington, DC on Friday rejected DOJ’s effort to indict an individual prosecutors claimed voted in two jurisdictions during the 2024 election. One person familiar with the case said it was brought under pressure from political appointees, including U.S. Attorney Jeanine Pirro, who wanted to follow through on Trump’s demands for voter fraud cases as the midterms neared, while another said the investigation began after the D.C. Board of Elections sent Pirro’s office a list of people it found had voted twice. Previous DOJs shied away from politically fraught cases in the weeks before Election Day, but in Trump’s second term the department has brought about 200 voter fraud cases against individuals, compared with roughly a dozen under Biden. This year the DOJ has lost dozens of lawsuits it brought against state and local officials over how they run elections and against Trump’s political enemies. Last week, grand jurors also declined to charge former Trump aide Cassidy Hutchinson, and today a judge dismissed charges against two former F.B.I. officials accused of lying to Congress.

Judge Warns There Will Be "Hell To Pay" If DOJ Misled Court On Poll Monitors

A judge warned of "hell to pay" if DOJ misrepresented who its poll monitors are, while DOJ argues in court that the ban on voter intimidation doesn't apply to the federal government. Bloomberg / Democracy Docket: At a Monday hearing on the NAACP's bid to block DOJ from using federal law enforcement employees as poll monitors, Judge Reggie Walton said he hoped DOJ attorney Kathryn Barragan "would not misrepresent the reality of who these monitors are going to be," adding that if she did, "there's going to be hell to pay for that." DOJ has said in a filing that employees of the Bureau of Prisons, ATF and DEA will serve as monitors, but Barragan said they won't be present in a law enforcement capacity or wear uniforms or identifying insignia, and that DOJ is working to ensure none are "sworn officers" with arrest authority. Walton asked how DOJ decides where to send monitors, and Barragan said she did not have an answer, prompting him to say he hoped monitors aren't "being sent to any particular locations because of the perceived political leanings of those locations." In response to the lawsuit, DOJ argues that the Civil Rights Act's ban on intimidating voters by any "person, whether acting under color of law or otherwise" does not apply to the federal government, because the only way to enforce it is a civil action brought by the attorney general.

In The States

D.C. — The FBI told its D.C. agents to stay away from polling places after National Guard troops and federal agents were spotted near them. The Washington Sun: The directive covers agents working for Trump's D.C. Safe and Beautiful Task Force and was disclosed by a government attorney in the lawsuits over alleged plans to dispatch ICE agents to polling sites. After the FBI learned over the weekend that agents "may have been observed near an active polling location," it told all D.C.-stationed employees to avoid polling locations, with "the only exception" being "an active shooter at a particular polling location." The FBI said any agents seen near a polling place were on a roving foot patrol, not an investigation. Plaintiffs including the NAACP and LULAC are still seeking assurance that ICE agents won't be sent to polling places.

GEORGIA — Gwinnett and DeKalb counties are contacting voters whose absentee ballots never arrived and sent replacements overnight. CBS Atlanta: The Southern Poverty Law Center said it reached separate agreements with the two counties to contact voters who haven't returned their ballots and tell them they can request a replacement, with the county covering return postage. The agreements follow an emergency lawsuit alleging that more than 1,800 registered Gwinnett voters who requested absentee ballots hadn't received them from New York-based Fort Orange Press as of Friday, and a similar suit was filed in Cobb County. "No voter should lose their voice because an absentee ballot they requested never made it to their mailbox," said ACLU Voting Rights Project attorney Will Hughes. Absentee ballots must be received by 7 p.m. on Election Day, and voters who haven't received theirs can vote in person if they sign a document attesting that they are voting only once.

NEBRASKA — Mail voting fell sharply in Sarpy County after a group spread voter fraud claims there, but requests for mail ballots are rebounding. Votebeat: Volunteers from the Nebraska Voter Accuracy Project went door to door in the county quizzing residents about whether they voted by mail, generating 52 fraud complaints and a county investigation costing about $88,000 that found no evidence of widespread fraud or criminal wrongdoing. The share of Sarpy voters casting mail ballots fell from nearly a third in 2018 to 24% in 2022, compared with 35% statewide, and was 25% in 2024, compared with nearly 32% statewide, though there is no direct evidence that the group's campaign caused the drop. This year, the county received around 13,300 mail ballot requests by the Oct. 23 deadline, up roughly 43% from about 9,330 in 2022. Tammy Patrick, chief program officer at the Election Center, said "The ongoing, unsupported narrative that voting by mail is not secure and fodder for rampant fraud has eroded some voters' confidence." Sarpy County Election Commissioner David Jones said he is highly confident in the mail voting process, citing signature verification, envelope barcodes that guard against duplicate ballots, and oversight of ballot handling by both major parties.