Try and Stop Us Digest — November 6, 2026

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Trump Tried To Undermine The Midterms. He Failed.

Voters rejected Republicans so thoroughly on Tuesday that it became impossible to blame the outcome on fraud. New York Times: Since returning to the White House in 2025, Trump resurrected disproven theories about tainted voting machines and rampant noncitizen voting, tried to redirect the Postal Service to restrict mail voting, seized 2020 ballots in Georgia, and launched a massive investigation of state voter rolls, suing states to remove suspected noncitizens. The courts reined in many of the most brazen attempts, including when the Supreme Court rejected the administration's effort to make California set aside 20,000 mail-in ballots on the eve of the election. Trump tried to use the power of the federal government to spread false claims about widespread voter fraud and to use those claims to assert unprecedented control over the midterms this year. It didn’t work.

Democrats are about to control the top election office in every significant battleground state for 2028. New York Times: Democrats will control the top election office in Texas, Ohio, Kansas and Iowa, and Democrats also swept into statehouses in Pennsylvania, Michigan, Arizona and Wisconsin, where Republican lawmakers had played a key role in trying to overturn the 2020 election. That likely means fewer election deniers in office, fewer new voting restrictions and fewer attempts to upend the process through hand counts or certification changes. Even Michael Flynn, who helped Trump try to overturn the 2020 election, wrote on X, "America, We lost last night. Full stop." David Becker, a former Justice Department lawyer who runs the Center for Election Innovation and Research, said election deniers "produced zero evidence" after six years of claims. Cleta Mitchell, who founded the Election Integrity Network, called the question of whether she accepted the results "a stupid question" and said, "We're going to be continuing to be very active. We're adding state coalitions as we speak." Gabriel Sterling, the former chief operating officer in the Georgia secretary of state's office, cautioned that "One election cycle does not an election denialism kill."

Another Vile Election Conspiracy Theorist Bites The Dust: Harmeet Dhillon Resigns At DOJ

Harmeet Dhillon resigned as head of DOJ's Civil Rights Division, leaving behind 27 straight court defeats in her fight to get states' voter rolls. NBC News / Democracy Docket: Attorney General Todd Blanche posted on X that he had accepted her resignation. Dhillon’s division sued 30 states and Washington, D.C. for their unredacted voter rolls, and the department has now lost 27 straight district-court cases, without a single win forcing any state to hand over the data. Even Trump-appointed judges rejected DOJ's arguments. Under Dhillon, the division's Voting Section also worked with DHS on a national voter database, pressed Fulton County, Georgia for 2020 records before the FBI seized them, and sent roughly 1,000 monitors to all 50 states on Election Day, an operation that produced no publicly announced findings of voter fraud. In July 2025, Dhillon sent Texas officials a letter claiming four Democratic-held districts were unconstitutional racial gerrymanders, and days later Gov. Greg Abbott called the special session that redrew the map to try to win five more seats. Republicans won just one of the five on Tuesday.

Voting rights advocates say Dhillon destroyed the Civil Rights Division and want the new Democratic Senate to scrutinize her successor. NBC News / Democracy Docket: Kristen Clarke, the NAACP's general counsel and the division's chief under President Joe Biden, said Dhillon "abdicated her responsibility to enforce our nation's federal civil rights laws and destroyed the crown jewel of the Justice Department." Stacey Young, executive director of Justice Connection, an organization of former DOJ employees, called her "the most destructive, lawless, and hateful head of the Civil Rights Division in DOJ history" and said "more than three-quarters of the division's lawyers left."

Republicans Demand Mississippi Counties Preserve Affidavit Ballots As Colom's Lead Grows

Republican lawyers sent letters to Mississippi's counties demanding they separate and preserve every affidavit ballot, as Democrat Scott Colom's lead over Sen. Cindy Hyde-Smith grew to more than 1,700 votes. The Daily Beast / WLBT / New York Times: The letters say the ballots are "potential evidence in any box examination under § 23-15-911, election contest, or proceeding before the United States Senate." The letters do not mention tampering, but suggest Republicans' next move could be questioning individual ballots. There is no evidence at this stage that any ineligible ballots have been counted. "This desperate stunt from national Republicans is what you do when you know you're about to lose a race," Colom campaign manager Gerard Henderson said. Mike Hurst, chairman of the Mississippi Republican Party, said that "This election is far from being over," and estimated that 20,000 ballots remain to be counted, including mail and affidavit ballots. State officials have estimated about 3,600 absentee-by-mail ballots and an unknown number of affidavit ballots. Colom led 466,226 to 464,502 in unofficial results Thursday afternoon, with an estimated 95.6% of the vote in.

Thousands of Mississippians who will decide the Senate race were forced to vote by affidavit ballot after the Republican secretary of state's contract with Experian made them “inactive.” Democracy Docket: A Mississippi Today analysis found more than 15,000 voters in DeSoto County were removed as active voters between the primary and the general election, along with 14,063 in Jackson County and 28,921 in Harrison County. Harrison County voter Clint Lowery, a registered Mississippi voter of five years, waited hours in line before being told he wasn't on the precinct's list. Secretary of State Michael Watson (R) defended the inactivations as a "cornerstone of election integrity." Thessalia Merivaki of Washington State University, who researches elections, said, "these affidavits are gonna really make or break who wins this election," and that eligible voters were erroneously inactivated because the data were faulty.

Trump Demands Alaska's "Fake Dan Sullivan" Votes Go To The Incumbent

Trump demanded that Alaska hand incumbent Sen. Dan Sullivan the votes cast for the other candidates on the ballot, which state law does not allow. Washington Post / Politico: "The vote totals for the Fake Dan Sullivan, plus the other 'slug' that the Dems put on the Ballot, should be immediately given to the REAL Dan Sullivan, and the Election is over - He easily wins. There is no other fair solution!" Trump posted on Truth Social. Politico noted it is the first time since the Republican losses that Trump has raised the idea of any voting irregularities, and that he has not asked DOJ to take further action. Under Alaska's ranked-choice system, a ballot for an eliminated candidate moves only to the next candidate that voter ranked, and ballots with no further ranking drop out. Democrat Mary Peltola led by less than one percentage point on Thursday with most of the vote counted. The ranked-choice tabulation will not run until Nov. 18, and officials aim to certify results Nov. 25. DOJ's lawsuit to block certification was dismissed Sunday and is on appeal at the 9th Circuit, which has set a briefing schedule that extends into January. Gov. Mike Dunleavy (R) has ordered a state investigation into the second Sullivan's candidacy and said certification could be "stopped or changed" if wrongdoing is found.

Even ranked-choice tabulation is unlikely to save Sullivan, a New York Times analysis finds, because more of the other Dan Sullivan's voters ranked Peltola second than the incumbent. New York Times: Peltola leads by less than one percentage point, but she is expected to build a more substantial lead once about 60,000 more votes, mostly cast by mail, are counted. If the race goes to ranked-choice tabulation on Nov. 18, the Times found Sullivan might not gain even half a point. Among ballots that ranked Gerald Heikes, Daniel J. Sullivan Jr. or a write-in first, which are about 4 percent of ballots counted so far, the incumbent would gain only four-tenths of a percentage point in vote margin. Of the second choices of Sullivan Jr.'s voters, 29 percent went to Peltola, 18 percent to Heikes and 16 percent to the incumbent, and 36 percent left the choice blank. Even if every one of the blank-ballot voters had actually intended to vote for Sullivan, he would gain only about one percentage point, which would not offset Peltola's expected gains from the uncounted mail vote. The Times says the votes Trump wants to hand to Sullivan amount to fewer than 4,000 ballots as of Thursday. About 10,000 hand-counted ballots, primarily from rural areas where Peltola has performed well, are not included in the analysis.

Sen. Dan Sullivan called the second Dan Sullivan's candidacy "the biggest election cheating scandal in the history of the state of Alaska," but the Alaska Supreme Court has ruled that he has a legal right to be on the ballot. Alaska Beacon: Sullivan made the claim to reporters after voting on Election Day, saying, "Thousands, likely, of Alaskans are going to mistakenly throw away their vote." “Ballot stacking" is generally legal and both parties have used it in Alaska elections, and there is no law against convincing someone to run for office unless bribery is involved. Alaska voters the Alaska Beacon spoke to dismissed the idea of confusion. The ballot identified Sullivan as the incumbent, and ranked-choice voting lets voters rank both Sullivans. "If you know what the word incumbent means, it should not be a problem," said Ella Wheeles, an 18-year-old first-time general election voter. A Petersburg man who donated to the second Sullivan said two FBI agents visited him last Friday and asked whether he had contributed to "the correct Sullivan."