Try and Stop Us Digest — October 5, 2026

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After Months Of Attacks, Trump Suddenly Tells Republicans To Vote By Mail

Trump posted a video Saturday urging Republicans to vote by mail, after months of attacking the practice. New York Times: "Vote early. Vote by mail. Or vote in person on Election Day," Trump said, while promoting a Republican Party website on voting options. As recently as July he called mail ballots "inherently corrupt," and in March, days before mailing in his own ballot, he said "Mail-in voting means mail-in cheating." The shift follows the Supreme Court blocking his March executive order restricting mail ballots and Congress declining to pass the SAVE America Act. NYU's Richard Pildes: "He's realizing that his efforts to change policy on mail-in voting have basically run aground at this point, and he's shifting gears."

Mail Voters Keep Hitting New Hurdles — From The Post Office To The Pentagon

The Postal Service pushed back the start of its special ballot-handling measures, leaving 10 days before Election Day instead of 15. Democracy Docket: USPS's "extraordinary measures" include separate post office lines for ballots that need postmarks, extended retail hours and drive-throughs. They now begin Oct. 24, versus 15 days out in 2022 and 2024. A memo to employees last week gave no reason and no warning of problems. It came less than a month after the Supreme Court blocked Trump's attempt to use the Postal Service to restrict mail ballots. Steve Hutkins, who runs Save the Post Office: "The shorter timeframe is noteworthy and I don't know why they're doing this."

Pete Hegseth ordered a one-day voting stand-down for troops by Oct. 15, while the administration has scrapped the federal fax service military voters used to return ballots. Washington Sun / Democracy Docket: The order gives troops time with voting-assistance officers to register and request absentee ballots, and bars commanders from steering anyone's vote. Hegseth himself acknowledged that voting has been "time consuming and complex" for service members, with "unnecessary, difficult ways of obtaining, completing, and returning absentee ballots while serving far from home." Yet the Federal Voting Assistance Program quietly ended its email-to-fax service, so military voters must now fax materials directly to their local election office or use another method their state allows. Only an estimated 42% of active-duty troops voted in 2024, versus about 65% of civilians.

Trump's Noncitizen Voting Crusade Confirms It's Incredibly Rare

The Trump administration has poured enormous resources into hunting noncitizen voters, and the results confirm it's incredibly rare and nowhere near enough to swing an election. Associated Press: DOJ's tally of 90 voter-fraud cases, only 50 of them against alleged noncitizens, wouldn't come close to swinging any significant federal or even state election. The 10 people charged in Minnesota allegedly voted across three elections in which more than 8 million ballots were cast. Ohio prosecutors secured nine noncitizen-voting indictments over a decade in a state with about 8 million registered voters, and Georgia found just 20 noncitizens among its 8.2 million registered voters in 2024. Even Attorney General Todd Blanche conceded, "I don't think we can say there's a pattern we've identified." Former DOJ attorney David Becker says "a lot of resources" have been "redirected away from things like violent crime and counterterrorism."

States Say Trump Is Leaving Them In The Dark On Election Threats

State election officials, including Republicans, say the Trump administration has halted the intelligence briefings, trainings and testing they relied on. Washington Post: The cuts come as spy agencies assess that Russia is working to sow distrust in the midterm results. CISA laid off nearly a third of its staff in early 2025 and Trump has yet to appoint a director. The Foreign Malign Influence Center was shuttered, and in July Trump fired two Democratic Election Assistance Commission members, after which the lone Republican resigned. Arizona Secretary of State Adrian Fontes says CISA's acting director told states in August that the agency's focus was on 2028. Utah Lt. Gov. Deidre Henderson (R): "The threats that we're getting now are mostly from our own government."

The Justice Department's election-threats task force prosecuted 21 cases from 2021 to 2024 and now appears to be defunct. The Guardian: Nikki Fisher, formerly Oregon's chief election security officer, says no new cases have been brought. Asked about the task force, DOJ pointed to nine press releases announcing indictments of foreign nationals for election fraud. Pam Bondi dissolved the FBI's foreign-influence task force the day after her confirmation, and administration leaders fired or reassigned CISA staff working on foreign election interference and defunded training for local officials. Caitlin Durkovich, a former deputy homeland security adviser, says the administration has "dismantled the entire apparatus that is responsible for detecting and holding these bad actors accountable."

The FBI Is Chasing Election Conspiracy Theories From Fulton County To California

Kash Patel is still pushing FBI staff to keep hunting for 2020 election fraud after turning up nothing. The Atlantic: Many of the requests came straight from the White House, officials say, and when nothing turned up Patel told staff to "look harder" or "look again," three people say. In July, roughly 260 FBI employees were pulled off other work for two weeks to review data from the ballots seized in Fulton County, an effort people familiar with it say yielded nothing substantive. Two analysts who raised questions were escorted out. Asked by Sen. Richard Blumenthal at a September hearing to confirm FBI staff wouldn't be at polling places, Patel said: "I don't know that we can't legally do it." Federal law has barred armed agents from polling sites since the Civil War.

A California election chief who lost his race padlocked ballots over claims they smelled too inky, and the FBI showed up with bolt cutters. Washington Post: Shasta County Registrar Clint Curtis lost his June race to his former assistant, Joanna Francescut, with 58% of the vote. He certified the results as accurate, then locked the ballots in a storage room, ordered the keys destroyed and reported his suspicions to the Trump administration. Some ballots felt too rough, he says, and he echoed a baseless 2020 claim about counterfeit ballots with bamboo fibers. FBI agents and state officials later came to inspect the boxes. Curtis still runs November's election.

Democrats Are Preparing Now For Trump's Post-Election Plots

Democrats are suing now to get ahead of post-election fights, including a DNC lawsuit demanding records on any planned seizure of ballots and voting machines. New York Times: The DNC suit asks DOJ for public records "concerning any planned seizure of ballots, voting machines and other voting system components," and the administration has turned over no documents so far. A second DNC suit seeks records on stationing federal agents at polling places, and civil rights groups and labor unions sued last month arguing that immigration enforcement and talk of armed agents at the polls amount to illegal voter intimidation. Elisabeth Frost of Elias Law Group imagines the administration saying: "We tried to get this data, and the states didn't give it to us, and so no one should believe the results." Former Homeland Security Secretary Jeh Johnson: "There's a whole bar out there now of election law experts that have to be on the ready on election night."

Democratic state officials and groups are preparing for federal agents at the polls, from court orders within hours to trained observers at polling places. Washington Sun: Maine Secretary of State Shenna Bellows says that if something alarming happens, her office and the attorney general's "would be in court and getting orders from the court within hours, not days or months." Michigan Attorney General Dana Nessel has run tabletop exercises with the secretary of state, the governor's office, State Police and local communities: "Community after community after community, we are sitting down and we are planning so that we can be ready for any set of circumstances that arises." The Save America Movement is sending clergy, nurses, teachers and veterans trained in "de-escalation, deterrence and documentation" to polling places in Mecklenburg County, NC, Wayne County, Michigan, DeKalb County, Georgia, and Cuyahoga County, Ohio.

Top intelligence Democrats are putting the new spy chief on notice: tell Congress about any foreign election manipulation. Politico: Sen. Mark Warner (D-Va.) and Rep. Jim Himes (D-Conn.), the top Democrats on the Senate and House intelligence committees, sent the letter Friday to Director of National Intelligence Jay Clayton. It lists the threat briefings and reports, some required by statute, that they expect before Election Day, and says they'll "assume" no foreign manipulation took place unless he notifies their committees otherwise. The move is meant to head off any attempt by Trump to claim that China or Iran compromised the vote. "Between now and Election Day, it is critical the IC continue to inform policymakers, state and local election administrators, and the American people about threats to our elections," the letter says.

Nine In Ten Voters Oppose Cutting Polling Places And Voting Hours

A new national survey finds overwhelming bipartisan support for expanding voting access, and more voters worried about eligible people not voting than about ineligible people voting. Democracy Docket: The iVote Research poll of 800 likely midterm voters found 82% strongly favor early in-person voting and making Election Day a federal holiday, and 75% back more drop boxes and Postal Service resources. Nine in 10 oppose cutting voting hours or polling locations, like the Sunday voting cuts in North Carolina and the 30% cut to polling places in a Texas battleground county. Nearly 60% of voters say eligible people not voting is a bigger problem than ineligible people voting. An analysis this week found 72,000 ballots were rejected in six states' 2026 primaries, while 588 noncitizen voters were found nationwide over 14 years.

In The States

GEORGIA — Georgia's election board director sent the Trump administration demands the board never approved, according to the chair and a Republican member who voted for the resolution. Votebeat: Georgia State Election Board Chair John Fervier says the board’s executive director James Mills drafted and sent the letters to the Justice and Homeland Security departments on his own, going well beyond the 3-2 resolution passed last Monday: "We have no control over our executive director, and he does whatever the hell he wants to." Elections board member Salleigh Grubbs, vice chair of the state Republican Party, says she emailed Mills within hours asking to see the letter first, never heard back, and learned of it "with everybody else." The resolution urged software updates and federal help. The letters demanded that DOJ force a specific software install before November and ban QR-code tabulation. They also accused Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger (R) of misleading the legislature and asked DOJ to investigate alleged alteration or withholding of election records — allegations that appear nowhere in the board’s resolution. Fervier calls the letters "a political hit piece against our secretary of state."

GEORGIA — Georgia's election board director asked DOJ to investigate ERIC, the nonpartisan voter-roll program the state pays to belong to. Democracy Docket: James Mills asked a board meeting last week, "What does ERIC do?" His letter to the Department of Justice alleges Raffensperger's agreement with ERIC lets voter and motor vehicle data be shared with another nonprofit, CEIR, "without oversight or accountability." Georgia is one of the last GOP-controlled states still in ERIC. DOJ civil rights chief Harmeet Dhillon recently attacked red states for sharing rolls with "so-called nonprofits that in fact weaponizes information toward the left," and DHS Secretary Markwayne Mullin's Sept. 2 letter also targeted ERIC and CEIR. ERIC "firmly rejects" the allegations and points to a federal court that sanctioned attorneys this year for making similar claims it found frivolous.

MONTANA — A Montana court blocked a Republican-backed law that got nearly 3,000 absentee ballots thrown out last year over birthdate technicalities, ruling it violates the state constitution. Democracy Docket: HB 719 required absentee voters to write their birthdate on the envelope or lose their vote, in a state where 80% vote absentee. The state offered no evidence of fraud on a scale to justify it and couldn't explain to the court how the requirement would help crack down on fraud. The court wrote: "Against this lack of evidence…is the undisputed fact HB 719 has resulted in thousands of ballots being rejected due to a missing or incorrect birth year." Disability Rights Montana and Big Sky 55+ brought the case.

TEXAS — Tarrant County's Republican commissioners cut Election Day polling sites by 29% for the midterms, and four voters of color are suing, saying the cut "intentionally treats Black and Hispanic voters unequally." Fort Worth Star-Telegram: Commissioners voted along party lines Sept. 1 to eliminate 92 polling sites compared with 2022, over the objections of the court's two Democrats and roughly 105 public commenters. The lawsuit, filed Friday, says the cut disenfranchises voters and violates election code, and asks a judge to restore the 92 sites. Early voting starts Oct. 19.