Try and Stop Us Digest — October 6, 2026

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Ed Martin Says Trump Met With Tina Peters Yesterday To Discuss Midterm Plans

Former DOJ official Ed Martin says Trump met with convicted election tamperer Tina Peters in the Oval Office to discuss "the plans" for the midterms. Alternet: Martin told conservative host Eric Bolling that Peters had been in the Oval Office about two hours earlier, then tied the meeting to the stalled SAVE America Act: "If Congress won't pass the Save America Act, and they won't, then the president's going to have to do what he's going to do." He didn't say what the plans are or what action Trump could take. Martin also pointed to DHS Secretary Markwayne Mullin's August warning about foreign-made parts in voting machines, claiming the machines are "compromised," though Mullin's letter didn't show that any machine was compromised or any vote altered. Peters was convicted in 2024 of seven offenses, four of them felonies, for letting an unauthorized person access Mesa County's voting equipment while looking for evidence to back 2020 election claims.

Democrats Mapped 150+ Election Threats And Are Already Drafting The Briefs

Democrats have mapped more than 150 possible threats to the midterms, from ICE at the polls to ballot seizures, and lawyers are drafting court filings in advance. CNN: Schumer has convened senators, legal experts and former officials for closed-door drills on specific scenarios, including DHS agents and the National Guard at the polls, ballot seizures after the administration claims a foreign adversary compromised voting systems, and fake AI-generated fraud videos that spark demands for intervention and a purge of eligible voters from the rolls. Participants role-played the Homeland Security Secretary, the director of national intelligence and the attorney general. Rep. Pramila Jayapal: "We just have to be ready to go to court immediately. There is no time to write briefs." Elias Law Group is litigating 85 cases in 41 states, and partner Aria Branch says, "We basically have go-bags prepared." The ACLU has committed $25 million and mapped 25 scenarios, with legal filings and press releases drafted for each, and Sen. Alex Padilla's new bipartisan Senate observer program will send staffers to polling places through the count and certification. Former Associate Attorney General Vanita Gupta: "We can't have a failure of imagination, given what happened with the Big Lie in 2020."

Early Voting Is Open For Business In A Growing List Of States

Ohio opens early voting today, joining Maine, California, Montana, Nebraska, New Mexico, Indiana, Wyoming and other states where voters are already casting ballots. Reuters / Democracy Docket: Ohio opens early voting today. Maine opened in early voting in person yesterday and Secretary of State Shenna Bellows says voters' anxiety about mail voting "seems to have subsided to some degree" since the Supreme Court blocked Trump's restrictions. Maine's Republican nominee for governor has asked Trump to send ICE to the polls, and Bellows says her office keeps stressing that doing so would be "a violation of federal law with criminal penalties."

DOJ Sends 1,000 Monitors; Democrats Aim For 10,000 Poll Watchers

The NAACP sued DOJ for records on its plan to deploy roughly 1,000 federal personnel to polling places, calling it an "unprecedented deployment" that "stands to jeopardize the election." Democracy Docket: The suit, filed in federal court Friday, seeks records on the legal authority, personnel, training, locations and planning behind the operation and asks the court to order DOJ to preserve and release them. The plan dwarfs the roughly 289 monitors sent in 2022 and 714 in 2024, yet the Civil Rights Division has only 353 authorized positions, including 193 attorneys, and it's unclear where the rest will come from. Monitors sent to this year's primaries drew pushback: Hennepin County, Minnesota, turned down DOJ's request to put them inside polling places, and Wyoming's Republican governor, Mark Gordon, called their conduct "a bit aggressive" and "irregular." The suit also asks DOJ to confirm that David Michael Levin, who pleaded guilty to illegally accessing election websites in 2016, is a DOJ employee and took part in election monitoring in Minnesota or elsewhere.

Democrats are building their own army of election watchers, as officials warn that activists hunting for fraud could spin routine events into fraud claims. Axios: A coalition of Democratic state parties is aiming to recruit at least 10,000 election watchers across all 50 states and territories, while anti-ICE activist networks are converting their ICE-watch trainings into poll-watching trainings. The RNC is expanding the watch network it built in 2020, and Republicans have signed up as poll workers in record numbers. The Brennan Center's Andrew Garber: "I worry that people are going to go in and claim they're seeing things that they aren't."

Trump Praises Brazil's Elections — Which Run On Paperless Voting Machines

Trump praised Brazil for reporting election results the same day, even though Brazil votes entirely on paperless electronic machines while he has falsely claimed machines used in U.S. elections change votes. Democracy Docket: In a Truth Social post Sunday, Trump wrote that Brazil's results "came out shortly after the vote closed, on the SAME DAY!" while U.S. results "will often take weeks to Rig, I mean, calculate." Brazil has held elections entirely on standalone electronic machines with no paper ballots since 2000, the only country to do so, while 98% of U.S. voters fill out a paper ballot or use a machine that prints a paper record. American counts take longer mostly because of pro-voter policies and accuracy protections: California, for example, mails ballots to every registered voter and counts all ballots mailed on time even if they arrive later, and officials must verify each ballot before counting it.

In The States

NEW HAMPSHIRE — A federal judge ruled New Hampshire can't bar poll workers from accepting student IDs as evidence of identity for voters who have no other ID, a partial win for young voters. New Hampshire Union Leader: Judge Joseph Laplante found Secretary of State David Scanlan's April directive telling clerks student IDs were unacceptable too sweeping: "It does not follow, and the state has not explained why it should follow, that it also decided that a student ID also may not constitute evidence a polling station official may rely on to establish voter identity when no other form of ID is available at all." He declined to block the law Gov. Kelly Ayotte signed in April that bars student IDs as stand-alone voter ID, so it stands for Nov. 3. An expert for the plaintiffs found 7,747 voters ages 18 to 24, or 6.6%, lacked qualifying paperwork in the last presidential election, and the Coalition for Open Democracy says it will keep fighting on First, 14th and 26th Amendment grounds.

PENNSYLVANIA — Pennsylvania state Rep. Malcolm Kenyatta (D) introduced a bill to ban law enforcement, including federal agents like ICE, from within 100 feet of polling places. Votebeat: State law already keeps police out of that zone on Election Day, and federal law already bars "troops or armed men" from polling places. Kenyatta's bill would swap "police officer" for the broader "law enforcement officer" so the rule clearly covers federal agents. It hasn't received a vote in the state House, but Kenyatta says it's necessary: "We have become so accustomed to the president blatantly lying about the election, threatening people, using the court process and administrative powers granted to him to try to intimidate voters."

TEXAS — Texas election officials racing to clear the state's voter registration backlog say the state's registration system is making the job harder. Votebeat: Randall County's elections administrator, Shannon Lackey, was still processing 3,388 state-sent records at 6 p.m. while the system kept failing: "I cannot tell you how many times I get that message, 'an error occurred.'" Some election officials say verifying a voter's eligibility in the system has taken up to 60 days, which risks registrants not showing up on the rolls when they try to vote. The Texas Association of County Election Officials blames "fundamental system architecture failures" by the state's vendor, Civix, and wants the state to hold further payments until the software works. Texas has committed $17 million to Civix, and up to $36 million if it renews the contract in 2027, and Monday was the registration deadline.

WASHINGTON — The Supreme Court vacated rulings upholding a court-drawn legislative map that protects Latino voters in Washington's Yakima Valley and sent the case back for a redo under its decision weakening the Voting Rights Act. Courthouse News: The brief order Monday returned the case to the Ninth Circuit in light of April's Louisiana v. Callais ruling, which weakened Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act. Washington officials themselves asked for the do-over, writing that the lower courts applied the law correctly as it stood but that Callais "substantially changed the relevant standards." A Republican state lawmaker and two voters petitioned the Court, arguing the remedial map is a racial gerrymander, and the voting rights groups that brought the original case urged the Court to deny the petition.

What Experts Are Saying

Trump's window to use a national emergency declaration to interfere with the midterms has closed. "In any case, elections are like battleships: not easily turned around, even by an unconstitutional presidential decree. Ballots are already being mailed, voting machines are deployed, and people are already voting. The time for an emergency declaration has run out." — Rick Hasen, UCLA law professor and election law expert, Slate