Try and Stop Us Digest — October 7, 2026

Must Read

DHS Considered Sending Undercover Agents After Voter-Registration Groups

Internal DHS documents show the department has investigated more than 150 organizations and considered sending undercover agents to “disrupt activities.” New York Times / CNN: Documents released Wednesday by Democracy Forward show Homeland Security Investigations adopted a “network-based investigative approach, prioritizing organization and facilitation analysis over individual leads,” with reviews of 82 voter registration groups in Pennsylvania, about 44 in New Jersey and about 26 more flagged through a tip line. Investigators found no "derogatory information" on the New Jersey groups, no suspicious finances in another review, and closed an Ohio inquiry after exhausting their leads. The effort drew on tens of millions of records, including 48.4 million of unknown origin supplied by Heather Honey, a 2020 election denier who is now DHS's point person on election integrity, "through independent sources of information." Democracy Forward's Skye Perryman: "It appears the president and his allies want to pick their voters, as opposed to the way things are supposed to function in a democracy where voters pick their leaders."

DOJ's Poll Monitors Include Prosecutors, An FBI Agent And A Convicted Hacker

DOJ sent at least six criminal prosecutors and an FBI agent to monitor Arizona's primary, and is recruiting more prosecutors to watch polling places in November. Washington Sun / Democracy Docket: Records obtained by Democracy Forward show the prosecutors, all from the U.S. Attorney's Office in Arizona, monitored the July 21 primary in Maricopa and Pima counties, a break from the long-standing practice of using only civil attorneys and non-attorney staff. Internal emails show DOJ leaders have since asked attorneys and staffers across the department, including its criminal divisions, to monitor in November. DOJ says monitors "will not identify themselves as prosecutors" and that no FBI personnel are participating in the program, but the records show an FBI special agent detailed to the U.S. attorney's office monitored Maricopa County's primary. A half-dozen former Voting Section officials say they know of no earlier case of prosecutors at the polls, and Stacey Young of the DOJ alumni group Justice Connection says the practice "carries the real risk that election interference and voter intimidation will follow."

David Levin, who pleaded guilty to illegally accessing election websites, was credentialed as a DOJ election observer in Maricopa County, alongside a DOJ lawyer who helped advise Georgia's alternate Republican electors. Democracy Docket: A July 15 email from a Civil Rights Division attorney listed Levin among 12 people needing authorization letters for monitoring in Maricopa County, and the county issued him an observer credential. In 2016, Florida authorities arrested Levin after he used a SQL injection attack to obtain an election official's credentials and enter restricted parts of Lee County's elections website; the charges were reduced to two misdemeanors, he served 20 days in jail, and he has called it a "silly political stunt." Also on the Maricopa team was Christopher Gardner, now a DOJ attorney who represents the department in voting litigation.

DOJ's voting division is filling up with partisans and conspiracists. New York Times: Upward of 300 career employees have left the civil rights division since early 2025, and about 130 lawyers have recently joined, many of them conservatives whose records might once have disqualified them, former officials say. Eric Neff, who is temporarily leading the voting section, was put on leave in 2022 after his bosses at the Los Angeles County prosecutors' office dropped his case against a software executive accused of storing poll-worker data on a Chinese server, citing irregularities in the case; the county later paid the company $5 million. Sen. Peter Welch (D-Vt.): "Deploying politically motivated individuals to carry out D.O.J.'s poll-monitoring efforts threatens to undermine Americans' faith in the electoral process ahead." Asked whether another new elections lawyer, David Vandenberg, should have been hired, his former supervisor in El Paso said: "Hell, no."

Election Deniers Are Steering Trump Toward Seizing Voting Machines

Cleta Mitchell and Tina Peters are pushing Trump's commerce secretary to seize voting machines under a 2019 executive order, a power legal experts say he doesn't have. Democracy Docket: Peters has pushed the scheme since August and, according to former DOJ official Ed Martin, raised it with Trump at the White House Monday: "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." Mitchell argues Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick already has the authority because voting machines are "critical infrastructure." David Becker of the Center for Election Innovation & Research: "I can't say this any more clearly: The Commerce Secretary has no authority." If Lutnick tried to exert it, Becker says, "the states would laugh at him."

Election deniers are stoking fears about voting machines and even claiming that polls showing Democrats ahead are a plot to suppress conservative turnout. The Guardian: Cleta Mitchell told Steve Bannon she has it "on good authority, from some of the highest levels in the Trump administration" that DOJ is asking Georgia's secretary of state about voter data the state shares with two nonprofit groups. Heritage Foundation president Kevin Roberts told Fox Business that predictions Democrats could flip the Senate are "a psyop" by polling firms aimed at depressing conservative turnout.

Trump On Mail Voting: "We Seem To Have No Choice"

On the day Tina Peters met with him at the White House, Trump told reporters Republicans can vote by mail only because there's no alternative, then claimed again, without evidence, that mail voting is rife with cheating. ABC News: "I'd rather have a vote in person," Trump said Monday, adding that "there is a lot of cheating in vote by mail." Sources confirmed to ABC News that Peters, who was convicted in Colorado in a scheme to breach the state's voting systems while hunting for evidence of 2020 fraud, met with Trump at the White House that day. Trump has voted by mail twice in Florida elections this year, including in the state's recent primary. His administration filed an emergency appeal last month asking the Supreme Court to let it immediately implement new Postal Service mail-ballot rules, and the Court rejected it.

In The States

ARIZONA — Arizona opens early voting today with Maricopa County's elections split between two offices that spent more than a year suing each other, and Republican nominees with records tied to challenging the 2020 election running for the state's top three offices. Democracy Docket: Under a July court-mediated settlement, Recorder Justin Heap's office controls early voting, including mail ballots, drop boxes and signature verification, while the Board of Supervisors runs Election Day, the count and the county canvass. The Republican nominee for secretary of state, state Rep. Alexander Kolodin, helped litigate some of the most notorious challenges to Arizona's 2020 results, and he told a debate he'd deliver results on election night, which Secretary of State Adrian Fontes says is impossible because valid ballots keep being processed after polls close. Mail ballots must arrive by 7 p.m. on Election Day, county canvasses run Nov. 9 to 19, and the statewide canvass is Nov. 23.

CALIFORNIA — A federal court struck down California's rule forcing voters with print disabilities to print, sign and mail their ballots on paper, ruling it "denies them meaningful access to the vote by mail program." Mother Jones: Magistrate Judge Sallie Kim found the system excludes blind and other disabled voters, who can fill out ballots electronically but must then print, sign, seal and return them without help. Plaintiff Christopher Gray, who is blind, paid an assistant to mark his ballot in 2022, giving up his privacy. The state has until Oct. 19 to propose a new protocol, and since ballots have already gone out, changes likely won't take effect until the next election cycle.

FLORIDA — A man dressed as an ICE agent was arrested for intimidating voters at a Miami-Dade College site where Brazilians were casting ballots in Brazil's election. WKRC: Danilo Silva, 46, allegedly walked the voting site Sunday in a blue raid jacket, an "ICE" hat, tactical boots and a mask, and the arrest report says the voters appeared to be afraid. He faces five charges, including voter intimidation, disorderly conduct and unlawful use of a police badge or insignia, and was given a bond of more than $5,000.

UTAH — Utah's Republican lieutenant governor says her state's yearlong review found just 27 confirmed noncitizens among more than 2 million registered voters, and that the Trump administration doesn't want to hear it. Democracy Docket: Only 13 of the 27 had cast a ballot since 2018. Lt. Gov. Deidre Henderson: "They don't want to know that things are going well, because it goes against a narrative that is being pounded relentlessly of mass fraud or ineligible people voting." Henderson refused to hand voter data to DOJ, which sued Utah and opened an investigation into her, and she says the only time she hears about Sen. Mike Lee, the SAVE Act's sponsor, "is when he tweets about me."

Headlines

Trump's Attacks on Voting

The Hill: Blanche defends DOJ's plan to send 1,000 monitors to polls on Election Day

MS Now: Trump administration refuses international election monitors for first time in over 2 decades

Politico: Trump administration's crackdown on illegal voting rests on a shaky foundation

Democracy Docket: Moved recently? Under Trump's voter eligibility lists, you could be disenfranchised

Votebeat: What to expect at the polling place amid uncertainty over federal agents

Polls

Semafor: Trump haters are more confident in election integrity, poll finds