Try and Stop Us Digest — October 14, 2026

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Election Deniers Keep Floating Martial Law And Fret Trump Isn't Acting Fast Enough

Election deniers with direct access to Trump are pressing him to use emergency powers over voting machines, one says it may take martial law, and Trump has refused to rule it out. Votebeat: Tina Peters says she has been to Washington seven times and the White House at least twice. Her lawyer, Peter Ticktin, says the situation "might even require, at some point, martial law," and Trump hasn't shut the door: "Let me just say that stranger things have happened, OK?" he said in August when asked about declaring a national security emergency over elections. The activists who want the Department of Commerce to examine foreign-made voting machine parts under Trump's 2019 emergency declaration are now worried he won't act, with Cleta Mitchell signing her messages to administration officials "Tick-tock." The Brennan Center's Sean Morales-Doyle says the goal is clear: "It is about sowing confusion, chaos and distrust and undermining public trust in our elections."

Researchers Got AI Chatbots To Fake Ballot-Stuffing Photos

Researchers got leading chatbots to produce fake ballot-stuffing images, forged government documents and deepfaked officials, while the federal agency that defends elections has been gutted. The Atlantic: Brennan Center researchers prompted chatbots to create realistic photos of ballot stuffing and a man voting with a foreign passport, fraudulent government documents and deepfake videos of officials, sometimes in violation of the companies' own policies, and several leading models couldn't tell the fakes from real images. The Brennan Center's Lawrence Norden says of the companies' guardrails: "They're easily circumventable, and the tools themselves make it easy to circumvent them. That's really what makes me think we're not ready." The Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency has been decimated by staff cuts, while Trump says AI companies are doing "tremendous self-policing." The Atlantic notes there is little evidence AI could alter actual vote counts, which are almost always backed by paper records.

RNC And Pentagon Are Trying To Disenfranchise Americans Born Abroad

The RNC has sued in eight states, and the Pentagon has scrubbed federal voting materials, to end voting rights for "never-resided" Americans, the children of U.S. citizens living abroad. Washington Sun: In 37 states plus D.C., Americans who have never lived in the U.S. can vote in federal elections. A North Carolina judge sided with the RNC in June, Nebraska and Michigan upheld the practice and the RNC appealed, and cases are still pending in Arizona, Colorado, Nevada, New Jersey and Virginia. In August the Pentagon quietly stripped references to never-resided voters from key election materials, and the DNC sued Oct. 1.

Supreme Court Could Gut The Ban On Last-Minute Voter Purges

Voting rights groups and the DNC told the Supreme Court that letting states purge suspected noncitizens in the final 90 days would sweep eligible naturalized citizens off the rolls. Democracy Docket: In RNC v. Mi Familia Vota, the RNC and DOJ want the Supreme Court to let Arizona keep running a database-driven removal program inside the National Voter Registration Act's 90-day quiet period, arguing that noncitizens were never eligible voters in the first place. Mi Familia Vota and Voto Latino told the justices the provision is not "to protect ineligible voters from removal" but "to protect eligible voters from being mistakenly swept up in a removal program," warning that naturalized citizens are at heightened risk because of databases with "stale citizenship information." The Court hears arguments in December.

In The States

GEORGIA — Georgia early voting is underway, and Trump's DOJ, the RNC and the State Election Board are all working to interfere. Democracy Docket: Early voting runs through Oct. 30. The FBI's January raid on a Fulton County elections facility, based on debunked claims, has produced no charges, and DOJ is seeking the state's unredacted voter registration records. An appeals court Friday upheld the dismissal of the RNC's suit over Gwinnett County's ballot drop-off policy, which the RNC could take to the Georgia Supreme Court, and the State Election Board asked DOJ and DHS to "prohibit" ballot-marking devices. The Coalition for Good Governance warned: "The Board has handed the Trump administration a blank check for involvement in Georgia's elections."

NORTH CAROLINA — North Carolina is sending letters to 1,392 voters flagged as possible noncitizens by an error-prone federal database days before early voting starts. Charlotte Observer: The State Board of Elections says no one will be removed automatically. Flagged voters are asked to voluntarily cancel their registration if they aren't citizens, and anyone who got the letter in error is directed to provide proof of citizenship. Those who don't respond can still vote if they're eligible. The board trimmed its list from 1,600 after cross-checking other state databases, but SAVE has been shown to flag eligible voters: in one Texas county, at least 10% of those flagged as noncitizens were citizens, AP reported. A federal court had blocked states from using SAVE for voter checks until the Supreme Court reversed that order last month.

PENNSYLVANIA — DOJ has now charged 11 Pennsylvanians with noncitizen voting since September, in a state where alleged fraudulent votes are roughly 0.00024% of ballots cast. Spotlight PA: DOJ announced Monday that four more Pennsylvania residents were charged with voting as noncitizens in 2024, three of them lawful permanent residents, as part of its nationwide crackdown ahead of the midterms. A Votebeat and Spotlight PA analysis found 165 allegedly fraudulent ballots in Pennsylvania since mid-2015 out of more than 67 million cast, and there is no evidence the cases are related or that fraud is widespread or coordinated. DHS claimed in July to have identified 14,576 potential noncitizens on the state's rolls but still hasn't given Pennsylvania the list.

TEXAS — A judge refused to restore 92 Tarrant County polling sites even after the elections administrator testified that no one studied how the cuts would hit minority voters. Fort Worth Star-Telegram: Judge J. Patrick Gallagher denied a temporary injunction Tuesday after plaintiffs argued the closure of 92 of the 316 voting sites used in 2022 placed an unequal burden on Black and Hispanic voters. Fort Worth Councilmember Deborah Peoples testified that all three polling places in her majority-minority ZIP code closed. Elections Administrator Clint Ludwig testified that neither he nor other county officials examined the impact on minority communities and that he used no methodology to ensure equal access. The plaintiffs' attorney noted that Gallagher didn't rule out discrimination and said Ludwig's testimony "raised serious questions about the process and intent of why these voting sites in predominantly minority areas were eliminated." Early voting begins Monday in Texas.

TEXAS — Voting groups sued Texas over a registration backlog that delayed nearly 600,000 records and say voters are still being affected. KVUE: The Texas Civil Rights Project sued the Department of Public Safety and the Secretary of State's office Oct. 9 for the League of Women Voters of Texas and MOVE Texas Civic Fund, alleging the state violated a 2021 settlement by failing to properly process online registrations and address changes. Attorney Karla Maradiaga says, "We know voters are still being impacted," and some could be forced to cast provisional ballots or get regular ballots missing races they're eligible to vote in. Travis County alone received about 32,000 backlogged applications overnight in September, and DPS blames an October 2025 software update from a third-party vendor.

WISCONSIN — A Wisconsin judge ruled that elections officials can't reject ballots that arrive late because of an error by local officials, blocking a repeat of the rejection of 23 Madison ballots during an April election. Wisconsin State Journal: Dane County Judge Everett Mitchell ruled Tuesday that the Wisconsin Elections Commission's order to reject the ballots from Madison's April 7 election was "an unconstitutional invasion of the Plaintiffs' right to vote." The ballots reached the city clerk in time but missed the 8 p.m. Election Day deadline at their polling places because a courier was delayed. His order effectively bars the commission from issuing a similar order in any future election, three weeks before the general election. Law Forward's Scott Thompson: "The right to vote is no empty promise. It is a constitutional guarantee that our votes will count."

What The Experts Are Saying

A top Republican election lawyer says Trump has produced no evidence of vulnerabilities. "Despite unleashing more government investigations than any president and filing more court cases than any candidate, he has failed to produce actual evidence. Suspicions are not evidence. As president, his duty is to fix any vulnerabilities. Any 2026 breach will be on his watch and his failing the country." — Ben Ginsberg, Republican election lawyer who advised the Bush and Romney campaigns, New York Times

Trump is using federal agencies to hunt for fake problems and discredit results, but states are ready. "Trump is deploying federal agencies to hunt for fabricated problems, with a goal of discrediting results he doesn't like. This playbook will fail because our elections are decentralized and because state officials and organizations have been preparing for it." — Vanita Gupta, former Biden associate attorney general, New York Times