Too Big To Ignore: Will of the People Weekly

Three weeks from Election Day, Donald Trump and Republicans across the country are trying to sow chaos and make it harder to vote. New reporting shows Trump’s immigration agents amassed tens of millions of voter records, investigated hundreds of voter registration groups, and weighed sending undercover officers into them. The same records show ICE lawyers working out how to deport New Jersey residents the state itself had mistakenly registered. Trump may be losing in court, but that isn’t stopping anyone from trying. On Friday, a federal judge threw out his Justice Department's nationwide voter purge program and barred the DOJ from using voter files handed over by at least 18 states. Meanwhile, three courts are deciding whether Tarrant County, Texas, must reopen 92 shuttered polling places, whether North Carolina can reject more mail ballots this year, and whether Georgia's second-largest county can keep taking ballots by hand. But what happens next is up to us, not them. Early voting opens in Georgia today and in a dozen more states this week. When all of us show up, the will of the people wins. Try and stop us.

In the Administration

• Trump's immigration agents investigated hundreds of voter registration groups and discussed sending undercover officers into them. Internal ICE records cover at least 82 groups in Pennsylvania and 41 in New Jersey, among them a Muslim civil rights organization and a teen skate-clothing brand. One document says future operations “may involve utilizing” undercover agents against them.

• Trump's ICE lawyers worked out how to deport New Jersey residents the state had registered by mistake. A software failure in New Jersey's motor vehicle system registered roughly 6,600 noncitizens between 2023 and 2024, and fewer than 400 of them voted. ICE's deputy principal legal advisor wrote that it made no difference: “There is no requirement that the alien have knowledge that he or she has illegally voted.”

• Trump's Justice Department sent criminal prosecutors and an FBI agent to watch Arizona's primary, and credentialed a man convicted of hacking election websites. Records released last week show six prosecutors and an FBI special agent monitored the July vote, a break from the civil rights lawyers who have long done the work. Maricopa County also credentialed a man who served jail time for breaking into a Florida elections site, as a department observer.

• Trump's allies are pressing his Commerce secretary to take control of the country's voting machines. Election denier and top Trump ally Cleta Mitchell is urging Secretary Howard Lutnick to “exercise his legal authority” over electronic voting systems, and Tina Peters, the Colorado clerk convicted of breaching her own county's equipment, reportedly met Trump in the Oval Office on Oct. 5.

In Congress

• A group of House members is asking colleagues to sign a written promise to seat whoever wins. Reps. Josh Gottheimer (D-NJ-05) and Don Bacon (R-NE-02) circulated the pledge last week, which commits signers to oppose any effort to refuse or delay seating a member-elect holding a valid certificate of election. Bacon said the point is to “put down a clear, bipartisan marker that we follow state certifications.”

In the Courts

• Common Cause v. U.S. Department of Justice (U.S. District Court, D.C.)
  • On Friday, a federal judge struck down Trump's nationwide voter purge program, which demanded unredacted rolls from 49 states, ran them against federal immigration data, and had cooperating states scrub flagged voters within 45 days. At least 18 states had turned over their files, and the ruling bars the department from using the data it already holds. The judge found no law gave it that power and that it brushed off the risk of flagging naturalized citizens, writing: “DOJ cannot run roughshod over longstanding laws.”

• North Carolina Alliance for Retired Americans v. North Carolina State Board of Elections (U.S. District Court, Middle District of North Carolina)
  • A federal judge hears arguments Wednesday on North Carolina's new mail-ballot rules, which the GOP-controlled state board passed along party lines the day absentee ballots went out. The rules make it easier to discard a ballot over a sealing error and add a signature-matching requirement that state law had barred, in a state that already demands photo ID and a witness. Voters rejected on Election Day have no chance to fix it. North Carolina's early voting starts Thursday.

• Peoples v. Tarrant County (Tarrant County District Court, Texas)
  • Four Black and Hispanic voters in Fort Worth are asking a state judge to restore 92 Election Day polling places that Republican county commissioners voted to close, and the court heard the case Monday. Their suit points out that 46 of the closed sites each drew more than 500 voters in 2022, which is the county's own written standard for keeping a location open. Commissioners rejected a proposal to bring back 37 of them earlier this year.

• Republican National Committee v. Gwinnett County Board of Registrations and Elections (Gwinnett County Superior Court, Georgia)
  • A Georgia judge threw out the Republican Party's suit on Oct. 7, ruling that Georgia law lets the state's second-largest county accept mail ballots handed directly to a sworn election official at early voting sites without drop boxes. The party appealed the next day and asked the judge to block the practice anyway through Nov. 3. Six of Gwinnett's 13 early voting sites work this way, and Georgia's early voting opens today with the motion still pending.

In the States

Georgia

• An undisclosed Gmail account holding at least 486 messages appeared on screen during a State Election Board meeting, and it was never turned over in the records lawsuit the board paid $50,000 to settle last year. The attorney general's office has until Oct. 22 to explain whether those records were preserved.

New Jersey

• The ACLU of New Jersey and Harvard's Election Law Clinic sued the Ocean County Board of Elections on Oct. 8 over a residency review that targeted voters in the borough of Bay Head, arguing the county went after them without the evidence state law requires and inside the 90-day window when federal law forbids systematic purges.

Oregon & Washington

• Both secretaries of state are now telling voters to mail ballots seven to ten days early, because a Postal Service change cut pickup times at more than 15,000 post offices, where a ballot may not get postmarked until the next day. Oregon rejected more than 7,300 ballots over postmarks in May, and Washington's late-postmark rejections more than tripled in some counties.

Upcoming Elections & Deadlines

Tuesday, October 13

• Early voting opens in Georgia and parts of Idaho
• Voter registration deadlines in Kansas, New Jersey, Oregon, and West Virginia (no same-day voter registration offered)
• Advance voter registration deadlines in Maine, Maryland, Minnesota, and Washington D.C. (same-day voter registration still offered)

Wednesday, October 14

• Early voting begins in Iowa, Rhode Island, Tennessee, and parts of Kansas
• Ballots begin going out in Oregon and Iowa
• Advance voter registration deadline in Wisconsin (same-day voter registration still offered)

Thursday, October 15

• Early in-person voting begins in North Carolina

Friday, October 16

• Ballots begin going out in Washington

Saturday, October 17

• Early voting begins in Massachusetts and Nevada