Five takeaways from ProPublica’s midterm election coverage — ProPublica

As next week’s midterm elections approach, President Donald Trump has systematically demolished the institutional guardrails that prevented him from overturning the 2020 presidential election, according to reporting by ProPublica.

Trump has empowered his loyalists to attempt to transform the electoral process. He launched an unprecedented — and largely unsuccessful — effort to find non-citizen voters. And he tried to restrict mail-in voting.

Our journalists have spent much of this year covering Trump’s efforts to exert more federal control over elections. Here are five takeaways from their reporting.

1. The Trump administration has sought greater federal control over elections.

In April, Doug Bock Clark and Jen Fifield reported on Trump’s efforts to “take control” of the midterm elections, detailing how the administration abandoned or diminished efforts within the federal government to protect the electoral process or block foreign interference. These efforts have included reducing staffing of elections teams at federal law enforcement agencies and finding ways to exert greater federal control over voting.

Our reporting led by Peter Elkind revealed that the Trump administration exploited Homeland Security Investigations’ personnel, technology and legal authority to try to support Trump’s unproven claim that illegal non-citizen voting tilts elections in favor of Democrats. Administration officials insisted that HSI’s efforts were producing significant results. Our analysis of Justice Department data found that as of May, 41 alleged noncitizens were charged with illegal voting or other election-related crimes. Earlier this month, CBS reported that 156 people had been indicted since the start of the second Trump administration.

As part of that effort, the Justice Department has asked states to turn over unredacted voter rolls, which contain confidential information about millions of Americans and have historically been maintained by the states. Since September 2025, the department has sued 30 states and the District of Columbia over the confidential data. Wary of the federal government’s overreach, state officials — including some Republicans — fought back, and so far all DOJ lawsuits decided by a federal judge have been dismissed. (The Trump administration has appealed most of its losses to federal appeals courts and has said it will consider taking its fight to the Supreme Court. A Justice Department spokesperson said its “attorneys are competent, principled litigators who argue each case honestly and in good faith.”)

In a March executive order, Trump directed the U.S. Postal Service to create new regulations for mail-in voting. The rules would have placed the Postal Service in an unprecedented role, deciding whether to send or refuse delivery of voters’ absentee ballots. In September, the Supreme Court blocked the rules, at least until after November.

The Trump administration said its actions would make U.S. elections fairer and more secure — and prevent people barred from voting, like noncitizens, from doing so. Spokespeople for the DOJ and Department of Homeland Security emphasized that their departments strive to ensure free and fair elections and work closely with states to achieve these goals. Claims to the contrary, they say, are false.

2. Trump has ousted career civil servants – and is coordinating with a conservative grassroots organization to transform the election.

At least 75 nonpartisan career officials who had held positions in federal agencies related to election integrity and security have been fired or left government.

Two dozen Trump appointees – many from the election denial movement – ​​have been hired. Ahead of the midterm elections, current and former government officials as well as election security experts have expressed concerns that once-fringe actors who espoused debunked conspiracy theories about the election are now able to control the narrative around the electoral process. (A DHS spokesperson said it recruits “experts from diverse backgrounds who undergo a rigorous selection process.”)

At least 25 administration appointees have close ties to Cleta Mitchell, an attorney who leads Election Integrity Network, a conservative grassroots group focused on transforming the U.S. electoral system. This month, Clark profiled Mitchell and explained how, although she does not hold an official role in the White House, she played a key role in shaping the Trump administration’s campaign agenda. The White House has appointed his associates to help track down non-citizen voters and investigate claims of voter fraud in 2020. (Mitchell declined multiple requests to speak with ProPublica, but wrote in an email: “You are my opponent. … You will never write objectively and without judgment about the election integrity movement.”)

Mitchell, who played a role in helping Trump contest his defeat in the 2020 presidential election, led efforts to pass state and federal versions of the SAVE Act. The 2026 version of the bill, known as the SAVE America Act, would require voters nationwide to provide proof of citizenship to register and present a photo ID to vote, and would require states to turn over their voter rolls to DHS. Trump has repeatedly called the measure his top legislative priority, but it has been blocked in the Senate.

In July, Trump also expelled the remaining members of the bipartisan Election Assistance Commission, a four-member board designed to be split evenly between Republicans and Democrats and which sets standards for state voting systems. (At the time, a White House official did not confirm the moves but said the president “reserves the right to remove individuals who may not be fully aligned with the important task of securing America’s elections and ensuring that every legal vote is counted.”)

3. Trump officials asked a cybersecurity agency to secretly acquire a voting machine and hack it.

A few months into Trump’s second term, DHS policymakers asked its cybersecurity and infrastructure security agency to obtain a voting machine, hack it and report the results so they could be transmitted to the White House, two former administration officials with knowledge of the request told Clark and Andy Mannix.

CISA employees told politicians their request was impossible, in part because the agents capable of carrying out such an operation had just been fired by Elon Musk’s Department of Government Effectiveness. (One of Trump’s first actions upon returning to the White House was to dismantle the agency’s election security work.)

Although it was not acted upon, the request shows how the Trump administration attempted to use the agency for its own purposes while draining it of resources for one of its critical missions: protecting the nation’s election systems. Since CISA became an agency in 2018, it has provided crucial support to thousands of local election officials grappling with increasingly sophisticated attacks.

But some state election officials said CISA gave them little help in planning for the 2026 midterm elections. And other state officials told Clark and Mannix they no longer trust the agency and fear it has been compromised by the Trump administration. (A DHS spokesperson told us in April that “the claim that DHS broke its partnership with states and made our elections less secure is simply false.”)

DHS did not respond to questions from our October investigation, but a DHS spokesperson previously told ProPublica that the changes at CISA were a response to “a ballooning budget concealing a dangerous deviation from its statutory mission,” which included “campaigning instead of defending America’s critical infrastructure.” A White House spokesperson declined an interview request but said: “President Trump has done more than any other president to ensure a free and fair election. »

4. The White House floated an idea that would have ended virtually all mail-in voting.

The White House initially proposed a change for the Postal Service that would have been even more disruptive than the rule rejected by the Supreme Court in September.

As Fifield and Elkind reported, the Trump administration suggested that all ballots be delivered by certified mail, meaning voters would have to be at home to sign for delivery of their ballots. The Trump administration abandoned the plan after the USPS said it would be too difficult to implement. Instead, he passed the executive order that would have required postal workers to act as gatekeepers, deciding which ballots would be delivered and which would not.

In an emailed statement, White House spokeswoman Lauren Bis denied that the administration had inappropriately interfered with the Postal Service, an independent agency whose governance structure is specifically designed to protect it from political influence.

The Supreme Court’s September order means that mail-in voting can proceed as planned for the midterm elections, with states remaining free to decide rules for mail-in voting.

5. Cost-cutting measures taken by the Postal Service led to delays and more rejected ballots in rural areas.

Amid growing attention to the Postal Service’s role in elections, a ProPublica analysis found that delays resulting from cost-cutting measures taken by the agency in recent years have put the validity of ballots in rural areas at risk.

The Postal Service has consolidated processing of first-class mail in regional centers, and the agency has cut in half the frequency of mail collection at many post offices located 50 miles or more from these processing plants. The changes often added a day or more to the delivery time and pushed back the postmark, an official mark confirming that an envelope has been received by the postal service.

In the five states where the best data was available – Washington, California, Ohio, North Carolina and Oregon – delays in this year’s primary elections had the most substantial effect in areas that voted for Trump in 2024.

Postal Service executives say such delays are less likely during the Nov. 3 general election because of the “extraordinary measures” the agency is putting in place for those votes, when turnout is typically much higher.