WASHINGTON, DC – A new article from The Guardian’s Peter Stone highlights how Democratic AGs have been working together with Democratic secretaries of state and several other civic groups to protect voters from the Trump administration’s attempts to interfere with midterm elections, strategizing how best to  stop the unlawful power grab.

“The enhanced cooperation is significant because secretaries of state are responsible for supervising elections and state attorneys general are charged with defending the laws governing them,” The Guardian wrote. “Democratic attorneys general have been involved in challenging the justice department lawsuits, and the justice department has lost 26 of the lawsuits that courts have ruled on.”

Key Highlights: 

• “Nick Brown, the Washington state attorney general, said that the justice department and the Trump administration were ‘the biggest adversary to a smooth election.’ Brown added that ‘Trump lies about the election on a regular basis. Truth is not a goal of his. That creates a whole host of concerns for us.’”

• “A former US attorney and federal prosecutor, Brown said the Zoom calls focus on election security issues in general and potential event scenarios – including the possibility of ICE agents showing up near some polling places and ballots being seized in some races.”

• “Besides these efforts, Brown’s office co-led the legal moves that blocked Trump’s radical plans in his March executive order to overhaul and curb voting by mail, which the supreme court ruled against last month.”

• “‘From day one, Trump has been taking dead aim at our elections,’ [Oregon Attorney General] Rayfield said, ‘We’re trying to dispute some of the misinformation that the Trump administration keeps putting out,’ including about the dangers of voting by mail.”

• “More broadly, Rayfield cautioned that Trump ‘continues to take steps to interfere in our elections … This president has stretched our democracy more than any president in my lifetime.’”
• “‘The pro-democracy AGs are preparing for anything that this anti-voter administration may throw at them,” said [Norm] Eisen, a former special counsel for ethics and government reform to Barack Obama. ‘The level of preparation by the AGs and the secretary of state is off the charts.’”
• “Addressing the PSLC work to counter Trump administration election interference threats, Sean Rankin, the president of the Democratic Attorneys General Association, noted that ‘it is a concern that the administration will try to seize ballots, and the AGs and secretaries of state are working on responses to that to find solutions if that happens.’”

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