WASHINGTON, DC – After relentless comments and threats to nationalize elections by President Trump, Democratic attorneys general are stepping in and are actively looking at ways to bolster election protection to combat the administration’s attempts to disenfranchise millions of voters this midterm cycle.

“The party’s top prosecutors have been strategizing for months about how to counter a series of increasingly extreme scenarios they fear could play out this fall,” the POLITICO article reads. “They’re readying motions for temporary restraining orders to preserve election materials and remove armed forces from voting sites […] they’re monitoring Trump and his allies’ every word about elections for clues about what his administration could do next.”

Key highlights: 

• “Democratic attorneys general are bracing for President Donald Trump to interfere in the midterm elections — and war-gaming how to stop him.”
• “They’re preparing for the administration to potentially confiscate ballots and voting machines, strip resources from the postal service to disrupt the delivery of mail ballots, and send military members and immigration agents to polling locations to intimidate voters.”
• “‘[Trump] wants to continue to have his party prevail, seemingly by whatever means necessary,’ California Attorney General Rob Bonta said. ‘So we have to be ready for that, sad and tragic as it is.’”
• “Nineteen of them banded together to sue the administration last spring over Trump’s sweeping executive order targeting voting rules, most of which has since been blocked by courts.”
• “Trump and his allies’ rhetoric is the type of ‘red-alarm fire that people need to take very seriously,’ said Washington Attorney General Nick Brown, who leads the Democratic Attorneys General Association’s election protection working group.
• “’If the president said, “Look, I want my ICE people to protect American elections … go to all these polling places and stand out in front with guns,” I think they would do it,’ said Attorney General Keith Ellison of Minnesota, where an immigration enforcement surge earlier this year resulted in two deaths. ‘And I think we all need to be prepared to deal with that problem.’”
• “Nevada Attorney General Aaron Ford…urged his counterparts to ‘stay nimble.’ Trump ‘likes to sow chaos because he thinks it’s going to throw people off their game,’ Ford said. ‘But he has met his match when it comes to the Nevada attorney general’s office; he’s met his match when it comes to the Democratic attorneys general.’”

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