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After high-level Trump administration officials said they might send armed officers to the polls during the upcoming midterm elections, and after months of administration efforts to wrest control of some aspects of voting from state officials and limit how people vote, there’s a lot of fear that armed federal officials will disrupt voting and even seize ballots. A number of civil rights and voter advocacy groups and labor unions have filed lawsuits against the Trump administration to bar any such presence, with one suit claiming that “threatening messaging and violent enforcement actions” by administration officials “have created a climate in which voters, especially voters of color, are intimidated and fearful of engaging in the democratic process.”

Last month, the California Supreme Court rebuked a local sheriff’s unprecedented seizure of roughly 650,000 ballots cast in the state’s November 2025 special election. The decisions, Bonta v. Bianco and Cervantes v. Bianco, both held that the sheriff had to follow the state attorney general’s directions to pause his investigation and that the seizure violated the state’s laws for securely handling and storing cast ballots. The court also ordered the ballots returned to local election officials.

A recent episode involving a California sheriff who obtained a search warrant and seized more than 650,000 ballots from a November 2025 special election has raised the troubling possibility that a similar incident could occur while a state's vote-counting process is still underway. This Report explores these concerns and offers guidance to the state and local actors best positioned to address them.

On July 30, SDRI Legal Director Danielle Friedman spoke with Bob Bauer on Executive Functions. They discussed state criminal statutes that could apply to federal deployment of military or ICE and examine the limits of executive authority in the context of potential federal interference ahead of the November midterms.

State courts are encountering a new type of “vote dilution” claim, which asserts that certain election rules or practices are unconstitutional because they increase the hypothetical risk that fraudulent votes which will be cast, which would dilute the weight of “legal” ballots. These hypothetical vote dilution claims increasingly invoke state constitutional rights. With sparse, unsettled, and often conflicting precedent on these types of claims, state courts may understandably find these claims difficult to adjudicate, especially in the highly charged election space. This Report offers state courts context on these claims and analytical frameworks with which to evaluate them under state constitutions.

Mail voting is under unprecedented federal pressure heading into the 2026 midterm elections. From the White House to the Supreme Court to Congress, a series of developments is threatening a form of voting that tens of millions of Americans rely on—and that was relatively uncontroversial until just a few years ago. This explainer examines how mail voting became a partisan battleground, what the current federal threats mean for mail voting, and what states, election officials, and advocates can do in response.

Litigation over election results serves an important role in legitimizing the democratic process, but when these challenges drag on for months, they can undermine that legitimacy and leave citizens without representation. North Carolina’s 2024 Supreme Court race, for example, took six months of post-election litigation to resolve, and some observers worry that similar delays could affect control of Congress in 2027. This Explainer examines the gaps in state laws that increase the risk of prolonged election contests and shows how state supreme courts can use their supervisory and rulemaking powers to ensure prompt resolution of such proceedings.

Election administrators in the U.S. face persistent financial strain with local governments and their tax bases shouldering most costs while state and federal support remains limited. At the same time, states collect billions each year in unclaimed funds, which are assets like abandoned bank accounts and forgotten insurance proceeds. States are increasingly using unclaimed funds to support public programs like education and housing, but none have earmarked them for election administration.

The 2026 midterm elections will be a vital test of the country’s democracy, and state officials and state courts will play a critical role in ensuring that the elections are free and fair. In a series of ongoing projects, we are exploring several critical issues, from the protection of state voter data, to efforts to guard against meddling with mail voting, and we are sharing recommendations for how courts can efficiently and effectively handle highly expedited cases. In the coming weeks, we plan to tackle additional questions on topics ranging from state election crimes, deployments of federal officers at the polls, and safeguarding voting machines and ballots from federal seizure, among other topics.

The U.S. Justice Department has demanded states' complete, unredacted vote registration lists. States have mostly declined to provide their full, unredacted voter registration lists. This report examines the questions raised by the federal government's demands about the long-established authority of states to administer elections and the scope of the federal government’s role in the voter registration process.