Richard Hasen

then we'd be breaking the chain of custody and it would be impossible to know if ballots were added or changed or taken out of account.

It would essentially nullify an election.

So that's one thing I'm worried about.

I'm worried about him.

Yeah, and I think we should take a step back here and recognize that the greatest threat to free and fair elections in 2026 is interference from the federal government.

And that's an astonishing thing to say when it's been the federal government.

If you think back to the Voting Rights Act in 1965, it was the federal government that helped protect free and fair elections.

And now we need to worry about how the federal government might interfere with state processes for running elections and for tabulating the ballots.

So well before Trump.

When we saw attempted interference from foreign countries, including Russia, the Department of Homeland Security declared our voting systems part of critical infrastructure.

That was perfectly appropriate to do because we need to have that protection.

And until...

The second Trump administration, there was a federal agency called CISA that was working with state and local election officials to assure that voting machines were not going to be hacked.

There was not going to be some kind of interference with how elections were going to be run.

Unfortunately, the Trump administration now has taken CISA and kind of taken it out of the business of protecting elections, leaving state and local officials on their own.

But the idea that the voting system has been declared critical infrastructure could serve as a pretext for Trump to try to interfere with voting machines or the tabulation of ballots in the 2026 midterm elections.

Well, he could potentially send federal troops into polling areas.

When the president's spokesperson was asked about this, she essentially said there were no plans to do so, but there was no unequivocal, of course, we would keep the federal troops away from polling places.

I actually think that

It's really hard to send troops in, and that would get some kind of public reaction.