Hello, and welcome back to The Franchise!
With just weeks until the midterm elections, the Trump administration is, unsurprisingly, still hard at work seeking evidence of widespread non-citizen voting. And it is still not finding it.
We got new details this week about exactly what the administration has been up to thanks to a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit. Over the past year, ICE has reviewed millions of records and investigated hundreds of nonprofits suspected of helping noncitizens register to vote, according to internal records that were obtained by the nonprofit Democracy Forward. “The information revealed in the documents should concern all Americans and is further evidence of an alarming attempt by the executive branch to undermine our elections,” Skye Perryman, President and CEO of Democracy Forward, said in a statement.
The records note that these investigations were, in part, meant “to identify specific organizations that may be predatory in nature, particularly those suspected of illegal registration and voter encouragement.”
For years now, the Trump administration has been pushing the false narrative that non-citizens are voting en masse for Democrats. There is no evidence of any kind to suggest this is the case. The lack of evidence, however, has not stopped President Trump from pushing forward this lie on a near-daily basis and using the U.S. Department of Homeland Security to investigate the conspiracy theory. It functions as another way to drum up fear and distrust in our election system just in time for the midterm elections.
The newly released records reveal that “48.4 million records were obtained by [DHS deputy assistant secretary for election integrity] Heather Honey through independent sources of information” as part of what is described as a “strategic line of effort” to investigate instances of supposed non-citizen voting. DHS Investigators also looked at 50.6 million records from the DOJ, the documents say; those records, CNN reported, could include unredacted voter data from some states.
The records also indicate that Homeland Security Investigation (HSI), an investigative unit within ICE, watched recent primary elections “to identify emerging trends, vulnerabilities, or indicators that may impact election integrity.”
“DHS has been incredibly transparent about the acquisition and the analysis of publicly available voter files conducted by the Fraud Detection and National Security Directorate of USCIS,” the Department told CNN. “DHS and DOJ are laser focused on prosecuting and removing aliens who vote and preventing the dilution of the votes of US citizens.”
The documents also reveal that HSI considered deploying undercover agents to investigate certain non-profits that the administration suspected of having helped register non-citizens to vote, and named New Jersey and Pennsylvania as specific “areas of focus.”
The records indicate that HSI specifically investigated a branch of CAIR, The Council on American-Islamic Relations in Pennsylvania as well as the clothing company Zumiez, which were both, per the documents, “flagged for further investigation.”
As always, we have a lot more to unpack this week, so let’s dig in.
Reminder: There are Hundreds of Election Deniers Running for Office
There are by one tally a staggering 197 election deniers on the midterm ballots next month, according to newly released research from States United Action.
We have previously highlighted some of the most prominent election deniers hoping to win elections this fall. For example, Jim Marchant is a big time election conspiracy theorist and is currently running as the Republican candidate for secretary of state in Nevada. Marchant, who has consistently repeated lies about the 2020 election for years now, also won the GOP nomination for secretary of state back in 2022, and was the founding member of America First Secretary of State Coalition. The coalition was a group of election deniers all running for secretary of state positions on 2020 election conspiracy theory platforms, intent on somehow overturning the results of that election. Marchant lost to Democrat Cisco Aguilar in 2022, and, at the time, told NBC News that if he was secretary of state he would not have certified the 2020 election results in favor of Joe Biden.
Marchant, however, is just one of many election deniers on the ballot. More specifically, and most concerning, there are, per States United Action, at least 33 election deniers in 21 states on the ballot running for positions that would play a role in overseeing elections, including 17 election deniers running for governor, 7 election deniers running for secretary of state, and nine election deniers running for attorney general.
“Our 2026 research shows how deeply embedded the election denial movement is, even as fewer Election Deniers are running for office than we saw in 2022,” Kelly Rader, Research Director at States United Action, said in a press release this week. “The election denial movement is showing up across every facet of our democracy — from the ballot box to the White House.”
Todd Blanche is Doubling Down on DOJ’s Decision to Send 1,000 Election Monitors to the Polls
Attorney General Todd Blanche is defending the DOJ’s decision to send 1,000 election monitors to various polling locations throughout the country for the midterm elections.
To jog your memory, we noted back in August that Assistant Attorney General for the Civil Rights Division Harmeet Dhillon confirmed to Bloomberg News that the DOJ planned to dispatch close to 1,000 election monitors next month as a way to, as the DOJ claimed, secure the midterm elections.
State and local election administrators have a different concern: that this onslaught of federal election monitors will be intimidating for voters.
Dhillon has sought to play it down as business-as-usual. “The United States Department of Justice Civil Rights Division has sent monitors to election hot spots, polling places to increase voter confidence to troubleshoot problems and we are doing that now. We just did it in the primary,” Dhillon said at the time. “We’re going to do it to the tune of approximately a thousand election monitors in the November election, and this is just something that DOJ does.”
More recently, on Sunday, Blanche told Fox News’s Shannon Bream that the administration’s decision to send federal election monitors to polling sites is simply to make sure “that federal law is being enforced appropriately.”
“They’re not going to Republican states, they’re not going to Democrat states,” Blanche said.”They are going to every state to make sure our elections are carried out legally, fairly and appropriately.”
Blanche also shut down speculation that armed federal agents would be deployed at polling stations, calling the claim “completely false.”
Relatedly, the NAACP filed a federal lawsuit against Dhillon only days before Blanche’s comments, demanding records about the DOJ’s plan to deploy 1,000 election monitors for the midterm elections.
“This unprecedented deployment of federal officials stands to jeopardize the election and interfere with the right of voters to participate in the election free from intimidation,” the lawsuit reads. “Courts have recognized that unnecessary law enforcement and government presence at polling sites can cause fear, create confusion, impose burdens on election officials, and have a chilling or coercive effect on the electorate.”
In Other Election News
CNN: Inside Democrats’ efforts to secure Election Day and respond to fears of Trump interference
ABC News:Trump sows doubt about mail-in voting while encouraging it, as midterms approach
Colorado Newsline: Tina Peters met with Trump to discuss election plans, former Trump administration attorney says
So it’s safe to say, as long as you vote for a Democrat, you’re pushing out the election deniers.
This doesn’t mean:
It means:
The specific movement labeled “election denialism” is overwhelmingly concentrated within the Republican Party.
That’s what the data shows.
So you know what to do on your ballot, right?