Experts: Trump Government Could Take Unprecedented Midterm Role

CHICAGO (WLS) — With the midterm elections approaching, concerns are growing that eligible voters could face significant obstacles when they try to cast their ballots.

For decades, the U.S. Department of Justice has sent election monitors to communities nationwide on Election Day.

The goal, according to Jason Mazzone, a University of Illinois College of Law professor, has been to protect access to the ballot and prevent violations of voting rights.

Mazzone told the I-Team that the Trump administration’s plans to deploy monitors during this year’s midterm election could carry serious consequences.

“I think the suggestion is that the monitors are there to make sure that people who are not supposed to be voting are not voting,” Mazzone said. He warned that the situation could escalate if federal officers conclude that misconduct is taking place. “You can imagine some really drastic scenarios in which, for example, federal officers think that there’s some funny business going on, and they decide to seize ballots or make arrests. That would be tremendously disruptive of the midterm elections.”

President Donald Trump has repeatedly questioned the integrity of U.S. elections, despite a lack of evidence showing widespread voter fraud.

ABC7 chief legal analyst Gil Soffer has firsthand experience with the process. He previously served as an election monitor while working as an assistant U.S. attorney for the Justice Department.

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Federal monitors may investigate potential violations of election law, Soffer said, but they cannot disrupt the voting process. “They could try to see if there’s a problem from any federal law perspective. What they certainly can’t do is interfere with the administration of the election,” he said. “The question is: What does that mean? Can they go up to people, interrogate them? Can they stand in the way of people? Almost certainly not. But there’s some gray there.”

This month, the Department of Justice sent letters to at least 30 states, including Illinois, directing officials to preserve materials connected to the 2024 election. The department has also requested voter rolls from several states. Meanwhile, the Department of Homeland Security has joined investigations into alleged voter fraud. A DHS whistleblower told Senate Democrats that investigators are accessing sensitive personal data as part of what the whistleblower described as a baseless pursuit.

“There’s no evidence to support that we are having large numbers of migrants, undocumented migrants, voting in our nation’s elections,” said John Cohen, a former DHS undersecretary for intelligence and an ABC News contributor. “If the evidence isn’t there, why are we spending our limited law enforcement resources looking for it?”

Election experts told the I-Team that the president could be amplifying concerns in a way that discourages people from voting in the midterms. They pointed to reports of federal election monitors interviewing voters during Wyoming’s primary.

DHS said it will investigate election fraud wherever it finds evidence of it.