How Senate Democrats Are Planning To Push Back On Potential Election Interference

Senate Democrats are war-gaming legal maneuvers and messaging strategies to thwart potential efforts by President Donald Trump or foreign actors to influence the results of the midterms.

Minority Leader Chuck Schumer and nine other Democratic senators huddled with top party election experts last week to drill responses to a range of extreme scenarios — from federal agents at polling locations, to ballot seizures in key battlegrounds, to foreign interference operations — that they fear could become reality pre- and post-Election Day.

They game-planned legal injunctions to bar armed federal agents or armed citizens from voting sites, and lawsuits to force the Trump administration to return ballots if they're confiscated in key contests that could decide control of Congress. They also choreographed communication strategies across elected leaders, campaigns and advocacy groups to combat misinformation and disinformation designed to sow distrust in the results, according to details of the tabletop exercises shared exclusively with POLITICO.

“Trump has talked about stealing the election, violating the election, perverting the election, over and over again. And woe be us, and woe be anyone who believes in free elections, who doesn’t take that seriously,” Schumer said in a phone interview earlier this week. “We are going to be prepared for anything that he throws at us.”

Trump has long promoted baseless claims of election fraud, spreading conspiracy theories about why he lost the 2020 election and working to sow doubt in successive election results. Earlier this year, he suggested Republicans should “take over the voting” in more than a dozen places across the country where the White House later said there has been a “high degree of fraud.” Last week, the president accused Democrats of “cheating” and “trying to STEAL” gubernatorial and mayoral elections in California as ballot counts dragged on. Days later, after Republican Spencer Pratt failed to make the mayoral runoff in Los Angeles, Trump complained the contests were “rigged.”

Democrats have referenced those remarks to accuse Trump of fear mongering and suggest he could be laying the groundwork to subvert the results of the November election, as he considered and attempted in various ways in 2020.

White House spokesperson Abigail Jackson responded in a statement that Trump “is committed to ensuring that Americans have full confidence in the administration of our elections. This campaign pledge from the President is why millions of Americans sent him back to the White House and the entire Administration will continue lawfully implementing this agenda.”

Senate Democrats’ strategy session mirrors preparations by Democratic attorneys general, secretaries of state and governors as the party looks to build a bulwark against possible election interference from Trump. Another exercise is already being planned for July, Schumer told POLITICO.

In recent months, the president has called to nationalize elections. When asked by a reporter last month whether he would send federal immigration agents or National Guard troops to voting sites, Trump said he would do “anything necessary to make sure we have honest elections” — even as his own administration officials have repeatedly insisted they won’t deploy immigration officers to polls.

His administration has seized 2020 ballots from key swing counties in Georgia and Arizona as Trump continues to relitigate his election loss that year, and has sought confidential voter files from nearly every state as he tries to crack down on non-citizen voting, which experts say is nearly non-existent. And Trump has pushed legislation and executive orders attempting to restrict voter access and federalize certain election processes.

Republicans say they are trying to bolster election security and curb fraud in the nation’s voting systems. But Democrats warn that Trump and his allies could be preparing to maximize disruption in November.

Schumer last week convened a slate of experts that included former Attorney General Eric Holder, prominent Democratic election attorney Marc Elias, election-law expert Norman Eisen and the heads of the left-leaning legal group Democracy Forward and the nonpartisan, nonprofit Protect Democracy. They helped senators prepare for a trio of possible scenarios and boost coordination with state and local leaders who directly oversee election administration and voter turnout operations.

The exercise was one of the first efforts from the election-protection task force Schumer launched earlier this year. Sens. Mark Warner (D-Va.), Dick Durbin (D-Ill.), Adam Schiff (D-Calif.), Raphael Warnock (D-Ga.) and Alex Padilla (D-Calif.), all of whom are members of the working group, were among the participants in the tabletop drill.

One of the scenarios hypothesized a foreign influence operation involving AI-generated deepfakes and a federal crackdown on media attempting to report on the disinformation campaign.

Another tracked how claims of systemic election fraud could prompt armed citizens to patrol voting sites and ballot drop boxes — and lead Trump to send federal agents to polling locations to “protect the election.”

A third played out what would happen if the Department of Justice disrupts certifications in critical races by seizing ballots to investigate “election administration irregularities.”

Democrats warn Republicans are using scare tactics that could lead to voter intimidation and depress turnout — even as some in the Democratic ecosystem caution their own party could also have a chilling effect on voters if they veer into catastrophizing.

“This administration is one that wants people to feel alone. They want people to be afraid. And they want people to believe that they have no power, that their voice doesn’t matter,” said Skye Perryman, the president and CEO of Democracy Forward, who participated in the tabletop drills. “This exercise is actually an exercise in confidence and trustbuilding. And what we need every American to know in this country is that if they want to vote, they’re going to be able to vote, and that we’re going to ensure that their votes are counted.”

Congressional Democrats are somewhat limited in their ability to respond. While lawmakers have a built-in bully pulpits, they can’t force hearings from the minority and are largely unable to stop Republicans’ party-line legislation without defections.

Many election lawsuits, meanwhile, are likely to be led by state attorneys general, advocacy groups, campaigns and even private citizens. Democratic attorneys general and voting-rights groups successfully blocked most of Trump’s 2025 executive order that sought to overhaul election rules and administration, and the Department of Justice has lost several cases seeking state voter rolls. But federal judges are allowing Trump’s latest executive order restricting mail-in voting to stand for now and have permitted the Justice Department to retain 600 boxes of election records seized from Fulton County, Georgia.

Meanwhile, the SAVE America Act, Trump’s prized legislation to tighten voting rules that includes documentary proof of citizenship requirements, remains stalled in the Senate.

Jackson, the White House spokesperson, said Trump is pursuing the SAVE Act and other legislative efforts to “establish a uniform standard of photo ID for voting, prohibit no-excuse mail-in voting, and end the practice of ballot harvesting to secure our elections for generations to come.”

Trump’s tendency to embrace throw-everything-at-the-wall tactics is further complicating Democrats’ response, leaving an already-reactive party scrambling to anticipate every possible move the president could make this fall.

But Schumer said Democrats are expecting the unexpected.

“We know that the threats are broad. They evolve,” Schumer said. “And we’re preparing for them.”