SACHA PFEIFFER, HOST:
Will this year's midterm elections be fair? It's a simple question, but for many state and local voting officials, it has an increasingly complicated answer. That's because of the possibility of interference by the federal government and President Trump. NPR voting correspondent Miles Parks is tracking this issue, and he joins me now. Hi, Miles.
MILES PARKS, BYLINE: Hey, Sacha.
PFEIFFER: Miles, your reporting shows that voting officials are already preparing for the possibility of federal interference. Tell us about that prep process.
PARKS: Yeah. So, I mean, early last year, it became clear to local officials - and I should say, from both parties - that the federal government helmed by President Trump wanted a bigger role in local processes. Just two months into his second term, he signed an executive order aimed at adding new voting restrictions, for instance. Most of that has been blocked by the courts at this point. But he also - his administration laid off much of the election security staff at the Department of Homeland Security. And I was talking about all of that with the secretary of state of Minnesota, Steve Simon, who's a Democrat, and he said the idea of federal interference is on election officials' minds as they game plan out every scenario.
STEVE SIMON: We in the election space have to just use our imaginations, as we would, to be clear, for any threat, whether it's from a foreign actor, whether it's a natural disaster that we can't quite predict. This falls into that category, too.
PFEIFFER: Miles, it's noteworthy that you have a state voting official there referring to federal government action as a threat, in his words. Did the Minnesota secretary of state say what specifically he's worried about?
PARKS: Well, something Simon talked about - and this is also something I've heard from a number of other Democrats that they're concerned about, as well - is the possibility of federal troops being deployed to polling places this year. I asked the White House about this. A spokesperson, Abigail Jackson, referred to these sort of scenarios as baseless conspiracy theories in a statement to NPR, but she didn't categorically rule it out. And the National Guard deployments last year obviously crystallized this as a thing that local officials feel like they need to prepare for, even if this sort of scenario would clearly break federal voting laws. The other possibility that voting officials are talking about is immigration enforcement. It is already illegal for noncitizens to vote in federal elections, but people in Trump's orbit have toyed with the idea of having ICE agents at polling places or involved in the election in some other capacity to guard against noncitizen voting. And any of these scenarios obviously could potentially have a suppressive effect if they make anyone scared to vote.
PFEIFFER: President Trump has talked a lot about wanting to ban mail-in ballots - voting by mail. What power, if any, does he have over the rules of how people will vote this year?
PARKS: Essentially none. The Constitution is very clear on this. States set the rules for how their voters vote, and Trump's allies have acknowledged this. But in the fall, Cleta Mitchell, who's a notable far-right election attorney, indicated that Trump could consider a sort of workaround by declaring a national emergency based on election integrity. Here's Mitchell talking on the podcast "Washington Watch With Tony Perkins."
(SOUNDBITE OF PODCAST, "WASHINGTON WATCH WITH TONY PERKINS")
CLETA MITCHELL: The president's authority is limited, except that where there is a threat to the national sovereignty of the United States, then I think maybe the president is thinking that he will exercise some emergency powers to protect the federal elections going forward.
PARKS: Legal experts I've talked to say there's no way this could actually work in practice, but I have heard from voting officials, including local Republicans, who say they're shoring up their relationships with their local and state attorneys' offices in preparation for the potential of legal fights. They're preparing for the possibility of attempts to access their election equipment. And I'll also note that more than a dozen states are already engaged in lawsuits with the Justice Department over requests the Trump administration has made for their voter data.
PFEIFFER: Miles, a bigger picture question. Trump is not on the ballot, of course. Lay out why he's so interested in how local officials conduct elections.
PARKS: I mean, at the most basic level, if Republicans lose control of the House of Representatives in midterms, it just becomes very, very difficult for the Trump administration to get anything done legislatively. But this week, Trump also made it clear that his investment in the midterms is personal. He said he thinks that if Democrats win, he will be impeached for a third time. And he's also made it clear that he is willing to mess with the democratic process to advantage himself, right? I mean, we just had the anniversary, the five-year anniversary of January 6 and his attempts to overturn the 2020 election. And even this cycle, we saw Trump spur on this unprecedented mid-decade redistricting. And so for many local election officials, this is not abstract or hypothetical, this idea that Trump would mess with the system to advantage himself.
PFEIFFER: That is NPR's Miles Parks. Thanks for covering this, and we'll keep talking throughout the year.
PARKS: Thanks, Sacha. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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