Politics 5 min read By Arthur Ellington
Former officials warn US election security faces gravest threat since 1860
A bipartisan group of former presidential advisers warns that the integrity of US elections is under sustained attack ahead of the 2026 midterms, citing federal pressure on state voting systems, the pardoning of Capitol attackers and the firing of election officials.
A bipartisan group of Americans who have served presidents from both parties has issued an urgent warning that the integrity of United States elections is under the most serious threat since 1860, arguing that the country is drifting from self-governance towards authoritarian rule. Writing in Fortune, the group says the foundation of democracy — the ability to hold valid, trusted elections — is being systematically undermined ahead of the 2026 congressional midterms.
The signatories trace the danger to the months before the 2020 presidential election, when Donald Trump repeatedly told audiences that a defeat could only mean a rigged vote. After losing, the group notes, he pressured Georgia's Republican secretary of state, Brad Raffensperger, to «find 11,780 votes» to overturn the result, and urged officials in Michigan not to certify the count. Both Republican officials refused. He then encouraged supporters to storm the Capitol to stop Congress and Vice President Mike Pence certifying the result. Only Pence's decision to put country over party, the group argues, prevented the first failed election in nearly 250 years.
Since returning to office in 2025, the article states, Trump has pardoned or commuted the sentences of roughly 1,500 people charged or convicted over the Capitol attack, including those convicted of violently assaulting police and, through commutation, of seditious conspiracy. He has also fired or forced out some 75 federal officials who played important roles in ensuring valid elections, with some replaced by people who actively worked to reverse the 2020 outcome.
The group lists a series of further actions that it says show the administration will not accept a losing result in 2026. In January 2026, Kurt Olsen, the administration's director of «election security and integrity» and a leading election denier, directed the FBI to seize 2020 ballots in Fulton County, Georgia, though the Justice Department has yet to produce evidence supporting the underlying fraud claims and senators have called the seizure's legal basis «misleading». In March 2026 the Justice Department obtained 2020 ballot images in Maricopa County, Arizona, and demanded 2024 ballots from Wayne County, Michigan, citing fraud claims. FBI agents also searched the office of an Ohio voter registration group without a warrant, and an assistant US attorney in Los Angeles announced multiple election fraud investigations after California's primary, saying charges would follow certification.
Trump has signed an executive order claiming authority to regulate federal elections, but federal courts in Maryland, Virginia and the First Circuit have blocked it, ruling that power rests with Congress and the states. The Supreme Court briefly allowed a related mail-ballot rule to move forward in August before blocking it again on 15 September. The president also torpedoed a bipartisan housing bill he had publicly supported, using it as leverage to demand passage of what the group calls his voter suppression act. His postmaster general has endorsed a rule that the postal service will not distribute mail-in ballots in states that refuse to hand over their voting rolls to the administration.
All of this, the group writes, is evidence of a relentless attempt to move authority over elections from the states to the federal government, contrary to the clear language of the constitution. The signatories say that while they have disagreed on many controversial issues, they have always agreed that the constitutional electoral process is vital, which means accepting and honouring a losing result. If valid, trusted elections cannot be held, they warn, the ability of the American people to govern themselves will end and their collective voice will be silenced, returning the country to the authoritarian model that predated the republic.
To prevent that in 2026, the group calls for three things. Congress must reclaim its constitutional powers and review and reject many of the president's executive orders. Federal, state and local officials with election responsibilities must be prepared to refuse unlawful demands to override actual results, putting country over party and self. And ordinary citizens — in pulpits and classrooms, on podcasts, at work and around kitchen tables — must defend the most fundamental freedom they hold: the right to choose who governs them.
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