DOJ says it will take 'aggressive actions' to secure midterm elections

By Thérèse Boudreaux | The Center Square

(The Center Square) – With the November midterm elections only six weeks away, the Trump administration is already implementing ballot security and fraud prevention measures, Acting U.S. Deputy Attorney General Trent McCotter told the media Tuesday.

Despite a federal judge recently blocking the Trump administration’s attempts to tighten security for mail-in ballots, the Department of Justice and other federal agencies “will continue taking aggressive actions to protect our elections,” McCotter said.

“Election integrity — which includes ballot integrity, by the way — should be a nonpartisan issue,” he added. “The right of American citizens to have their votes properly counted is vital to determining the rightful winner of an election.”

Over the past four weeks alone, the DOJ has charged 32 noncitizens with unlawful voting and registration offenses, bringing the total number of individuals charged with such crimes during the second Trump administration to 70.

“By comparison, in the prior administration, they brought only 13 — that’s not 13 per year; it’s 13 in four years total,” McCotter added. “So think about that: in the last four weeks, we’ve brought almost three times as many as the prior administration brought in four years. The prior administration simply turned a blind eye and refused to protect our nation’s electoral integrity.”

Aside from the ongoing DOJ investigations, other election security measures will include the U.S. Postal Service sending auditors to ensure the compliance of postal facilities with ballot collection standards and election law.

Congressional Democrats, however, are accusing the administration of spreading “misinformation and anxiety” about American elections, as Rep. Jamie Raskin, D-Md., dubbed it during House Democrats’ voting rights-themed forum, also held Tuesday.

Rep. Mary Gay Scanlon, D-Pa., who headed the forum, accused President Donald Trump of “trying to undermine voters’ faith in our elections, with phony claims about election integrity, by defunding the watchdogs and systems that protect our elections, and by trying to restrict access to the ballot with 21st Century voter suppression tools, like the SAVE [America] Act.”

The SAVE America Act, currently languishing in the Senate after passing the House, mandates that Americans display a valid ID to vote in federal elections and requires people to present proof of citizenship when registering to vote.

It also necessitates in-person voter registration for federal elections and directs states to remove all noncitizens from their voter rolls.

Democrats have dubbed the SAVE America Act a “voter suppression bill,” arguing that instances of illegal voting are rare and that stronger proof of citizenship requirements can disenfranchise rural, disabled, and low-income Americans.

Republicans believe that passing the legislation would hand Republicans the key to victory in the 2026 midterm elections because it would prevent voter fraud occurring in states with weak election security measures.

“We can’t solve this problem alone. We need states to stand with us. Unfortunately, several states have actually made it easier to cheat,” McCotter argued Tuesday. “New Jersey, for example, recently admitted 6,600 aliens had been improperly registered to vote, and they admitted hundreds of them did in fact vote. So remember, folks, voting fraud is real.”

Although Trump claims mass voter fraud is the reason he lost to Joe Biden in 2020, an August 2026 U.S. Census Bureau report found little corroborating evidence.

The bureau still has 32 million votes left to analyze, but the preliminary results show that the amount of suspected fraudulent voting was not high enough in any state to influence the presidential election results.

After comparing its data with records from U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, the Social Security Administration, the IRS, and other agencies, the bureau concluded “with high confidence” that roughly 24,000 of the 128 million votes it analyzed were cast by noncitizens in 2020.

Matthew Milholland, deputy head of Homeland Security Investigations, said Tuesday that HSI has recently generated more than 1,600 voter fraud cases, which have led to over 160 arrests.

“The broader scope of this election integrity initiative is about enforcing federal law, protecting lawful voting and other official processes from criminal exploitation,” Milholland told reporters.