President Trump’s renewed focus on election integrity is less about fixing a broken system and more about expanding federal authority ahead of the November midterm elections, analysts say.
Political analyst Eric Ham argued that Trump’s push for the SAVE Act and his recent prime-time address on election security are attempts to centralize control over a process traditionally managed by the states. “These efforts represent an attempt to expand federal authority over elections,” Ham told Al Jazeera.
Trump delivered a 25-minute prime-time address on July 16 in which he claimed China had obtained data from 220 million US voter files and that the intelligence community had concealed the extent of the operation. He released declassified documents to support his narrative, but the documents themselves undercut his claims.
One CIA document focused on Venezuelan elections, not American ones. Another assessment stated that manipulating vote tabulation systems on a scale sufficient to compromise results would be “difficult.” A separate assessment noted that China had targeted the Biden campaign in 2020 but did not intend to covertly interfere to sway the outcome. A declassified 2021 assessment under former DNI John Ratcliffe had already concluded there was no evidence any foreign actor altered or successfully interfered with the technical aspects of the 2020 election.
The SAVE Act, which Trump is pressing Republicans to advance, would mandate photo ID for voting, require proof of US citizenship for registration, and force states to share voter registration data with the federal government. Trump has pressured Senate Republicans to attach the bill to other must-pass legislation.
On July 9, Trump removed all remaining leadership of the Election Assistance Commission, the independent bipartisan agency that helps states administer elections. The EAC was left vacant months before the midterms, a move that Richard Hasen, a UCLA law professor and election law expert, called alarming. “The federal government is the greatest risk that this country faces to free and fair elections in 2026,” Hasen said.
The push comes at a time when Republicans face a difficult political environment. Trump’s approval rating sits at 36%, dragged down by the Iran war and rising inflation. Democratic candidates lead by four points in generic ballot polling.
Republican election officials in key states have pushed back against the narrative. Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger, a Republican, said the system is “tried and proven” and noted that extensive audits, recounts, and legal reviews found no evidence of widespread fraud in 2020.
Senator Jon Ossoff, a Georgia Democrat, put it more bluntly: questioning the state’s elections effectively declares “the state’s voters illegitimate.”
Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin has meanwhile pledged to make Trump’s election security demands “mandatory” and implement a “maximum pressure” campaign, raising concerns that federal law enforcement will be deployed in ways that intimidate voters rather than protect them.