UCLA project releases judges' guide on ballot search warrants

State official ran three trainings on ballot seizure scenarios

UCLA’s Safeguarding Democracy Project released a guide on Wednesday advising judges how to evaluate search warrant requests for ballots and election materials, as voting officials and legal groups prepare for the possibility that federal law enforcement could seek to take possession of ballots before the 2026 midterm elections are certified. The guide was shared first with NPR.

Rick Hasen, the project’s director and the guide’s lead author, told NPR that “lots of things that were off the table are now on the table.” Hasen tied the shift to President Trump’s stated regret that he did not push harder for the federal government to seize election equipment after the 2020 election.

Two ballot-seizure search warrants have already been executed this year — at the elections office in Fulton County, Georgia, and in Riverside County, California.

The warrant executed at the Fulton County elections office was, in NPR’s reporting, a “wake-up call” for the legal community, not solely because it happened but because of how it was approved. “Eventually we got to see the search warrant and it confirmed some of our worst fears,” Hasen said. “It contained information about potential fraud in Georgia that was based on discredited conspiracy theories.”

The warrant was approved by a magistrate judge. Hasen said magistrate judges, who generally handle warrant affidavits, are not elections specialists and could be asked this fall to weigh dubious claims “at a time when misinformation is rampant.”

Voting officials have begun preparing for the scenarios the guide addresses. One state election official, who did not have permission to speak publicly, told NPR their office has led three separate statewide trainings this year to prepare for the possibility of law enforcement seeking to take possession of ballots or election materials while an election is ongoing. “This is the thing we really fear,” the official said. “[Say] we have really close races [in our competitive districts] then the DOJ, FBI come knocking on one of our county doors and they say, ‘We believe there’s hijinks going on, we’re going to confiscate all the ballots so we can count them.’”

If a warrant is served and ballots are seized before an election is certified, voting officials may be unable to determine how many ballots were returned or whether seized ballots were tampered with — a problem elections officials call “breaking the chain of custody.” “They could do so much damage if they did that,” the state official said.

The UCLA guide recommends that judges not handle warrant review alone. “One of our key recommendations is to bring election administrators into the conversation,” Hasen said. Retired Chief Justice of the Supreme Court of Ohio Maureen O’Connor, a member of the nonprofit Keep Our Republic, said the warrant process typically happens in secret and limits judicial scrutiny. In the case of an ongoing election, she said, transparency should be prioritized: “That deserves to be discussed in a courtroom on the record, with the judge asking questions of witnesses under oath and determining then, by the totality of the circumstances, whether there should be a warrant issued.”

O’Connor and retired federal judge Philip Pro, the former chief judge for the District of Nevada, are both members of Keep Our Republic, one of the civil society groups that has been preparing for ballot-warrant scenarios this fall. “Right now, the judiciary writ large has their antennae up, anticipating what might be coming down the pike,” Pro said. “They’re going to be prepared.” Judges “are going to be looking behind the curtain rather than simply relying on what is presented [in the affidavit] as being gospel,” Pro added.

The guide lays out several alternatives for judges weighing a ballot-seizure warrant: waiting until after certification to execute the warrant; considering whether copies or reproductions could satisfy the government’s investigative needs; or allowing law enforcement to observe tabulation or a recount.

Hasen pointed to a Michigan mayoral race from 2025 in which the chain of custody was broken for just a few dozen ballots and the result, decided by 11 votes, remains in dispute. “We want judges to understand you can’t unscramble the egg,” Hasen said. “Once the ballots have been taken out of the custody of election officials, there are at least going to be conspiracy theories that ballots have been altered or added to or removed.”

Voting officials worry a similar controversy could have outsized consequences in a House or Senate race that decides the balance of power in Congress.

The guide also lays out procedures a court should follow if a warrant is granted, but Hasen said he hoped judges would consider their alternatives first. “Because all the things to do, if that does happen,” he said, “are really second-best solutions.”