Election officials beyond battlegrounds face expanded midterm scrutiny

Human errors in battlegrounds spark conspiracy claims; close midterms could renew pressure

The 2026 midterm races that will decide control of the U.S. House and Senate are spread around the country, bringing local election administration beyond traditional battlegrounds into wider national attention. NPR reported Nov. 2 that officials in Iowa, Alaska, New York and Kansas may find themselves in the national spotlight for the first time.

Other items in NPR’s Nov. 2 report said the Justice Department begins notifying counties where it wants to monitor elections and that the Justice Department issues subpoenas to California election workers.

In battleground states such as Michigan, Georgia and Arizona, election officials are more used to that level of pressure and scrutiny than they were more than half a decade ago. On the whole, the threat environment appears calmer than during the period after 2020.

Tina Barton, who oversaw elections as city clerk of Rochester Hills, Mich., in 2020, said the difference between running an election in a battleground state and a non-battleground is what happens when there are mistakes. “If a human error happens, it’s easily explained in the press and it’s not a story,” Barton said. “You have a human error in a battleground state and all of a sudden it can become a massive conspiracy.”

In Barton’s case, her office mistakenly sent an unofficial absentee vote file twice because the first did not initially appear to send. The mistake did not affect actual votes and was corrected in the tally the following day. But it changed her life regardless. The chairwoman of the Republican National Committee accused the office of improperly giving votes to Democrats.

Barton received a rush of death threats, including a voicemail saying she deserved a “throat to the knife” because she had “frauded out America of a real election.” She is now vice president of the Committee for Safe and Secure Elections, which helps local officials prepare for different worst-case scenarios.

NPR described mistakes that occur in every election cycle in a national process run by tens of thousands of human beings. Examples included an election machine that was not plugged in, a poll worker who slept through an alarm and did not open a precinct on time, and someone handed the wrong ballot. “It can happen whether you’re a red state or a blue state. Controversy can find you,” Barton said. “All it takes is some ballot equipment going down, a problem with ballots jamming, a website going down.”

Chris McGinn, executive director of the Texas Association of County Election Officials, told NPR earlier this year that Texas had been reliably Republican for the better part of 50 years. That history meant fewer competitive elections and less pressure on voting officials in federal cycles, but a U.S. Senate race that could decide the chamber’s balance has prompted McGinn to prepare county clerks for greater scrutiny. The Republican nominee for that seat sought to help President Trump overturn his 2020 election loss.

Still, McGinn said some officials assume the pressure cannot reach them. “We’re still in a state of not thinking it can happen to us — ‘That happens in other places,’” McGinn said. “One of the things that I jokingly but realistically preach to our members is we don’t want to be Florida in 2000.”

Wendy Link, supervisor of elections for Palm Beach County, Fla., said her office still regularly receives what she calls “love letters.” Her county includes part of a toss-up congressional district this year. Link also said she receives emails saying, “We’re going to send our army to arrest you, you’ll be spending your time in Guantanamo Bay.” She said some of the emails were clearly intended to intimidate her, though she was less worried about her safety than at different points in her job and was not requesting a security detail.

Barton said she worries the pressure could escalate again if the midterms are close. Researchers who study election misinformation said most false narratives usually emerge from real events like those Barton described, after which influencers or politicians falsely imply the incidents were intentional or occurring at a wider scale than they actually are.

The Committee for Safe and Secure Elections doubled the number of trainings it led in 2026 compared with 2024. NPR described the increase as a sign of new concerns about the Trump administration’s actions in elections and of an expanded understanding of what it means to be in a battleground state.

Barton said her message to officials in competitive districts was direct: “I’ve told them all, you better be on your game.” The committee’s role is to help local officials game-plan and prepare for different worst-case scenarios.