Considering Possible Federal Election Interference in Wisconsin
Even in his first presidential race in 2016, Trump falsely claimed irregularities in Wisconsin’s election results, although final results showed that he won the state. (The Green Party's own bogus post-election claims of lent Trump's baseless assertions a faint patina of credibility.) Then and ever afterward, Trump's accusations and grievances have been boundless even in victory.
In the years since, Wisconsin has been awash in empty accusations that Trump and the WISGOP have somehow been denied their rightful share of the vote. The 2020 Fake Electors Scheme started in Wisconsin, and former Wisconsin Supreme Court Justice Michael Gableman spent years here as a special counsel promoting conspiracy theories about the 2020 election in this state. (A disciplinary case against Gableman is pending before the Wisconsin Supreme Court. A court-appointed referee has recommended that Gableman lose his law license for 3 years.)
Trump's second term is now 387 days old, and on each one of those days he has advanced an authoritarian project. There has perhaps not been even an hour during those many days when Trump has acted justly within the liberal democratic tradition. He is manifestly unfit to govern a free people.
Returned to office, and more malevolent and avaricious than ever, Trump's earlier inclination to lie about election results now has the backing of countless dutiful federal officials, GOP operatives, and conspiracists across the nation. Trump, possessing federal executive authority with supportive GOP legislative majorities and an obliging high court majority, now possesses unprecedented federal power.
The worst president in American history is now its most powerful.
And so, and so, what specific federal actions would constitute interference in Wisconsin's elections? One begins with the only reasonable premise: Trump's executive branch behaves as an institution that believes its own ends justify a state's, city's, or region's submission.
There is the language of claimed support, operations of claimed support, and outright coercion.
The language of claimed support. Our question is not whether federal actors can speak the language of election security, integrity or combating disinformation. Our question is whether those terms are being used as sham support concealing interference.
Support is the category reasonable people expect from federal agencies, and could rely on before Trump was in power. It's also the category in which people are most likely to be naive. There are (or were) reasonable ways that support can be offered without commandeering Wisconsin's election process: threat briefings, best practices, vulnerability notifications, incident response planning. The public-facing version of support is posted openly by the Cybersecurity & Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA). Cybersecurity & Infrastructure Sec. Agency, Election Security.
And yet: terms like critical infrastructure can become, under federal overreach, a jurisdictional claim. The more something is described as national infrastructure, the easier it becomes to treat local administrators as subordinates.
The FBI’s election-crimes materials are framed as protection of the process. Federal Bureau of Investigation, Election Crimes and Security. And yet: we are here to protect elections can become we are here to police speech, we are here to set the acceptable boundaries of disagreement, or we are here to decide which allegations are respectable. The difference is not the mission statement but its aim.
The federal government may offer guidance that Wisconsin's officials can accept or ignore. If that guidance is a distortion or abrogation of legal precedent, then voters and communities will be led only to a diminished franchise. (In any event, guidance becomes a de facto mandate when the federal government controls downstream funding, audits, and investigations.)
Support is the easiest category to defend (we're only here to help) but also the easiest category to abuse because the language of support can be indistinguishable from the language of soft coercion.
The best practice: Communities should accept federal guidance only after independent legal review. Journalists should accept federal claims only after their own sourced review.
Operational coercion. A second level of federal interference may come from direct federal contact with state and local officials. Operational contact may be lawful. Coordination during intrusion, ransomware, threats to election workers, disinformation campaigns targeting voting procedures is all welcome if sincere.
Coordination, however, may be a soft term for we want to take the wheel.
Federal authorities may also seek records in legitimate investigations. Legal process, however, does not mean propriety of process. Officials can, and have, can serve lawful processes with unlawful purposes. If the federal government wants to chill local decision-making, nothing chills like the feeling of being watched and the fear of being next.
Litigation, unlike mere guidance, is an operational act: someone sues someone for something. The authoritarian populists often use the expression the rule of law when they mean the rule of the party, the man, or the movement.
Various task forces convened may interfere in legitimate elections through investigations or threats of investigations.
The best practice: Reply to inquiries only after seeking reliable, sound local authorization. Frontline local or state employees should be reminded to seek approval of their designated local counsel or election administrators before turning over records or answering questions on their own. Local or state employees should be told who those designated contacts are, and what to say to any inquiring officials while awaiting local guidance. Always polite, but always prudent: I want to help you, but first I am required to check with my designated local contact.
Physical coercion. This coercion includes visits, surveillance, direct implied threats, and check-ins that communicate that we know where you work, we know what you do, we can make your life difficult.
Wisconsin is a big place (65,496 square miles) and America is even bigger (3,809,525 square miles). There are not enough federal agents ten times over to visit every polling place in this nation.
Physical coercion isn't possible at every voting site, and that's not its purpose. Intimidation at a few sites, and news of that intimidation, itself serves to frighten and chill the vote elsewhere beyond the direct reach of federal officials.
The best practice: Remain calm in the event that federal officials do arrive at a polling place, stay in line if possible, and seek local clerks and legal counsel for guidance. An indispensable part of remaining calm is recognizing that coercion at one location should not — and need not — deter the voting of others elsewhere. America's many polling places and voters are more numerous than any number of coercive federal agents.
In these months ahead, there will be many warnings, some well-meaning, some intentionally stifling, about the risks to the 2026 vote.
First, ask what kind of threat is this (feigned support, operational coercion, or physical coercion)?
Second, apply a practical remedy (do not accept federal claims without legal review, provide information or access to federal officials only after guidance from designated local officials or counsel, and remain calm in the unlikely event of federal agents appearing at a given polling place).
There are many months ahead before November — and likely more months afterward of rumors or litigation. An informed electorate, aware of its rights and having a plan to vote and a plan in the event of interference, will prove a match for any coercive federal power.