Too big to rig? How Trump’s voter fraud crusade crashed into a Blue wave

Caroline Brehman/Bloomberg/Getty Images

The Trump administration’s unprecedented crusade to hunt for voter fraud spurred widespread fears of federal election interference but ultimately never materialized on Election Day – thanks to resistance from local election officials and federal courts.

In what quickly became a wave election for Democrats, voters delivered a sweeping midterm rebuke of President Donald Trump, with few issues reported at polls across the country. The Justice Department’s surge of voting monitors seemingly did not lead to disturbances. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents were not sent to polling places. The US Postal Service did not refuse to deliver mail-in ballots.

And on Tuesday night, Trump indicated that he would not challenge the results of an election that delivered control of the House and Senate to the Democrats.

Just like in 2020, institutional guardrails of the American electoral system largely blocked the Trump administration from carrying out some of the drastic steps that it pursued. The Supreme Court blocked Trump’s March Executive Order that would have severely restricted states’ mail-in voting. Local election officials brushed off threats from the Justice Department that they could face prosecution over noncitizen voting. And the federal courts rejected the Justice Department’s 11th-hour attempt to force California to segregate 20,000 ballots from being counted.

Election experts who spent months gaming out worst-case scenarios with tabletop exercises and trainings for election workers said that all of the preparation helped ensure the election was carried out lawfully and that any federal government attempts to overstep its authority was quickly halted.

“For all of the handwringing and speculation about how the federal government might interfere, how foreign adversaries might attempt to interfere … we’re seeing elections go very normally with only minor problems,” said David Becker, founder of the Center for Election Innovation & Research.

“It’s largely due to the preparation of those local and county election officials, who worked so hard with their state officials, despite attempts at federal interference,” added Becker, who advises local election officials in both parties.

The day was not without problems. There was a ballot scanner “debacle” in Westchester County, New York, that delayed counting; bomb threats were reported in several states; and various isolated allegations such as voters being incorrectly turned away from the polls or poll watchers not being allowed proper access. But those were all typical issues that tend to arise on Election Day, and nowhere near the widespread chaos that some had feared.

Nathaniel Wilder/Bloomberg/Getty Images

At least in the immediate aftermath of Tuesday’s rout, Trump told the New York Times in an interview that he was “absolutely willing” to accept the results of the midterms. Several prominent election deniers also appeared to be accepting the Democratic wins on Tuesday.

Trump’s Justice Department is still aggressively investigating claims of widespread noncitizen voters on the rolls in California and the two Daniel Sullivans on the ballot in Alaska. Many of the extreme steps Trump took in his efforts to overturn the 2020 election came weeks after Election Day.

But for months, election officials and Democratic lawmakers have been guarding against what they warned could become a constitutional crisis that would upend voting in the midterms if the White House tried to seize control of the US voting process that’s largely delegated to the states in the Constitution.

The president and his administration took aggressive steps – and suggested they might go further.

Trump officials tried to prove the president’s false claims the 2020 election was stolen from him. The FBI seized 2020 ballots from Fulton County in Georgia earlier this year, while intelligence officials tested voting machines from Puerto Rico in an unsuccessful attempt to prove baseless conspiracy theories about voting machines being hacked by foreign adversaries.

Trump said in February Republicans should “nationalize” the elections, while his allies pushed him to use the federal government’s powers to declare a national emergency to take control of the electoral process with steps like blocking certain voting machines from being used. Trump officials repeatedly refused to rule out sending ICE agents or other law enforcement officers to the polls.

Voting rights groups reported smooth operations at polls across the country on Tuesday – crediting the months-long campaign that included trainings and education of local election officials and judges for ensuring that the federal government wasn’t allowed to overstep its authority.

“When it comes to federal agents at the polls and so many other issues, it’s really important to remember … that today could have looked very different,” said Andrew Walchuko, a policy director and counsel at Common Cause, a non-partisan good government group. “I think we really put them on notice that we are watching.”

Throughout Tuesday, FBI field offices across the country operated command posts focused on monitoring any election issues that would require federal attention. While there were a small number of false bomb threats and disruptions that temporarily impacted some polling places, there were no actual significant threats, according to one senior law enforcement source.

Steps the Trump administration took that threatened to disrupt the election in the leadup to Election Day were blocked by the courts or rebuffed by states.

Kevin Mohatt/Reuters

Trump’s March executive order to restrict mail-in voting would have prevented the US Postal Service from mailing absentee ballots unless the states sent USPS its list of eligible voters. The Supreme Court blocked the administration from implementing it in September.

Last month, the Justice Department sent California a list of 20,000 voters it claimed could be noncitizens, demanding the state and county officials segregate those voters’ ballots and threatening prosecution of officials who didn’t stop noncitizen voting.

But California election officials rejected those demands, and the federal courts quickly put a stop to the effort to set the ballots aside.

“Like Americans across the country, we know the federal government does not run our elections. States and counties do. And at every turn, California has pushed back,” Aarti Kohli, executive director of the Asian Law Caucus, which deployed monitors in California with Common Cause-California, told reporters on Tuesday.

Some conspiracy theories still circulated on social media during the election on Tuesday. But in a twist, the Republican National Committee — which long amplified Trump’s false claims of a stolen 2020 election — helped debunk at least one of the incorrect claims.

The RNC’s Election Integrity team, which encouraged voters to flag irregulates or potential fraud, addressed a viral video that raised concerns about ballot handling in San Diego, explaining that election workers filmed loading ballots into an “unmarked minivan” were doing their jobs.

The video showed workers collecting ballots from an overflowing drop box. The RNC responded that its own “special monitors” flagged the full box to election officials and that workers were simply moving the excess ballots to the central voting site.

“And the ‘unmarked van’?” the RNC Election Integrity account wrote in the post on X. “It’s a County vehicle used to transport ballots.”

CNN’s Josh Campbell contributed to this report.

Caroline Brehman/Bloomberg/Getty Images

特朗普政府史无前例地发起了一场打击选民欺诈的运动，引发了人们对联邦干预选举的广泛担忧，但最终在选举日当天并未发生——这要归功于地方选举官员和联邦法院的抵制。

在民主党迅速取得压倒性胜利的中期选举中，选民们对唐纳德·特朗普总统进行了彻底的否定，全国各地的投票站几乎没有出现任何问题。司法部增派的投票监督员似乎并未导致任何骚乱。移民和海关执法局的特工没有被派往投票站。美国邮政服务也没有拒绝投递邮寄选票。

周二晚间，特朗普表示他不会对选举结果提出质疑，此次选举使民主党控制了众议院和参议院。

就像2020年一样，美国选举制度的既有保障措施在很大程度上阻止了特朗普政府实施其所采取的一些激进措施。最高法院否决了特朗普3月份签署的行政命令，该命令原本会严重限制各州的邮寄投票。地方选举官员对司法部威胁他们可能因非公民投票而面临起诉的言论不予理会。联邦法院也驳回了司法部在最后一刻试图强迫加州隔离2万张选票不予计票的请求。

选举专家们花了数月时间通过桌面演练和对选举工作人员的培训来推演最坏的情况，他们表示，所有这些准备工作都有助于确保选举合法进行，并迅速制止联邦政府任何越权行为。

“尽管人们对联邦政府可能如何干预、外国敌对势力可能如何试图干预等问题忧心忡忡、猜测纷纷……但我们看到选举进行得非常正常，只有一些小问题，”选举创新与研究中心创始人戴维·贝克尔说道。

“这主要归功于地方和县级选举官员的充分准备，他们与州级官员密切合作，克服了联邦政府的干预，”贝克尔补充道，他为两党的当地选举官员提供咨询。

当天并非一帆风顺。纽约州威彻斯特县的选票扫描仪出现故障，导致计票延迟；多个州报告了炸弹威胁；此外还出现了一些零星的指控，例如选民被错误地拒之门外，或监票员无法正常进入投票站。但这些都是选举日常见的突发问题，远未达到某些人担心的混乱程度。

Nathaniel Wilder/Bloomberg/Getty Images

至少在周二惨败之后，特朗普在接受《纽约时报》采访时表示，他“完全愿意”接受中期选举结果。几位知名的选举结果否认者似乎也在周二接受了民主党的胜利。

特朗普的司法部仍在积极调查有关加州选民名册上存在大量非公民选民以及阿拉斯加州两名丹尼尔·沙利文出现在选票上的指控。特朗普为推翻2020年大选结果而采取的许多极端措施，都是在选举日数周后才实施的。

但几个月来，选举官员和民主党议员一直在防范他们警告的可能演变成宪政危机的局面，这场危机可能会颠覆中期选举的投票，因为白宫试图控制美国宪法中很大程度上授权给各州的投票程序。

总统及其政府采取了强硬措施，并暗示他们可能会采取进一步行动。

特朗普政府官员试图证明总统关于2020年大选被窃取的虚假说法。今年早些时候，联邦调查局从佐治亚州富尔顿县查获了2020年大选选票，与此同时，情报官员测试了波多黎各的投票机，试图证明有关投票机被外国敌对势力入侵的毫无根据的阴谋论，但最终失败了。

特朗普二月份曾表示，共和党人应该将选举“全国化”，而他的盟友则敦促他动用联邦政府权力宣布国家紧急状态，从而控制选举进程，例如采取措施阻止某些投票机的使用。特朗普政府官员一再拒绝排除派遣移民及海关执法局（ICE）特工或其他执法人员前往投票站的可能性。

投票权组织报告称，周二全国各地的投票站运作顺利——这要归功于长达数月的宣传活动，其中包括对地方选举官员和法官的培训和教育，以确保联邦政府不会越权行事。

“谈到联邦特工出现在投票站以及其他诸多问题，我们必须记住……今天的情况原本可能截然不同，”无党派倡导良好政府的组织“共同事业”（Common Cause）的政策主管兼法律顾问安德鲁·瓦尔丘科（Andrew Walchuko）表示，“我认为我们已经让他们意识到，我们正在密切关注。”

周二当天，联邦调查局在全国各地的外勤办事处都设立了指挥中心，重点监控任何可能需要联邦政府介入的选举问题。一位高级执法官员透露，虽然出现了一些虚假炸弹威胁和干扰事件，导致部分投票站一度受到影响，但并未出现任何实际的重大威胁。

在选举日临近之际，特朗普政府采取了一些可能扰乱选举的措施，但这些措施要么被法院阻止，要么被各州驳回。

凯文·莫哈特/路透社

特朗普三月份签署的旨在限制邮寄投票的行政命令，将阻止美国邮政局寄送缺席选票，除非各州向邮政局提交符合资格的选民名单。最高法院于九月份阻止了该命令的实施。

上个月，司法部向加利福尼亚州发送了一份包含 20,000 名选民的名单，声称这些人可能是非公民，并要求州和县官员将这些选民的选票隔离，并威胁要起诉那些没有阻止非公民投票的官员。

但加州选举官员拒绝了这些要求，联邦法院也迅速制止了搁置选票的企图。

“和全国各地的美国人一样，我们知道联邦政府并不负责我们的选举。各州和各县才负责。而加州在每一个环节都进行了反击，”亚裔法律联盟执行主任阿蒂·科利（Aarti Kohli）周二告诉记者。该联盟与加州公共事业组织（Common Cause-California）一起在加州部署了监督员。

周二选举期间，一些阴谋论仍在社交媒体上流传。但出人意料的是，长期以来一直支持特朗普关于2020年大选被窃取的虚假说法的共和党全国委员会，却帮助揭穿了至少一条不实说法。

共和党全国委员会的选举诚信团队鼓励选民举报违规或潜在的欺诈行为，并就一段引发人们对圣地亚哥选票处理担忧的病毒式传播视频做出回应，解释说，被拍到将选票装入“没有标记的小型货车”的选举工作人员是在履行职责。

视频显示，工作人员正在从一个装满选票的投票箱中收集选票。共和党全国委员会回应称，其“特别监督员”已将投票箱满溢的情况告知选举官员，工作人员只是将多余的选票转移到中央投票站。

“那辆‘无标识厢式货车’呢？”共和党全国委员会选举诚信账号在X网站上发帖写道，“那是一辆县政府的车辆，用来运送选票。”

CNN的乔什·坎贝尔对本报道亦有贡献。