The U.S. is Missing the Silent Nationalisation of The Elections
Why the real threat to the 2026 midterms isn't at the ballot box, but in the server rooms and sealed affidavits of a newly centralised federal machine.
Dear friends
On Thursday, Senator Ruben Gallego issued a stark warning on the Court of History podcast, urging Americans to prepare for a worst-case scenario. His “worst case scenario” was that “they try to either capture the ballot box as ballots are being counted, they try to stop the count, they try to surround polling places“.
This kind of thinking — that democracy will be defended or lost in the streets this November — is not only dangerously behind the curve, it’s likely to result in the midterms being lost before a single ballot is cast. Because while leaders like Gallego are bracing for a tactical, physical assault on the vote, the administration is already finishing the assembly of a much more effective, administrative machine.
We need to look at the recent events in Fulton County and Minnesota not as isolated incidents of administrative overreach, but as early tests of how far the federal government can push into election administration. Because while the media has been focused on Epstein, ICE and the legislative gridlock in the Senate, the administration may be building the kind of practical machinery that changes what an election feels like on the ground — less a democratic contest, more a managed administrative process.
What we appear to be watching is the federal government testing the boundary of American federalism in elections. By using the FBI to seize election materials, with the visible involvement of the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, the administration is moving from arguing about past results to building leverage over future ones.
A key shift is the way “election integrity” is now being treated less as an ordinary electoral or civil process question, and more as an “election security” matter. Framed this way — as “critical infrastructure” exposed to foreign and domestic interference — it becomes easier for the executive branch to pull intelligence and federal law enforcement closer to election administration, even where states have traditionally guarded sovereignty.
What we’ll cover here:
Intelligence Operations as Domestic Enforcement: The structural crossing of roles between the DNI and local law enforcement.
The Federal Campaign for Person-Level Data: The drive for unredacted voter rolls and the centralisation of sensitive identifiers.
The Use of Federal Presence as Administrative Leverage: Analysing the “ransom letter” tactics used in Minnesota.
Mechanisms for Engineering Future Outcomes: How the environment is being shaped without touching a single ballot.
What to Do Now: A borderless framework for direct accountability and resistance.
Indicators to Monitor Before November: The specific administrative red flags to watch.
The Reality of Forensic Forecasting: The methodology behind forensic signal-matching, and a special offer for subscribers.
Intelligence Operations as Domestic Enforcement
The presence of Tulsi Gabbard at the FBI seizure of 2020 election materials in Fulton County on 28 January 2026 is a striking crossing of roles. The DNI is not a domestic law-enforcement office. It is a national intelligence coordinating role, typically associated with foreign threats. That is why her appearance at an on-the-ground search warrant execution immediately raised alarms.
The Fulton County seizure: FBI agents executed a search warrant at the county election hub in Union City and removed “hundreds of boxes” of 2020 election materials, including ballots and other records. Fulton County officials later challenged the seizure in court and sought the return of materials and the unsealing of the warrant affidavit. Some local accounts put the number of boxes at roughly 700; Reuters reports it as “hundreds”.
The stated justification: Gabbard has said she attended because the President asked her to be there, and the administration has defended her presence as related to “election security”. That defence makes this episode structurally significant: it is an attempt to make intelligence-community proximity to a domestic election enforcement action look normal.
The personal link: Gabbard has said that she facilitated a brief phone call between the President and FBI agents who carried out the search, although she insisted neither she nor the President issued directives about the investigation. Regardless of how it is described, this places the President in direct contact with agents on a specific, politically charged investigation in a way that is rare and institutionally provocative.
By having the FBI seize 2020 election materials in Fulton County with the DNI physically present, the executive branch has shown a willingness to pursue election claims through federal enforcement power, not only through litigation and public argument. That does not, by itself, prove a plan to pre-engineer future outcomes, but it does show a workable route. Generate “official” security findings through processes that are harder to test in public — and then use those findings to justify more federal control over how election disputes are defined and handled.
The point is not that ballots can be linked to individual votes — US ballot systems are designed to prevent that. The point here is that custody of election materials, and the ability to frame election administration as a security problem, can shift power away from state and local election authorities and towards executive agencies.
The Federal Campaign for Person Level Data
While the DNI manufactures the narrative of a “breach”, the Department of Justice (DOJ) is pursuing a three-pronged approach that would give the federal government access to highly sensitive, unredacted voter-registration data.
1. Federal Litigation
As of February 2026, the DOJ says it has sued 24 states for refusing to hand over unredacted voter registration rolls.
The DOJ is demanding full names, residential addresses, dates of birth, and partial Social Security numbers. Judges in California and Oregon have thrown out the suits, calling the demand “unprecedented and illegal”. That matters because it clarifies what DOJ is trying to obtain: not a narrow compliance dataset, but person-level voter files with sensitive identifiers.
Whatever the stated justification, centralised federal access to unredacted voter files changes the balance of power in a decentralised election system. It creates the practical conditions for a national-scale voter dataset. It also makes it easier for the federal government to run its own eligibility checks and then lean on states to act on what the federal government claims it has found.
The Targeted Map: 2026 Swing States: These suits and seizures are not happening in the abstract. They land hardest in contested jurisdictions, where small administrative shifts can decide control of Congress.
Arizona: Sued in January 2026. The DOJ is demanding full data; state officials are resisting, calling it a “data grab.”
Georgia: The Fulton County raid serves as the physical version of the digital data demand. There is no need to claim the litigation campaign and the raid are formally coordinated. The point is simpler: both routes converge on the same prize — custody of sensitive election records.
Wisconsin: Sued over access to unredacted voter registration data, framed as “list maintenance” enforcement.
The stated purpose is “list maintenance”, but this label can cover a process that changes who is able to vote — not by touching ballots, but by deciding who stays registered.
US law does set limits. The National Voter Registration Act restricts large-scale, systematic removals close to a federal election, and it requires notice-based procedures for many types of removal. Those safeguards exist because large matching exercises routinely sweep up eligible people, and the burden of putting things right tends to land on the voter — time, paperwork, and repeated proof — rather than on the agency that triggered the flag.
The point is that “list maintenance” is the respectable label for a process that can be used to change who is allowed to vote — not by touching ballots, but by deciding who stays registered. If the federal government gets unredacted voter files with strong identifiers, it can generate large numbers of “ineligible” flags through database matching and then lean on states to act on them. Even if only a small share of those flags are wrong, the practical effect can be large, because removals and delays land unevenly and the burden of correction sits with the voter. People miss deadlines, cannot get through the paperwork in time, or decide it is not worth the hassle. That is how turnout is shaped without anyone needing to falsify a single vote.
2. Cross Agency Linkage and the End of Decentralisation
The significance of the DOJ demanding unredacted voter files — particularly partial Social Security numbers (SSNs) and dates of birth — cannot be overstated, especially when we consider the administration’s broader posture on federal data access and de-siloing. Even without a formally announced “master database”, wide cross-agency access to person-level datasets can create something close to an integrated identity record assembled from multiple systems.
In that context, unredacted voter files are not just election data. They function as a linkage tool.
The Power of “Unique Identifiers”: Names and addresses are “noisy” — people move, and many people share the same name. A partial SSN and a date of birth make matching far easier. If the DOJ obtains that combination at scale, it gains the technical capacity to cross-reference state voter rolls against other federal identity and eligibility systems.
Algorithmic purging: When list maintenance is driven by cross-database matching, the predictable danger is that eligible people will get swept up, people like naturalised citizens, people with hyphenated names, and infrequent voters. The core risk is not that mistakes happen — mistakes always happen — but that the matching process is opaque, the incentives run one way, and the path to correction is slow and draining.
The Impact of Centralisation: Traditionally, the United States has a decentralised election system. Each state controls its own voter data precisely to avoid a single point of failure or control. A federal campaign to obtain unredacted voter files at scale pushes in the opposite direction: nationalised access to the raw inputs. Combined with broad cross-agency identity linkage, this expands the federal government’s ability to connect voter-registration records to other identity-linked datasets.
This is about identity linkage and administrative leverage, the risk being what can be done with registration-level identity data when it can be matched and acted on at scale.
Voter intimidation: Whatever the intention, the effect can still be chilling. If people believe the federal government is screening them through an enforcement lens, some will step back from participation rather than risk being flagged — especially in communities already living with fear and heightened scrutiny.
Predictive Modelling: Once voter-registration data can be linked to wider identity datasets, it becomes possible to shift from retrospective checks to targeted pressure: concentrating “integrity” scrutiny in communities and counties likely to oppose the administration. This does not require the declaration of a plan; it simply follows from what integrated datasets allow. In practice it often looks like administrative friction — more audits, more paperwork, more delays, more reviews — applied unevenly.
And once identity records can be linked across agencies, it also becomes possible to use ordinary administrative systems as leverage against people who have been flagged — rightly or wrongly. That leverage does not have to look like a dramatic sanction. It can look like a routine “verification” step that freezes a payment until extra documents are produced, a standard review that turns into weeks of delay, or a sudden demand to re-prove eligibility for something you have received for years. When someone is ‘wrongly’ flagged — or when the criteria are broad, or applied selectively, so that eligible people are pulled in anyway — the burden of clearing it falls on the individual, slowly, through processes that are hard to navigate and easy to exhaust.
That is not to say this will happen, but it is a foreseeable abuse pathway when datasets are integrated and oversight is weak.
3. Federal Presence as Administrative Leverage
While the DOJ pursues the states in court, a more direct form of pressure has emerged in Minnesota. On 24 January 2026, Attorney General Pam Bondi sent what has been described as a “ransom letter” to Governor Tim Walz that essentially linked the federal law enforcement posture in the state to the surrender of voter rolls.
The communication signalled that the “restoration of the rule of law” — specifically regarding the surge of federal agents in Minneapolis—was effectively contingent on state “cooperation” with federal data demands.
The Tactical Pivot: This move bypasses the judicial setbacks the DOJ faced in California and Oregon. If the courts will not grant the federal government access to unredacted voter files, the administration is demonstrating it can find other, more immediate pressure points.
Negotiating Sovereignty: By tying the presence of federal law enforcement to administrative data sharing, the executive branch is treating state sovereignty as a negotiable commodity. It puts governors in a position where they must weigh the privacy of their voter rolls against the continued escalation of federal intervention in their jurisdictions.
The Framing of Obstruction: Refusal to hand over the data is framed not as a defence of privacy, but as “obstruction” of federal security efforts. This allows the administration to shift the conflict from a technical dispute over database access to a high-stakes debate over public safety and federal assistance.
This indicates that the administration’s goal is not merely to win a legal argument about voter rolls, but to make the cost of local resistance high enough that state officials view surrendering the data as a necessary trade-off to reduce federal pressure.
Now we need to consider the question of what becomes possible once that data is centralised.
Mechanisms for Engineering Future Outcomes
While none of this proves that the administration plans to rig future elections, it shows they are building a toolkit. Once federal agencies can take custody of election materials, demand sensitive voter identifiers at scale, and frame election administration as an “election security” problem, the range of plausible interventions expands sharply.
The interventions do not have to look like ballot-stuffing. A more realistic route in modern election interference is administrative: changing who is on the rolls, where friction is applied, which jurisdictions are put under extraordinary scrutiny, and which narratives are treated as official security findings rather than contested political claims.
There are three ways this can shape the 2026 midterms and the 2028 presidential election.
First: if the federal government gets centralised access to unredacted voter files, it can start doing eligibility checking at scale.
If the DOJ obtains statewide records that include dates of birth and partial Social Security numbers, it becomes much easier to run large cross-checks against other databases and then press states to act on the results. That is where purge-like outcomes show up in real life: not one mass deletion, but a steady rise in people being flagged, challenged, removed, or told to prove eligibility again — especially in places where small changes in turnout can swing a race.
Courts have already treated these demands for sensitive voter data as legally suspect. Judges have warned that pulling this information into federal hands can chill participation and invites misuse.
Second: custody matters. Who physically holds election materials has power, especially once an election moves into recounts, audits, certification fights, and post-election disputes.
Fulton County shows the federal government is willing to treat election infrastructure as something it can take control of through law enforcement — under a sealed warrant, with little immediate public visibility into the rationale. If that posture carries into 2026 or 2028, the pressure point is not “changing votes”. It is controlling the dispute environment: what gets seized, what gets examined, which claims are treated as “security” concerns, and which local officials find themselves under investigative pressure.
The more election administration is described as “critical infrastructure under attack”, the easier it becomes to justify extraordinary federal involvement and unusual secrecy.
Third: when election administration is framed as a national-security problem, it becomes easier for the executive branch to justify exceptional measures.
“Security” language changes what people will accept by default. Secrecy starts to look normal; urgency starts to sound self-evident; and federal intrusion can be presented as protection rather than interference.
That is why the visible involvement of DNI leadership in a domestic election seizure matters. It pushes intelligence-community proximity to election enforcement towards something that looks routine, rather than something that should trigger immediate alarm.
Put bluntly, these are the ingredients for engineered outcomes without the need to engineer ballots.
An engineered outcome might look like tighter eligibility rules in the places that matter; more people removed or challenged on the basis of opaque matching; longer and harder processes to get a mistake corrected; and a lot more fear in communities that already feel exposed to enforcement pressure. It may look like selective “integrity” saturation — some counties living under constant federal scrutiny and repeated interventions, while others are left to run elections in relative peace. Or it may look like narrative engineering: disputed claims being turned into official “security” findings, and then used to justify the next round of centralisation.
None of that depends on anyone being able to see how an individual voted. The vulnerability is upstream and adjacent to the vote: whether you are kept on the rolls, whether you can clear being flagged in time to vote, whether election offices are operating under investigative threat, and whether the whole thing is being pushed into a security frame rather than treated as a civic process.
What To Do Now
If we accept the framing of elections as a “security problem”, we concede the high ground to the executive agencies currently centralising control. Resistance to this process must be as decentralised as the election system we are trying to protect.
1. Force the issue with representatives: Do not simply “ask” representatives to look into this; provide them with the evidence. Copy and paste the core of this analysis into a direct communication to every member of the House Committee on Administration and the Senate Rules Committee, regardless of their state. They are the national gatekeepers.
The Question: “Are you aware of the DOJ’s demand for unredacted voter files, and what is your specific plan to prevent the federalisation of registration rolls?”
The Follow-up: If they are not talking about the Fulton County seizure or the Bondi letter, assume they do not understand the gravity of the situation. Publicly tag them on Substack and other platforms with this post and demand a public statement.
2. Leverage Substack for direct accountability Substack is now the intellectual headquarters for many elected officials and those standing for office. Use that proximity.
Restack this post and tag high-profile Governors, Attorneys General, and Secretaries of State — especially those in jurisdictions like Arizona, Georgia, and Minnesota where the pressure is highest. They need to know the global community is watching.
Restack and tag those committed to democratic defense: This is a national-scale seizure; every representative and observer is a pressure point. Restack this post and tag the official accounts of organisations, analysts, and writers tracking these institutional shifts. They need to see the administrative receipts.
Audit the candidates: Visit the “Notes” and posts of candidates running for federal office across the country. If their platform is focused solely on “physical polling place security,” they are fighting the last war. Interrupt that narrative. Share this post and ask them: “How will you stop the Department of Justice from using ‘list maintenance’ as a tool for administrative disenfranchisement? What is your specific plan to protect unredacted voter data from federal seizure?”
3. Engage your State Attorney General (AG) The Attorney General is the primary legal shield against federal overreach.
Demand a “Data Protection” posture: Write to your AG’s office. Specifically cite the California and Oregon rulings that found the DOJ’s demands “unprecedented and illegal”. Ask if your state is prepared to litigate to protect unredacted voter data (including partial SSNs) from federal seizure.
Monitor the “Agreements”: Ask for transparency regarding any “voluntary” data-sharing agreements between your state’s election board and the DOJ or DHS.
4. Protect your own status Since the goal of this centralisation is often “list maintenance” that triggers administrative friction, you must be proactive.
Verify your registration monthly: Do not wait for a “flag” to arrive in the mail. Check your status on your Secretary of State’s website regularly.
Document everything: If you or anyone you know receives a registration challenge or “ineligible” flag that appears to stem from a federal data match, make it public. Save a copy of the notice, the timestamp, and any correspondence. Share these documents with local investigative journalists or civil rights groups. Upload a redacted version of the notice to Substack and tag them. When these errors are seen in aggregate, the “efficiency” narrative will collapse into a visible pattern of interference.
5. Support the “Resisters” Governors and Secretaries of State who are currently fighting these lawsuits are under immense federal pressure. They need to know that their constituents view “cooperation” with the DOJ as a breach of trust. Send a brief note of support to the offices of officials who are actively resisting the data grab—it reinforces their political mandate to keep fighting.
The goal is to make the administrative capture of our elections visible, noisy, and politically expensive. If they want to treat the census of our democracy as a “security breach”, we must treat their intrusion as the primary threat.
Escalations To Watch for Before November
If the administration continues on this path of centralisation, the following developments are not just possible, but the logical next steps in the assembly of this machine:
The “Security Emergency” Declaration: The executive branch may use a specific, perhaps minor, local administrative error to declare a broader “election security emergency”. This would provide the pretext for expanded federal “oversight” in swing jurisdictions, framed as a protective measure.
The “Scrubbing” Narrative: Expect a coordinated cross-agency campaign to “cleanse” rolls using DOGE-led matching. This will be presented as an efficiency drive, but the practical effect will be a surge in administrative flags and challenges issued to voters in specific, contested postcodes.
Increased Use of Non-Disclosure Agreements (NDAs): We may see federal agencies require state election officials to sign NDAs as a condition for receiving “intelligence briefings” or federal security grants. This creates a wall of secrecy between local officials and the public they serve.
Targeted Audits of “Non-Cooperative” Jurisdictions: Expect the DOJ or FBI to launch “integrity audits” or civil rights investigations specifically into the counties and states that have resisted data-sharing demands. The goal is not a conviction, but the creation of investigative pressure that exhausts local resources.
The Normalisation of the DNI: Further appearances by the DNI or other intelligence officials at domestic administrative sites will be used to cement the idea that the intelligence community is a standard stakeholder in domestic election management.
These are not speculative theories; they are the standard operational steps for an administration that has already moved from litigation to enforcement.
I’ve spent the last week pulling these threads together because I believe that clarity is one of our best tools for resistance. It is easy to feel overwhelmed by a machine this large, but remember: the very fact that this capture is being attempted is an admission that the system only works for the administration if every variable is controlled.
By staying sharp, refusing to be distracted by the theatre, and protecting the integrity of our own local processes, we refuse to be passive variables in an administrative exercise. We still have time to hold the line, but only if we stop looking for agents at the ballot box and start looking at the registration rolls in our own backyards.
This fight is a global one, and right now, the American system is the front line for the future of democracy. On behalf of all those around the globe with our eyes on America, thank you for reading and for staying in the fight.
In solidarity, as ever
— Lori
© Lori Corbet Mann, 2026
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The kind of analysis and forecasting I provide here isn’t something you’ll find from traditional commentators or the standard churn of digital media. There are three very real reasons for that.
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A note on perspective: I am not a lawyer, a constitutional scholar, or a professional election administrator. I am a researcher looking at the mechanics of power. This analysis is based on publicly available filings, reports, and observable administrative actions; it is intended to provide a framework for understanding the current landscape, not as legal or professional advice. Always consult official state sources regarding your specific voter registration and local laws.
References:
Legislative & Congressional Sources
Senator Maria Cantwell Press Release (2 Feb 2026): “Cantwell Tells DOJ to Cease Pressure Campaign to Obtain States’ Sensitive Voter Data.”
Senator Alex Padilla Press Release/Letter (29 Jan 2026): Formal follow-up letter to AG Bondi documenting the “apparent ransom” of Minnesota.
John Larson House Press Release (22 Jan 2026): “Democrats, advocates probe DOGE coordination with election deniers as outrage grows.”
Official Government Portals & Filings
U.S. Department of Justice (6 Jan 2026): Official announcement of lawsuits against Arizona and Connecticut for voter rolls.
Social Security Administration (SSA) Legal Response: Filings confirming DOGE staffers used unauthorized servers to share citizen PII.
News & Investigative Journalism
The Washington Post (4 Feb 2026): “‘Confidential’ Agreements Show Trump Administration’s Plans for States’ Voter Data.” (As syndicated/referenced by Brennan Center).
AP News (23 Jan 2026): “Judge rules US Justice Department Filed a Lawsuit over Georgia Voter Data in the Wrong City.”
Mother Jones (26 Jan 2026): “DOJ’s ‘Ransom’ Letter to Minnesota Reveals How Trump Plans to Rig the Midterms.”
The Texas Tribune (9 Jan 2026): “Texas hands over complete list of registered voters to Trump administration.”
Truthout (31 Jan 2026): “Trump DOJ Sues to Force States to Share Confidential Voter Data.”
The Guardian (21 Jan 2026): “DOGE improperly shared sensitive social security data, DOJ court filing reveals.”
People’s World (23 Jan 2026): Reporting on federal overreach and the Minnesota “Operation Metro Surge” fallout.
Mashable (21 Jan 2026): “Did DOGE sign a ‘voter data agreement’ with election deniers?”
Think Tanks & Legal Advocacy
Harvard Ash Center (2 Feb 2026): “Understanding DOGE and Your Data.”
Common Cause (21 Jan 2026): “Common Cause Challenges Trump’s Demands for Voter Data in 14 States.”
Elias Law Group (15 Jan 2026): “Federal Court Dismisses DOJ Lawsuit Seeking Sensitive Data of 23 Million California Voters.”
Brookings Institution: Policy analysis on the expansion of the SAVE program and voter data error rates.
Center for Racial and Disability Justice: Analysis of the impact of automated purges on marginalized communities.
Democracy Docket: Ongoing litigation tracker for all 24 DOJ lawsuits.
Professional Legal Commentary
Joyce Vance - Civil Discourse (31 Jan 2026): “Today Fulton County, Tomorrow???”
Truly frightening this is happening under our noses and no one is talking about it. Trump's administration continues to push the boundaries and see what it can get away with , gradually taking more and more of the populations liberty and freedom.
Another fantastic post Lori thank you!
What the current regime is asking for is PII, personally identifiable information, any one combination of which can identify you, and all of which together is a breach of your privacy. Bad enough DOGE and Musk, and the Palantir database being built by the Feds breaks every intentional silo of data between agencies, AND THE LAW regarding use of the data only for the purpose for which it was gathered, but now they are trying to aggregate it with state-collected and managed data! BigBrother IS watching us, and that is terrifying. George Orwell was right, just off by 40 years.