Nine ways the Trump administration could interfere with the midterms

US President Donald Trump has made no secret of his desire to exert control over the country's upcoming midterm elections. He has urged Republicans to "nationalize" voting, pressed for restrictions on mail-in ballots and deployed federal law enforcement to pursue discredited fraud claims. At a Republican Party convention in September, he called on supporters to "cheat like hell" whether they're "registered or not."

All of that raises a question: If Trump wanted to follow through, could the president disrupt the election? And how?

To answer that question, Reuters interviewed more than 50 election officials, voting experts and election lawyers, and reviewed Trump's public statements, court filings and actions by federal agencies. Their assessments point to a range of scenarios, outlined below, in which the administration could test the boundaries of federal authority.

To be sure, the US Constitution gives states broad authority over election administration, and courts have reinforced that power by blocking many of Trump's initiatives. Election officials generally expect those guardrails to hold, citing rulings since the 2020 election that favored states seeking to retain control over elections. Recently, courts ruled against administration efforts to restrict mail-in voting and access confidential voter-roll data.

Still, election officials across the country are taking the possibility of disruption seriously. Reuters previously reported that many are preparing for potential federal interference in November's elections, which will determine control of the US Congress and many key state offices.

Many said the greatest risk may not be any single intervention changing an election outcome, but a series of investigations, legal challenges and disputes over voting that could disrupt certification of the results, undermine public confidence and throw close races into turmoil.

The White House says its goal is to safeguard election integrity and voting security. Responding to Reuters' questions about the scenarios outlined in this article, White House spokesperson Lauren Bis accused Democrats of undermining confidence in US elections by opposing the SAVE America Act, which would require proof of citizenship to register to vote and photo identification to cast a ballot.

"President Trump is absolutely right," said Bis. "We fix this now, or we lose our country." The legislation has stalled in the Republican-controlled Congress.

Trump has a long history of challenging election outcomes and encouraging supporters to contest results he views as unfavorable. After losing in 2020 to Democrat Joe Biden, he asked Georgia's top election official to "find" enough votes to reverse his loss in the state and urged supporters to attend a rally on January 6 that preceded the storming of the US Capitol. Trump has denied responsibility for the violence, saying he told supporters to march "peacefully and patriotically" and that his remarks were protected speech.

More recently, his administration has launched probes involving election offices in several battleground states, scaled back programs intended to guard against cyberattacks and foreign election interference, and unsuccessfully sued states that refused to provide sensitive voter data.

Reuters distilled the views of election officials and experts into nine scenarios they see as the most significant potential flashpoints before and after Election Day.