President Trump is reviving 2020 election conspiracies with help from the federal government. Voting rights advocates fear the administration may use federal power to cast doubt on elections or discourage participation. New guidance from the Department of Health and Human Services has sparked concerns about how staff assist elderly voters.
Voting rights advocates fear the Trump administration may use the federal government to cast doubt on the election, discourage participation or try to delegitimize results.
One of President Trump's many false claims about the 2020 presidential election, which he has repeatedly, and falsely, claimed was rigged against him, was an assertion that there had been "thousands and thousands" of "crooked votes" cast in Wisconsin nursing homes.
The allegation was unfounded. Yet the view that American nursing homes are a hotbed of illegal voting, where aides regularly change the votes of unwitting residents, lives on in Trumpworld. And like a number of other enduring conspiracies about election fraud, the false claim has seeped into the mechanics of governance this year.
In July, the Department of Health and Human Services issued fresh guidance on the topic of voting assistance, "reminding facilities and their staff that they cannot engage in inappropriate coercion or other violations of residents' rights." Voting rights advocates decried the message for its potential to discourage nursing-home aides from providing lawful assistance to elderly voters.
The episode has heightened fears that the Trump administration plans to use the power and force of the federal government to cast doubt on the election, discourage participation or, in a worst-case scenario, try to delegitimize the results.
Election fraud in nursing homes is one of many conspiracy theories from years past that are haunting the 2026 midterms. Though some of the wilder schemes offered to support Mr. Trump's effort to overturn his 2020 loss have been largely abandoned -- there is little talk these days about unleashed Krakens, or the nefarious influence of Italian satellites -- other 2020-vintage conspiracies have carried over into the present.
And this year, some of them carry the force of the executive branch behind them.
Among the most prominent are Mr. Trump's unproven claim that significant numbers of noncitizens have made their way onto American voter rolls, and his baseless assertion that mail voting is "inherently corrupt." Hundreds of investigators from several federal agencies have been dedicated this year to hunting for noncitizen voters, even though experts say the practice is exceedingly rare.
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