Local Republican officials throughout the nation are taking aggressive steps to probe prior elections — from seizing ballots to making sweeping claims of noncitizens on the voter rolls — that mimic actions from the Trump administration’s hunt for 2020 voter fraud.
In Arizona’s Maricopa County, the official accountable for voter registration referred for prosecution greater than 200 individuals suspected of being registered to vote as noncitizens, primarily based on a database that’s turned up false positives elsewhere. The clerk in Macomb County, Michigan, touted noncitizen voters he claimed to have uncovered utilizing jury data as he runs for secretary of state. And in California, Riverside County Sheriff Chad Bianco — a Republican candidate for governor — final month seized 650,000 ballots from the state’s 2025 particular election to examine a processing discrepancy alleged by conservative activists.
They’re all going through pushback from state authorities who raised issues that the probes don’t observe the regulation or transcend the local officials’ experience. As allies of President Donald Trump have seized on the brand new fraud claims, state officials have additionally mentioned the allegations overstate the specter of fraudulent elections and the extent of noncitizen voting.
Trump has continued to make baseless allegations that Democrats are dishonest in elections and has urged Republicans to “nationalize the voting.” His administration has already seized 2020 election materials from Maricopa and from Fulton County, Georgia, by way of legal investigations. Election officials and specialists fear that the Trump administration or Trump-aligned state and local officials might be emboldened to take actions that disrupt or forged doubt on the upcoming midterm elections.
California Attorney General Rob Bonta said in a lawsuit Thursday that the Riverside sheriff’s investigation “threatens to sow distrust and jeopardize public confidence in the upcoming primary and general elections, not just in Riverside County but around the State.”
“It also sets a dangerous precedent that could invite future attempts to improperly contest election results through a misuse of law enforcement authority and the criminal process,” Bonta mentioned within the lawsuit, searching for a courtroom order halt to the evaluate.
The seizure of ballots in Riverside is especially worrisome to election officials and specialists heading into the 2026 midterms.
“It complicates things incredibly,” mentioned David Becker, a former Justice Department legal professional who heads the Center for Election Innovation & Research. “Riverside is a great example, where you’ve got a candidate for governor who appears to be politicizing a confirmed landslide election.”
The local officials have defended their critiques and have accused their state counterparts of interfering with investigations that they argue ought to be welcomed if they need to restore public confidence in elections.
“Why would you interfere and obstruct an investigation instead of assist? What are you afraid of?” Bianco mentioned in a press release to NCS.
Trump administration officials, in the meantime, have cheered on the efforts as Republicans pursue sweeping new voting legislation that would come with strict new ID and proof-of-citizenship necessities.
“It’s very refreshing to see local law enforcement take action on these types of issues,” Harmeet Dhillon, chief of DOJ’s Civil Rights Division, mentioned on Newsmax final week. “Too often everyone runs to the federal government, asks us to be the police of everything, but actually this type of thing should be investigated by local law enforcement.”
The sample of poll seizures by federal and local officials is “extremely worrisome,” mentioned Richard Hasen, an election regulation professor on the University of California, Los Angeles.
While the seizures by the Trump administration and the Riverside County sheriff are scrutinizing settled elections, if regulation enforcement took ballots from an energetic election earlier than a contest was determined, Hasen mentioned, it might quantity to a break within the chain of custody that will threaten the integrity of the vote.
“That is truly taking things to a new level,” he mentioned.
The state elections authorities who are pushing again at local officials’ sweeping fraud claims are additionally cautious of how these allegations might feed into the Trump administration’s determined widespread makes an attempt to dig up proof of mass voter fraud.
Arizona Secretary of State Adrian Fontes and Attorney General Kris Mayes just lately warned local officials within the state in opposition to complying with any demand that may come from federal investigators for election materials.
“We have a sacred duty to protect our constituents’ privacy and uphold the law, and we urge you to stand with American democracy and protect Arizona citizens from the federal government’s unprecedented abuse of authority,” the letter mentioned.
As was the case with the FBI’s seizure of Fulton County’s 2020 ballots, the investigation launched by Bianco was pushed by allegations made by citizen activists who’ve carefully scrutinized election administration, utilizing their very own critiques of voting supplies to put ahead sweeping theories of fraud.
Bianco obtained a number of search warrants primarily based on claims by the Riverside Election Integrity Team, a local activist group, which alleged a 40,000-plus discrepancy between hand logs of 2025 ballots as they got here into election places of work and the licensed variety of ballots within the machine rely.
The Riverside Registrar of Voters, in a prolonged presentation to the county board final month, identified flaws in REIT’s strategy and mentioned the discrepancy was solely 103. Counties nearly by no means have an ideal match between these comparisons, the California legal professional common mentioned in courtroom filings.
Bonta demanded that Bianco put his investigation on maintain, citing the supervisory energy legal professional common has over sheriffs.
Bianco as a substitute obtained a further warrant from the choose, and his legal professional instructed NCS that warrant allowed the evaluate to transfer ahead below the supervision of a particular grasp appointed by the courtroom. Bonta, nevertheless, questioned description of that the majority latest warrant in courtroom filings that additionally revealed the sheriff seized one other 426 containers of supplies on Tuesday, when litigation was pending difficult the evaluate. The California legal professional common now has parallel circumstances searching for judicial intervention on the county courtroom and the state supreme courtroom.
“I do not understand why the attorney general would be fighting so hard to try to prevent an investigation unless the attorney general has something to hide,” mentioned the sheriff’s lawyer, Robert Tyler.
Elsewhere within the nation, local election officials have been keen to tout critiques of voter rolls that they are saying present a serious downside of noncitizen registration and voting — critiques their state counterparts say are half-baked or not compliant with authorized procedures. In a number of circumstances, their findings have drawn the eye of the Trump administration.
Michigan Secretary of State Jocelyn Benson, a Democrat, just lately scolded Macomb County Clerk Anthony Forlini — who’s working as a Republican for Benson’s present workplace — for making “reckless accusations” when he publicly promoted a evaluate of noncitizens he mentioned he discovered on his rolls, after her workplace decided a few of these individuals have been residents.
Forlini, who oversees elections in Michigan’s third-largest county, had mentioned his evaluate whereas selling his candidacy for Michigan secretary of state on numerous right-wing platforms earlier this yr. It was primarily based on a comparability of voter rolls in opposition to individuals who report as noncitizens on jury kinds — an strategy election specialists warn doesn’t present definitive proof of voter fraud, as a result of individuals can lie to get out of serving or by accident click on the unsuitable field.
When Benson — who’s now working for governor — checked out claims he rolled out in January of 15 alleged noncitizens on the rolls, she discovered that three have been residents and 4 had already had their registration canceled. She additionally issued guidance to local election officials stressing the necessity for extra investigation when utilizing jury kinds to discover noncitizens on voter rolls.
Still, Forlini’s announcement obtained the eye of a prime Trump appointee on the Justice Department, as nicely the president’s allies in Congress.
Dhillon, the DOJ civil rights chief who has sued 29 states for confidential voter data on their registration rolls, twice amplified Forlini’s claims on X, whereas House Oversight Committee Chair James Comer requested that the division examine the matter.
Forlini instructed NCS that his public spat with Benson was basically a breakdown of communications and that he wouldn’t have made claims publicly had her workplace been responsive to his efforts to increase his findings to her privately.
“I am considering this a help to the secretary of state’s office,” he mentioned of his efforts to vet his voter rolls.
In a follow-up evaluate that he mentioned discovered 18 potential noncitizens on the rolls, three of these people had data displaying that they had voted. Federal investigators subpoenaed that data, Forlini instructed NCS, after beforehand visiting him in his workplace to talk about his claims.
Likewise, Bianco mentioned at a press convention earlier this month that he’d been in contact with the Justice Department. And when then-Department of Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem traveled to Arizona and made imprecise claims of mass voter fraud within the state, she met with Maricopa County Recorder Justin Heap, who says he discovered dozens of suspected noncitizens in voter registration data there and referred them to the county legal professional.
Heap’s findings have been primarily based on data within the Department of Homeland Security’s Systematic Alien Verification for Entitlements, also referred to as the SAVE information system.
Election specialists and state officials have cautioned that using the DHS database in different states to establish noncitizen voters has often ensnared US citizens, together with those that just lately grew to become naturalized, and so extra vetting is important earlier than eradicating these individuals from the rolls or suggesting they dedicated a criminal offense.
Heap, whose workplace maintains the county’s voter file, introduced final month that he had recognized 137 registered voters who weren’t US residents, together with 60 who had voted. He’s since referred these and one other 70 names turned up this month to the Maricopa County Attorney’s Office for potential prosecution.
A spokeswoman for Fontes, Arizona’s Democratic secretary of state, cautioned that the SAVE database has a lag time for new residents to be included, warning that it might be “imperative for Maricopa County to do independent research to verify that these voters were not citizens before canceling their registration.”
A spokesperson for Heap didn’t reply to requests for remark.
While Heap’s predecessor, Stephen Richer — a Republican whom Heap defeated within the 2024 major — additionally used the SAVE database to confirm people’ naturalization standing, he warned in opposition to making sweeping conclusions primarily based on matches in that database alone.
“I probably would have wanted to do some digging” earlier than referring these flagged for prosecution, Richer instructed NCS, “given the number of false positives that have been reported in other jurisdictions.”
Even the “worst-case scenario” that Heap laid out meant there have been 200 noncitizens registered out of the practically 2 million who forged ballots within the county, mentioned Richer, who stood up to Trump’s 2020 election reversal schemes.
“I just caution against any sort of notion that these are hardened criminals each of whom had a long-mediated plot to participate in American election,” he mentioned.