Election Officials Say Washington Is Now the Top Risk

“Our No. 1 risk at this point is the federal government,” said Colorado Secretary of State Jena Griswold, a Democrat, as state and local officials prepare for the midterm elections. Her blunt assessment marks a striking reversal. Washington spent years as a key partner in protecting the vote. Now, some election officials say that partnership has frayed.

The warning isn't coming from just one party. Republican Wesley Wilcox, supervisor of elections in Marion County, Florida, told POLITICO's Morning Cybersecurity newsletter there “is no sort of level of trust or anything else at this point in time” between his office and federal partners.

A Strained Partnership

Election officials have spent years preparing for polling-place bomb threats, large-scale disinformation campaigns and state-backed hacking. Those threats haven't disappeared. What's changed is who officials can count on.

According to the newsletter, the Trump administration has sought greater federal control over state election administration during its second term. It cited President Donald Trump's February 2026 call for Republicans to “nationalize” U.S. elections and an executive order restricting mail-in voting, issued in March 2026. There's also a nationwide effort to access voter rolls in every state and compare them with a federal immigration database. That effort has reportedly drawn scrutiny over purging eligible voters from state rolls.

The Department of Homeland Security rejected that premise. “The assertion that DHS is attempting to exert more federal control over elections heading into the November midterms is totally false,” the department said in a statement.

But distrust has changed how states operate. Colorado was among 15 states DHS flagged that summer to watch for “vulnerabilities in upholding election integrity.” Griswold said federal officials wouldn't be welcome inside Colorado's Cyber Command Center, which the Colorado National Guard stands up every election to protect election infrastructure from cyber threats. She cited concerns about federal meddling in state election administration. Arizona Secretary of State Adrian Fontes told CNN the administration had stopped giving state officials election-security briefings.

Relitigating 2020

The administration has also launched a broader effort to relitigate the 2020 election, which federal agencies and state election offices have repeatedly called “the most secure in American history.” In February 2026, the FBI seized years-old ballots from Fulton County, Georgia. In a July 2026 address, Trump highlighted Chinese efforts to access voter rolls and risks involving voting machines. He offered no evidence that the 2020 election was stolen.

Some state officials fear the damage reaches beyond logistics. They worry that efforts to sow doubt about voting could fuel widespread skepticism about the country's democratic processes and discourage people from casting ballots. “The biggest disservice to our country is to have people disengage with the civic process,” said Delaware Secretary of State Charuni Patibanda-Sanchez. Her office doesn't directly oversee elections, but she co-chairs the state's Task Force on Free, Fair and Secure Elections.

Cuts Leave States Carrying the Load

In 2025, the administration sharply cut personnel and funding at the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency, including its election security work. States now bear increasing responsibility for protecting their own systems.

CISA recently announced some of its first public election-security actions since those cuts, including a 13-page plan released late last month that outlines free resources for state and local election offices. Some officials said it arrived too close to the midterms to help.

“The latest CISA plan is a day late and millions of dollars short,” said Maine Secretary of State Shenna Bellows, a Democrat. “The states and localities are going to ensure that there's a free, safe and secure midterm election, despite absence or interference from the federal government.”

Other Security Pressure Points

The same newsletter tracked a series of other threats. Hackers stole personal data from the nonprofit Educational Testing Service, which contracts with the California Department of Education. The department said the breach exposed names, addresses, demographic information and disability status for all 7 million students enrolled in California public schools over the past three school years. The department is investigating.

The newsletter also reported a cyberattack on the Transportation Department's safety agency contact center, a separate attack that disrupted government websites used to report and transmit bankruptcy notices to federal courts, and an FBI investigation into a breach of its online jobs portal. The cybercriminal group ShinyHunters, which has targeted the education sector in recent months, claimed responsibility for the FBI breach.

On AI policy, advocates warned that a draft bill Anthropic has pitched to members of Congress doesn't address concerns raised by current and former employees. The bill would let the government block a model's release or use only if it posed an imminent risk of more than $1 billion in damages or killing or seriously injuring more than 50 people. It would also preempt some state AI safety laws. Charlie Bullock of the Institute for Law & AI said the bill was weaker than measures under consideration in Congress, including the FRONTIER Act from Reps. Lori Trahan (D-Mass.) and Jay Obernolte (R-Calif.). “New bills introduced today should ideally go further than FRONTIER was able to go rather than regressing,” Bullock wrote.

Why This Matters: Elections depend on voters trusting the count. When election officials call the federal government their biggest risk, and a Republican county supervisor in Florida says trust has evaporated, that's a warning about institutional health, not partisan score-settling. States must defend their systems with less federal help after the 2025 CISA cuts, so protection could vary according to each state's money and expertise. Voters in resource-poor jurisdictions could end up less protected. And if doubt about the process keeps growing, the cost may show up in people who simply stop participating. Officials from both parties are telling the public the same thing: the machinery of democracy needs a reliable partner, and right now many of them say they don't have one.