DOJ Threatens Election Workers With Jail Before Midterms

Two days before Election Day, the Justice Department sent election officials in all 50 states the same letter, signed by acting Deputy Attorney General Trent McCotter and dated Oct. 29. The message was simple: keep every record, or go to prison. "It is a crime to willfully fail to comply with Section 20701," McCotter wrote. "Such a failure is punishable by up to a year in prison and a $1,000 fine."

The letters, first revealed in a Votebeat report, land three days before Tuesday's midterms. They cite a federal statute requiring local officials to retain all records tied to a federal election for 22 months after election day. That means completed voter registration forms, pollbooks, precinct sign-in sheets, the ballots themselves, identification papers, mail-in ballot requests and the envelopes they came in. McCotter also noted it's unlawful to "willfully steal, destroy, conceal, mutilate, or alter" those records under Section 20702.

Who Has the Power

McCotter framed the threat as a favor. "Thank you for your commitment to ensuring election integrity," he wrote, after laying out the prison terms. He and other Justice Department officials told reporters Thursday that cracking down on illegal voting is "not a threat to elections. It's not a threat to democracy. It's not a threat to election officials. Exactly the opposite."

The letters are the latest in a series. In July, Harmeet Dhillon, the assistant attorney general for Civil Rights, reminded officials they'd be prosecuted if they knowingly let noncitizens vote. In September, Eric Neff of the same division warned that failing to preserve records during ongoing litigation carries civil or criminal penalties. The October mailings went out just days after a federal judge in California gave the Trump administration a pointed warning about its correspondence to local election officials.

The apparatus is bigger than paper. The Department of Justice will deploy 1,000 monitors across 50 states. Spokeswoman Kiersten Pels told The Post they will "observe for potential violations of federal law and report concerns to the Department, which the Department will review after Election Day and act where appropriate." The Republican National Committee will have its own monitors and lawyers, with 179 active election integrity cases in 37 states. Elias Law Group, representing the Democratic Party, is litigating 85 cases in 41 states. Several hundred lawsuits have already been filed.

Who Gets Crushed

The people holding the threat are far from the people facing it. Local election workers, the ones who actually count, file and store the ballots, get the prison warning. The officials writing it don't.

Then there are the voters. DHS has spent months gathering state voter rolls, and at least 16 states have handed over complete statewide registration lists, according to the Brennan Center. The federal government sued 30 states and Washington, DC, for not complying. Twenty-seven of those suits have been dismissed. Over two months, the Justice Department charged 154 foreign nationals across 23 states with unlawful voting, fraudulent registration and related offenses, with North Carolina at 18 defendants and Minnesota at 11.

A DHS spokesperson put it bluntly: "Our message to aliens who vote in American elections is clear: we will find you, arrest you, and you will face the consequences — including criminal charges and deportation." ICE, the spokesperson said, "is not planning operations targeting polling locations," though people could be arrested during "targeted enforcement" if a threat arises. Democrats worry the administration may target jurisdictions where voting materials come in multiple languages. Officials have war-gamed scenarios including ballots seized by feds and Homeland Security agents questioning voters.

What They're Calling "Order"

President Trump, asked this week whether he'd accept the results, said: "I will, if they're honest." On Truth Social he wrote about Minnesota: "Don't allow them to play with the votes after the race is over. The Federal Government will be watching closely." Sen. Tina Smith answered on X that he's "blatantly laying the groundwork to steal an election if his chosen candidate doesn't win."

In Alaska, Trump said Democrats' effort to recruit a candidate sharing the incumbent Republican senator's name "was a plot by the Democrat Party, and frankly, they should be, I think they should be prosecuted." The Justice Department has filed a civil suit and may pursue criminal charges.

Both parties are arming up. The DNC says it has staff in more than 35 states and "the DNC's first-ever in-house litigation team." Marc Elias described the fight as running from voter registration through tabulation, certification and "ultimately you have seating." Notice who's missing from that pipeline: the people being asked to vote.