August 31, 2026 - Fulltext

The U.S. military has no plans to deploy troops to polling places or seize election materials during the November midterm elections, Gen. Dan Caine said in a letter obtained by MS NOW.

Caine, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, responded to concerns from Democrats about potential military involvement in the vote and outlined the military’s position in a letter to Sen. Elissa Slotkin, D-Mich., after she pressed senior Pentagon leaders about whether troops could be used in connection with the elections.

“Every member of the U.S. Armed Forces takes an oath to support and defend the Constitution of the United States, and the Joint Force has acted, and will continue to act, in accordance with the Constitution and the law,” Caine wrote. “Election administration and security remain the fundamental responsibility of state and local officials. The Joint Force has no plans to send Federal military personnel or Federalized members of the National Guard to polling places during the 2026 elections.”

The letter was first obtained by The Associated Press.

The nation’s highest-ranking military officer also said the military is not planning to use personnel to seize ballots, voting machines or other materials used to administer elections. He added that he has not received an unlawful order involving the election and does not anticipate receiving one.

Slotkin had asked both Caine and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth to pledge that the military would not be used to interfere with voting or the handling of election materials. Hegseth has not responded to Slotkin’s request for a letter, according to Sonja Thrasher, Slotkin’s press secretary.

Hegseth’s office did not immediately respond to MS NOW’s request for comment.

The exchange comes as Democrats have raised concerns about the possibility of federal forces being used around the midterms, particularly after President Donald Trump expanded the military’s domestic role during his second term.

The Trump administration has expanded the use of federal forces, deploying National Guard troops to several cities including Washington, D.C.; Chicago; and Portland, Oregon, in some cases over the objections of Democratic state and local leaders.

Trump also considered proposals involving the seizure of voting machines after his 2020 election loss as he sought to overturn the results, though the military was not ultimately used to do so. Federal law places significant restrictions on the use of military forces in domestic law enforcement and at polling places.

Source: https://www.ms.now/news/caine-hegseth-military-troops-polling-places-midterms

September 1, 2026 - Fulltext

The U.S. Postal Service could "derail" the midterm election if it continues rushing out "untested" technology as part of President Trump's push to restrict mail-in voting, a newly released whistleblower report warns.

With voting by mail for the midterms set to officially start this week, key parts of the USPS plan for carrying out Trump's directives, including requirements for states to comply, remain blocked for now by a court order in the legal fight over the president's executive order.

Still, the mailing agency has been preparing for months to launch an online portal that would allow state election officials to submit absentee voters' names and ballot envelope barcodes required by the now-blocked rule.

Testing of that new system, however, has been insufficient, according to claims by a whistleblower, outlined in a disclosure that Democratic Sen. Richard Blumenthal of Connecticut submitted Monday to USPS.

"USPS leadership, it appears, has discarded all best practices as they speed the project to be ready for a September 1 implementation — raising questions about whether catastrophic failure would be a feature rather than a bug," said the disclosure, prepared by Whistleblower Aid, a nonprofit organization representing the anonymous federal government official with direct knowledge of the Postal Service's development of the new system.

If courts allow USPS' plan for Trump's order to proceed for the midterms, problems with the online portal could lead to eligible absentee voters not receiving their mail-in ballots in time or at all.

One potential logistical hurdle, the whistleblower claimed, stems from an unusual "zero-percent failure policy" USPS has set for the process of verifying that the mail-in ballots states want to send out meet the requirements of its new rule.

"As designed, the process is entirely unforgiving. It could delay ballots by the thousands in repeated verification cycles — and thus prevent states from mailing enormous numbers of ballots," the disclosure said.

Spokespeople for USPS did not immediately respond to NPR's questions about the whistleblower disclosure.

In a letter to Postmaster General David Steiner, Blumenthal urged Steiner to "abandon this ill-conceived, unconscionable plan and ensure that all Americans can exercise their constitutional right to vote, including by mail, without interference by USPS."

Blumenthal said on a phone call with reporters that he found the details of the disclosure "mind-boggling" as an elected official and U.S. citizen.

"And what the disclosure reveals is that the Postal Service has designed a system that is intended to fail," the senator added.

The president, who has voted by mail himself, defended his directives for USPS and other federal agencies as a way to curb illegal voting by non-U.S. citizens, which many studies and audits show is extremely rare.

Last week, a federal judge in Boston issued a temporary restraining orderagainst USPS after finding that its plan for Trump's order is likely illegal because the mailing agency has no authority to control voting by mail.

The Trump administration has appealed that ruling to the 1st U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, setting up what will likely be another battle at the Supreme Court, which has not yet weighed in on the legality of Trump's directives.

More lower court rulings on Trump's order may also be on the way as election officials and mail-in voters attempt to sort through the uncertainty the ongoing legal fight has caused.

August 31, 2026 - Transcript

Dark money is flooding into the midterm elections. This means that billionaires and special interest groups are able to stay totally anonymous while paying for television ads, mailers, social media campaigns. Call Chris Pappas and tell him to stop helping millionaires.

Call Tom Barrett. Tell him to lower costs for Michiganders. Those ads lurk almost indistinguishable from an actual campaign commercial.

These policy ads and mailers are paid for with untraceable money. Reporting with my colleague Teddy Schliefer, we found that nearly a billion dollars in undisclosed spending has poured into the midterm elections this year. There are a lot of reasons people want to stay hidden as donors.

Some of it is public backlash. Some of it is corporate interests and special interests who are trying to get something out of the federal government. But when you look at what voters want, who is funding who has become a central issue.

And you'd have to really be looking at the fine print at the end of these ads to say paid for by a group, a nonprofit. And by making it about an issue that you're telling people to call about, technically it evades the requirements for disclosure. Whereas campaign ads say they're approved by the candidate themselves and are being paid for by the candidates.

There are three main ways that donors are hiding as they spend so much money in these elections. The first is simply to give to a nonprofit group that doesn't have to disclose its donors. The second is using those nonprofits to send money to a super PAC.

That super PAC does have to disclose its donors. But in some cases, 100% of the donors they disclose are in fact secret money groups where you don't know where the money actually came from. Then there's a third way, pop up super PACs.

That's when you create a super PAC really close to an election and then send a bunch of money to it, but the voters never find out before they cast their ballots who sent the money. There really aren't any watchdogs checking in on what nonprofit groups or political campaigns are doing. The IRS is in charge of nonprofits and they have seen cuts in the Trump administration.

And the Federal Election Commission, which is supposed to be the federal watchdog agency for campaigns, doesn't even have enough members to hold a formal meeting, let alone actually enforce the law. There's a real tension here, which is more and more donors are finding more and more ways to stay hidden. But voters seem to be saying they want to know who's really behind these candidates and campaigns.

And in fact, some of the candidates funded by the most dark money have lost this year.

September 1, 2026 - Fulltext

State election leaders say they’re largely in the dark on mail voting just weeks away from when many are set to send ballots out to voters.

The uncertainty adds to the growing danger that chaos and confusion could ensue if states are required to comply with President Donald Trump’s anti-mail voting executive order so close to the election. That was underscored by the release of a whistleblower report Tuesday that warned the U.S. Postal Service’s (USPS) rush to implement the order could cause a “catastrophic failure” of the mail voting system.

With USPS’s final mail voting rule in the thick of fierce litigation, and without the resources needed to comply even if it’s greenlit, some state election leaders told Democracy Docket they’re sitting on their hands until there’s a final court order. 

One spokesperson for a secretary of state told Democracy Docket that while chief elections officials across the country are in talks with each other, most questions remain unanswered. They said even states who may be “super thrilled” to implement the order can’t push forward without guidance.

“If we have to do this, we have to do this, but there’s no guidance yet so I think we’re all in the same boat,” said the spokesperson Monday.

Last week, North Carolina took the first step to implement the USPS rule that requires states to submit voting materials for review and approval and upload names to a federal voter eligibility list to screen who can receive mail ballots. It’s the first state to do so, with its state-mandated deadline to send out ballots Sept. 4.

Following North Carolina’s announcement, Democracy Docket reached out to the offices of every secretary of state and received responses from 24 states. As of Tuesday afternoon, 18 states said they have not and do not plan to submit envelopes or voter names to the USPS for review. Five states said they did not want to comment pending the ongoing litigation.

Oklahoma’s office said it has “been in contact with USPS regarding absentee ballots,” according to an email statement from the Oklahoma State Election Board. 

Oklahoma is one of the dozen states, plus the District of Columbia, that will sendout mail ballots in September, starting with Wisconsin Sept. 17.

In a document provided by the Wisconsin State Board of Elections, the state pointed to the fact that there’s no existing portal to upload voter names even if they wanted to.

“Wisconsin cannot comply for several reasons. First, the USPS portal does not exist. USPS has given no indication of when or whether it will exist, and USPS has provided no training on how the portal will be used,” an FAQ from the Wisconsin Elections Commission published Monday reads.

Meanwhile, Democrat-led states have continued to push back against the USPS rule that, if deemed legal, could bar millions from voting.

“Secretary Bellows has no intention of obeying in advance and would certainly not violate her oath to the Constitution and the nationwide injunction by complying with an unconstitutional and unlawful order,” said Deputy Secretary of State for Communications Jana Spaulding in a statement to Democracy Docket.

And New Mexico, which joined 24 states in a lawsuit challenging the order, said it’s simply too late for the state to make any changes to its mail voting system.

“New Mexico has not submitted, nor do we plan to submit, envelopes to be used for mail ballots to the U.S. Postal Service for review and approval. We are sending out our UOCAVA ballots September 19^th, and it is our position that it is too late to implement any changes for the midterms,” wrote Deputy Secretary of State and Chief of Staff Sharon Pino.

Maryland, Colorado, Pennsylvania, California and Nevada also expressed strong opposition.

“Nevada will continue to run a safe, secure election as it has in the past. The State will only make adjustments when told to do so by a judge — and our fight is far from over,” said a statement from Secretary of State Francisco Aguilar’s office.

As it stands, there’s a nationwide temporary restraining order (TRO) on the USPS rule that seeks to further execute President Donald Trump’s anti-mail voting executive order. A majority of states that responded to Democracy Docket pointed to this as a central reason they cannot take action.

U.S. District Court Judge Indira Talwani will hold a hearing on the rule’s preliminary injunction Thursday. Separately, there is another lawsuit challenging the executive order. But all three lawsuits will likely result in one outcome, with the final say for states left in the hands of the U.S. Supreme Court.

August 30, 2026 - Transcript

James Talarico: Nothing terrifies them more than people who show up to vote and people who show up to hold elected officials accountable. It's why they arrested people.

Host: Things got heated in the last meeting which lasted nearly seven hours when changes were discussed.

Voter 1: I think if you can't stand up against leadership and you can get arrested for saying something that challenges them, I think we all should be concerned in Tarrant.

Host: Come this Tuesday, Tarrant County commissioners will vote on how many polling locations will be available during the November midterm election.

Alisa Simmons: Dropping 92 election day polling places is crazy.

Host: A new proposal calls for 224 polling locations. That's 92 less than what was available in 2022.

James Talarico: That's nearly a third of the polling locations in Tarrant County and that means on election day there will be longer commutes, longer lines, lower voter turnout, especially in our black and brown communities.

Host: Many in the community are calling this voter suppression.

Voter 2: America is the right to vote. It is wrong to suppress that. You're on the wrong side of history. You're dishonoring what it means to be an American and more than that, you're losing your humanity.

Host: Sunday, U.S. Senate candidate James Talarico and Tarrant County Commissioner Elisa Simmons, who is running for county judge, were at UT Arlington.

The campus used to have a polling location but it has since been removed. 

Alisa Simmons: The minimum is never my standard and it should not be a standard of a county this size. 

Host: Currently, Tarrant County has more than 1.3 million registered voters. In Tarrant County, Brissette Olguin, CBS News, Texas.

August 24, 2026 - Transcript

Dr. Abdul El-Sayed: The question ultimately is do you want to drive on good roads or would you rather have a billionaire make a second billion?

That's what Mike Rogers wants. That's what Donald Trump wants. Apparently that's what you want.

I think the people in Michigan want something different. They want good roads and good schools.

Jesse Watters: So you're saying Beyonce, who just became a billionaire, she has to break you off something every year? She has to pay the politicians.

Dr. Abdul El-Sayed: It's not me. It's the American public. You're the one that wants the money to be able to contribute back to the public schools that she went to.

I think she'd be happy to invest in good roads in her community.

I think she'd be happy to pay a little bit more so that everybody had a little bit more.

Jesse Watters: Okay... You're reaching a little deep into the pockets...

Dr. Abdul El-Sayed: It's an insane thing to be defending billionaires from your channel, Jesse. That's a crazy thing.

I'm just saying, look, at the end of the day, I thought you were for the everyday man. Like if you're for billionaires more than you're for every other person, you and I are just going to disagree.

Jesse Watters: No, I just think I have the right to the fruits of my own labor. That's America. It's not communist what you're talking about. Let me ask you about socialized healthcare. 

Dr. Abdul El-Sayed: Billionaires don't make their money off of their labor.
That I think is where you, you, you head off.

Billionaires that make their money off their money. So if you have a billion dollars, your billion makes another hundred million.

That's not the fruits of your labor. That's just the fruits of your money making money. I think it's okay.

Like if we tax you at 7%, you're still going to make what a cool $30 million off your billion dollars. I think it's okay. They're going to be okay, Jesse.

August 31, 2026 - Fulltext

The Department of Homeland Security is planning a surge in its efforts to investigate voter fraud in select states starting Tuesday, according to internal federal guidance reviewed by CNN.

Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin has accelerated efforts to make the department a central force in President Donald Trump’s hunt for purported widespread election fraud. DHS has pushed states to share their voter rolls for audit and has vowed to withhold grant funding from those that refuse to adopt a broader set of election reforms.

The department has leaned for investigative work on one of its agencies — Homeland Security Investigations — an arm of Immigration and Customs Enforcement that typically tackles major crimes like human trafficking, drug smuggling and child exploitation. The agency has already surged an unprecedented number of agents to work on cases, including chasing down voter histories of people believed to be noncitizens who may have illegally voted or registered to vote.

Experts say there is no evidence that widespread voter fraud has occurred in recent elections.

Starting Tuesday, HSI is launching a “coordinated criminal voter fraud surge initiative to pursue investigative leads, conduct field interviews, and support timely prosecutorial review,” the guidance says.

Offices in nine states are expected to take investigative action from early September to mid-October, according to the guidance. Those states include Washington, Wisconsin, Missouri, Georgia, California, Pennsylvania, Nevada, New York and Connecticut.

The guidance’s reference to investigative steps is notable given the push comes as midterm elections get underway. Such “overt” investigatory actions while elections were approaching have historically been discouraged, under long-standing Justice Department policy limiting investigative actions could influence elections.

“Doing otherwise runs the risk of chilling legitimate voting and campaign activities and of interjecting the investigation itself into ongoing campaigns and the adjudication of any ensuing election contest,” the Justice Department manual says. “It may, however, often be appropriate, in consultation with the Public Integrity Section, to share information and allegations involving such matters with state or local authorities where an immediate need for overt measures exists.”

The DOJ formally rescinded the policy under the first Trump administration but still mostly abided by it, and it was reinstated under President Joe Biden.

But DHS, as a separate department, is not obligated to follow the policy, and the new guidance makes no reference to those timing concerns.

“While ICE Homeland Security Investigations is not able to comment on any active investigations, HSI is actively rooting out and investigating election fraud wherever it can be found,” a Homeland Security spokesperson said in a statement. “Under President Trump, HSI is committed to restoring integrity to our election systems and ensuring that American citizens and only American citizens are electing American leaders.”

Under the Trump administration, agents have, for example, been assigned to investigate whether naturalized US citizens registered or voted before becoming citizens, CNN previously reported. Another memo directed HSI agents to coordinate with US Citizenship and Immigration Services to begin removal proceedings when a noncitizen is suspected of or linked to voter fraud.

Despite the dramatic shift of resources toward investigating election fraud, the administration has brought only a handful of prosecutions — mostly targeting cases of noncitizens voting or being unlawfully registered to vote.

Still, the administration has touted alleged election fraud arrests. Last week, the Justice Department announced that a Honduran national who was legally living in the United States had been arrested and charged with fraudulently registering to vote and falsely claiming to be a US citizen.

“Today’s arrest is the first of many to come,” First Assistant United States Attorney Bill Essayli said in a statement.

Mullin, meanwhile, has positioned himself as a leading enforcer of Trump’s voter-fraud crackdown. Earlier this summer, his department announced an audit of public voter rolls had identified more than 250,000 registered noncitizens in just four states: California, Pennsylvania, New Jersey and Nevada.

“One thing that I love about numbers, and I love about facts, is they don’t lie,” Mullin told reporters at the time, warning that election officials who fail to secure the midterms could face fines or even jail time.

But the numbers have, thus far, proved far less definitive than DHS initially suggested. The department publicly claimed it had found nearly 16,000 noncitizens on Nevada’s voter rolls. But behind closed doors, the department acknowledged to the state’s top election officials that it had “confirmed” just 185 of them, according to internal records reviewed by CNN. Another 6,200 were labeled “higher confidence matches” — but still required further vetting.

Come on Florida. Not only do we have the chance to get the unelected, corrupt Moody out of office, we get to elect a candidate as energizing and inspiring as Angie Nixon.

August 31, 2026 - Fulltext

State officials say they worry about the Postal Service’s ability to deliver votes this fall. They are urging voters to mail their ballots early or use drop boxes so their votes count.

The rate at which mail votes have been rejected for arriving late has ticked up in primaries this year and general elections last year in roughly a dozen states, prompting election officials to worry that the U.S. Postal Service is ill-equipped to deliver ballots in the fall midterms.

The states studied by The New York Times include some of the most critical battleground House and Senate seats where control of Congress will be determined, as well as key races for governor and secretary of state. The Times obtained data from California, Colorado, Maine, Maryland, Michigan, Nebraska, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Utah, Virginia, Wisconsin and Washington.

In Wisconsin, which hosts an open race for governor, a competitive House election plus contests for both chambers of the state legislature, lateness accounted for about 5,000 rejected mail ballots in the spring primary this year, or 78 percent of all tossed ballots. During the last spring election, in 2023, the figure was roughly 2,300, or 47 percent of all tossed votes.

The increase is particularly striking when comparing primaries in 2024 and this year. In Michigan’s primary earlier this month, more than 10,000 mail ballots were rejected for arriving after the state’s deadline of 8 p.m. on Election Day. That is nearly double the number of ballots rejected in 2024. In Washington, the number of late-arriving mail ballots increased from about 16,000 to more than 20,000 in the same period.

The rise in rejected ballots comes at a time of immense upheaval at the Postal Service, where a budget crisis has prompted widespread complaints about delivery delays. The increase also comes as President Trump and his allies are trying to transform the 251-year-old agency into a central player in their quest to restrict mail voting and otherwise overhaul the nation’s elections.

Roughly two dozen states sued the government over the president’s executive order governing mail voting, which would require states to hand over voter information and would empower the Postal Service to block mail ballots from being sent or delivered in states that do not comply. The moves have especially alarmed Democrats, who fear the president could use the Postal Service to tip the scales of a midterm election that polls show currently favors their party. Mr. Trump has stated publicly that curtailing mail voting is good for Republicans.

A federal judge issued a ruling on Thursday blocking the Postal Service from proceeding after concluding that the agency’s plan appeared to overstep its legal mandate and could spark chaos by changing rules fewer than 70 days before an election. The administration is appealing.

Meanwhile, the uptick in rejection rates for mail ballots this year could fuel the partisan battle. The ballots that were tossed because they arrived too late represent a fraction of the overall mail ballot total — the Postal Service typically delivers more than 95 percent of mail ballots on time. But the agency has curtailed its services in the face of budget shortfalls in recent years, leading to slower mail delivery across the country.

Election officials say the rise in rejections, along with the general sentiment out of Washington, has prompted them to scramble to put safeguards in place to ensure that voters’ ballots are counted.

In Colorado, Jena Griswold, the Democratic secretary of state, has rapidly increased the number of drop boxes across the state — by 78 percent since 2018 — so voters can return their ballots without concerns of postal delays or interference.

“We did change the law last legislative session,” Ms. Griswold said in an interview. “Mail ballots are going out sooner, and drop boxes are going out sooner. That is in direct response to the uncertainty coming from D.C. and Trump’s attacks on our democracy.”

In a statement, The Postal Service countered claims that the agency has become unreliable by noting that over 95 percent of mail ballots have arrived on time in recent elections.

“There are any number of factors that may impact the timeliness of a returned ballot,” the statement said. “As such, our consistent message to voters who choose to vote by mail is to mail early.”

Following the 2020 election, when a deluge of voters opted to vote by mail during the coronavirus pandemic, the agency developed new procedures to prioritize on-time delivery for mail ballots. After a court case in 2021, the Postal Service agreed to maintain the new measures for all even-year federal elections through 2028.

William Hensley, a former election mail specialist at the Postal Service who helped establish the new procedures, said the fact that mail ballot delays were more prevalent in odd-year and primary elections suggested that the measures were effective. But he conceded that structural changes within the agency slowing service across the board were also affecting ballots.

As part of a 10-year-plan established in 2021 to shore up the Postal Service’s finances through structural changes, the agency set up regional distribution centers to process mail and increased the delivery standards for first-class mail, from three days to five.

The Postal Service further slowed down mail in 2024 when it implemented a centralized system that postmarks mail when it reaches regional centers, not when it first enters the mail stream. The delay has particularly affected mail voting, especially in states that rely on postmarks to determine if a ballot is valid.

These cost-cutting changes have so far struggled to make a substantial dent in the agency’s multibillion dollar deficit, but they have slowed the delivery of mail votes. Election officials are starting to notice.

In Wisconsin’s state Supreme Court election in April, several hundred ballots arrived a day late in Dane County, home to Madison, the state capital, according to Scott McDonell, the county clerk.

“That was highly unusual,” he said. “In the past, we would only see a handful.”

In a survey by the Wisconsin Elections Commission, two-thirds of clerks reported observing problems with mail delivery times in that election.

“The worst mail delivery day of the week is Tuesday (unfortunately for elections!) and our office jokingly but sadly refers to it as ‘no mail Tuesday,’” read one submission from a clerk in Waukesha County.

Mr. McDonell, who is a Democrat, says he now tells voters to use drop boxes, vote early in person or mail their ballots at least two weeks before Election Day.

In Washington, a universal mail-voting state, more voters are using drop boxes than trusting the Postal Service with their ballots, said Stuart Holmes, the state’s elections director.

“The Postal Service, these are great people, hard-working people,” Mr. Holmes said about the state’s local postal employees. “But their operation has become unreliable.”

In Washington’s primary earlier this year, 75 percent of rejected mail ballots were tossed because they arrived too late.

Ricky Hatch, a Republican election official in Utah, a state that relies almost exclusively on mail voting, said he had noticed a nationwide increase of election officials encouraging voters to mail their ballots early because of Postal Service slowdowns.

“We’ve definitely morphed over time from going from ‘Hey, get your ballot in before the deadline’ to ‘Mail your ballot at least a week early, if you want to have it counted,’” Mr. Hatch said.

Now, he added, the advice is even more cautious: “Better yet, use a drop box.”

August 31, 2026 - Video Summary

This video features a discussion on "Politics Monday" with Amna Nawaz, Amy Walter of the Cook Political Report, and Tamara Keith of NPR. They cover several key topics regarding the upcoming midterm elections (0:09-0:18):

• Trump's Influence on Midterms: President Trump aims to remain a central figure in the midterm elections, urging voters to act as though he is on the ballot. However, some Republican candidates are beginning to distance themselves from him due to his low approval ratings and other factors (0:22-2:08).
• The Enthusiasm Gap: Amy Walter discusses the "enthusiasm gap" among Republicans. While voters who identify as MAGA are highly energized, non-MAGA Republicans show less excitement, largely due to concerns about the economy (2:10-3:46).
• Michigan Senate Race: The panel analyzes the candidacy of Abdul El-Sayed. El-Sayed recently apologized for past comments following a synagogue attack, and the race is becoming a focal point for both parties. Republicans are framing him as "dangerously radical," while Democrats hope to pivot the focus of the election to Donald Trump (3:47-6:27).
• Massachusetts Senate Primary: They preview the primary in Massachusetts between incumbent Ed Markey and Seth Moulton. The debate centers on generational change, with Moulton running as a moderate challenger against Markey's liberal progressive platform (6:28-7:49).

August 31, 2026 - Fulltext

Multiple headlines recently have fueled confusion among Texas voters who have been placed on the state’s suspense list.

Voters on the suspense list can still vote. Despite its name, being placed on the suspense list does not mean a voter’s registration was suspended, canceled, or that the voter was removed from the voter roll. 

The list is made up of registered voters whose local election officials have reason to believe they may no longer live at the address they used to register to vote. Texas voters move every day, and they often don’t update their address on their voter registration record. 

Alicia Pierce, a spokesperson with the Texas Secretary of State’s Office, said the number of voters on the suspense list now — 1.2 million out of more than 18 million registered voters — is consistent with what the state has seen in previous election cycles. 

Voters on the suspense list can confirm their address by contacting their local voter registrar ahead of the Oct. 5 voter registration deadline and filling out a new voter registration form with their updated address. Voters can also update their address at the polls. 

Here’s what you need to know about Texas’ suspense list and what to do if you’re on it: 

What is the suspense list?

It’s an address verification list. By law, if a county voter registrar “has reason to believe that a voter’s current residence is different from that indicated on the registration records,” the voter registrar “shall deliver to the voter a written confirmation notice requesting confirmation of the voter’s current residence,” according to the secretary of state’s office guidance.

How are voters placed on it?

Every two years, each county voter registrar mails a new voter registration certificate to all active voters, a move required by law to keep the voter roll up to date. 

If the U.S. Postal Service returns the certificate as nondeliverable, the voter registrar must then confirm that the voter still lives at that address.

That’s when a voter is added to the suspense list. 

A voter registrar mails a notice of address confirmation to voters when:

• The voter’s registration certificate has been returned as nondeliverable.
• A jury summons or any mailing sent to the voter was returned as nondeliverable.
• The voter registrar has received information indicating the voter no longer resides at the address on file. For example, parents can notify their voter registrar if their children have moved, or a voter themselves can call the voter registrar to say they no longer live at that address. 

Although some county election officials had trouble mailing voter registration certificates in December due to issues with the state’s voter registration and management system, the certificates were mailed out ahead of the primary election earlier this year. 

How can I check my voter registration status?

You can check your voter registration status at VoteTexas.gov. But county voter registration lists are managed by county election officials, who have the most up-to-date information about your voter registration record. When in doubt, contact your county voter registrar directly. You can find a list and contact information by county here.

I’m on the suspense list; can I still vote?

Yes, you can still vote. Just make sure you update your address before the Oct. 5 voter registration deadline. 

How do I update my address on my voter registration record?

Fill out a voter registration application before the Oct. 5 deadline. You can find a form here. Print it, sign it, and mail it to your local voter registrar or turn it in in person. 

If you have a state ID or a driver’s license, you can also update your information online here. 

If you have questions, contact your local voter registrar — the election official in charge of your county’s voter registration list. You can find a list of voter registrars by county here.

What if I didn’t update my address before the Oct. 5 voter registration deadline?

That depends on where you’ve moved. 

If you moved to a different county, you may be able to vote using a limited ballot — which may include only state and federal races, but no local races — during early voting. A poll worker will instruct you on how to obtain one at the county’s main early voting polling place. On Election Day, however, limited ballots are not available for voters who moved from a different county and did not update their registration on time.

If you moved within the same county, you can vote during early voting and on Election Day by filling out a statement of residence form to update your address. If on Election Day, your county does not use the countywide polling place program, which allows voters to cast their ballot at any polling location in the county, you may be asked to go to your assigned precinct to update your address and cast your ballot there. 

If you’re running into further voter registration issues, we want to hear from you. Please send us an email at community@votebeat.org.

August 30, 2026 - Fulltext

The Senate map is less complicated than it appears. As with every modern presidential campaign, it runs through the Midwest.

If Democrats flip Republican-held seats in Ohio and Iowa while retaining Michigan, they will almost certainly net the four seats total needed to take control of the Senate for President Donald Trump’s final two years.

As the traditional start of the campaign season draws near, though, Republicans are increasingly worried they may be consumed by a worsening prairie fire.

“He’s in serious trouble in farm country,” Sen. Kevin Cramer (R-N.D.) told me. “He being Trump — and Trump is us. I’m not very optimistic.”

The triple-whammy of tariffs, expensive diesel and fertilizer and now imported beef has created a crisis for agriculture-state Republicans.

Over some brisket at Joe’s Kansas City Bar-B-Que earlier this month, the pastor of the country’s biggest Methodist congregation said Kansans are at a breaking point.

“Now some of those people are still not willing to say, ‘Hey, we don’t like Trump,’ but they do expect their senator is going to speak up for them,” said Adam Hamilton, the pastor-turned-Democratic nominee against Sen. Roger Marshall (R-Kan.). “What I’m hearing when I go across the state is people saying — and these are Republicans, not Democrats — we can’t have six more years of this, or even two more years of this.”

Hamilton said the only question is: “How many farms are going to go bankrupt?”

Two hundred miles north up I-35, at the Iowa State Fair in Des Moines, Josh Turek echoed Hamilton.

“We’re going through a second farm crisis right now, Farmageddon,” said Turek, the Democratic state lawmaker running against Rep. Ashley Hinson (R-Iowa) for an open Senate seat.

It’s Iowa that’s more likely to flip — Kansas has not elected a Democrat to the Senate since 1932 — and I think the Hawkeye State is the bellwether in this year’s Senate battle.

Should Iowa turn back to Democrats after supporting Trump in all three of his elections, and not electing a Democratic senator since 2008, it would be an unmistakable tell about the sort of voters who also backed Barack Obama twice.

The alarm among Republicans, though, is that the contagion may spread beyond the heartland.

While GOP incumbents in Kansas and Nebraska are facing the fight of their careers, Republican lawmakers in the South are also seeing unusually adverse polling data, while states at opposite ends of the country, Maine and Alaska, are tilting left because of their fuel- and trade-dependent economies.

If Democrats can hold on to Michigan, a once-daunting Senate map for their party looks less intimidating: To find four seats, they’d capture North Carolina, the most likely state to change hands, Ohio, Iowa and then find one more from the quasi-nation-states that are Maine, Alaska and Texas (with help from third-party candidates on the ballot).

Every wave election brings a late surprise, and if conditions deteriorate, there’s a chance Nebraska, Kansas and even Mississippi could fall.

The culprits are obvious: the exorbitant cost of living, Trump’s deep unpopularity with the political center and the massive enthusiasm gap Democrats enjoy over Republicans.

The fear, GOP officials tell me, is that these sentiments are increasingly becoming locked in with voters; that the grim political environment — caused by spiking gas prices after the ceasefire with Iran collapsed last month — is close to irreversible. Or to borrow from Haley Barbour, that sage of Mississippi: In politics, good gets better and bad gets worse.

For months, the shorthand conversation among political professionals has not been if this will be a difficult election for Republicans but whether it will be 2018 or 2006.

Which is to say: Will 2026 bring a backlash against the party in power, but one largely confined to House losses because of polarization, limiting Democratic strength in Senate races? Or will there be a greater wave that grows high enough to sweep out Republicans thought to be safe, flipping both chambers of Congress in the process?

Once Iran hostilities restarted and it became clear that there would be no Supreme Court vacancy, as there crucially was in 2018, the answer became clear. Republicans would not be able to get off defense and lacked the court fight that would hand them their best opportunity to go on offense.

Absent a drastic shift in voter sentiment, this election is poised to mirror the last time a Republican was besieged by ornery voters upset with corruption, the price at the pump and an unpopular Middle Eastern war: complete Democratic takeover.

What gives GOP strategists some hope is that there are fewer red-state voters willing to vote for Democrats 20 years later, and the party’s shift left offers easy fodder for advertising, which could be critical given the hundreds of millions of dollars Republican groups are sitting on as Labor Day nears.

Much of that money is in Trump’s hands, though, and Republicans are privately furious he’s not agreed to spend more of it on his party’s candidates this fall.

Which gets to a deeper problem, something few in the party are in denial about any longer — the president is focused entirely on having fun, claiming a personal legacy and targeting personal rivals.

When Trump is not living the life of a 12-year-old boy — hosting UFC fights on the White House lawn and watching Indy cars go vroom through downtown D.C. — he’s fixated on naming things after himself, doing renovation work and seeking vengeance via the Department of Justice or by renaming Great Lakes.

It’s all so small. Yet it’s no laughing matter when the American voter is paying $4 for a gallon of regular. And while a war with Canada may sound like an old Second City comedy bit, the rising tensions with Ottawa could prove politically fatal to border-state Republicans in the two races they most need to win: Maine and Michigan.

“I would remind [Trump] that Canada is our friend, our closest ally and our biggest trading partner,” Sen. Susan Collins (R-Maine) told me, adding: “And that our economies are so linked that if you try to hurt one, you end up hurting Maine and other border states.”

Shortly before last year’s New Jersey and Virginia gubernatorial elections, I wrote that Trump was leading the party to defeat and “the reason the seemingly esoteric matter of Argentine beef imports has penetrated the Republican psyche is because it’s a stand-in for: Hey, why is the president so focused on these other countries instead of bringing down costs here?”

Few farm-state Republicans would have believed at the time that, less than a year later and in an even more forbidding political moment, he would again be aiding foreign cattle growers to lessen tariffs on beef imports.

“The beef thing, are you kidding me?” Cramer said. “The one ag producer making money for a change and you shrink his revenue.”

The outsized backlash prompted by GOP senators who rarely criticize Trump can only be understood as not wholly over cattle but as a stand-in for their actual anger — at a president seemingly content to give away their majorities.

As one high-level party strategist involved in the midterms put it to me: What besides a more-than-a-year-old tax bill and Democratic excesses is there to run on?

As is the case with so many campaigns when they lack an affirmative message, Republican leaders are living off the land, grabbing whatever the news cycle hands them about Democratic infighting or similar.

The fundamental problem is that polls show voters don’t think Trump cares about them or their priorities, and there’s little Republican lawmakers or White House aides can do to make him act differently.

In fact, a recurring theme in conversations with Republicans is that the cabinet has been well deployed — they were ubiquitous at the Iowa State Fair and in other battleground states this summer — while Trump has been unhelpful.

It’s as if there are two administrations: the staff and appointees who chief of staff Susie Wiles can control in a conventional fashion, and the president himself who does and says what he wants.

Take the forthcoming mini-convention Republicans are staging next month in Dallas. The party will devise videos and speeches aimed at portraying Democrats as extreme. Yet as even one of Trump’s advisers told me, the actual message will be determined by “whatever crazy stuff the president says.”

Such despair reflects reality. There’s a throw-your-hands-up helplessness to it, one that reminds me of the fall of 2023 when it was Democrats who were coming out of their skin about their octogenarian president and his determination to run for reelection.

Approval for the war in Iran is in the low 30s, according to a recent Reuters survey, but there’s no obvious way out as long as Tehran has a vote in the matter.

Flipping pork burgers at the Iowa State Fair earlier this month, Hinson was glad to discuss her technique with the spatula, the importance of her race to the Senate map and her opponent missing votes in the legislature. But she went silent at repeated questions about whether it was time to end the war.

In Ohio, incumbent Republican Sen. Jon Husted has said he wanted the conflict to be “brief and successful,” but it is verging on neither.

And as long as the Strait of Hormuz is in dispute, oil prices won’t come down, and voters won’t feel any better. Sometimes politics isn’t complicated.

It’s the same sort of environment that propelled Sherrod Brown, Husted’s opponent, to his initial Senate win in 2006. That was also a year in which the Midwest proved vital, with Democrats besting incumbents in Ohio, Missouri and retaining Nebraska in what was Ben Nelson’s final race (his opponent: this year’s Republican incumbent, Pete Ricketts).

Former Democratic Sen. Claire McCaskill told me she knew she’d win her 2006 race when she pulled her campaign RV into a gas station in rural Missouri, and her mom got out of the car to see “a couple of good ole boys in John Deere caps.”

McCaskill’s mom, alluding to the high price of fuel, remarked to the men that President George W. Bush “is an oil man,” and the two shot back: “He sure as hell is.”

It was obvious then, McCaskill said, that voters “had lost confidence in him and therefore the Republican Party.”

Back over his Z-Man sandwich in critical suburban Johnson County — one of the few large metros where Democrats did better in 2024 than 2020 and where the proportion of voters has risen to over a quarter of Kansas’ total electorate — Hamilton described his congregation.

“We have people from barely making ends meet to people who are very wealthy,” he said. “You have gas prices that are $1.40 a gallon more? And you’re barely making it? That’s a problem. And that’s happening because of a decision in Washington that’s hurting people in Kansas.”

Source https://www.politico.com/news/magazine/2026/08/30/republican-party-midterms-trump-01055934

August 29, 2026 - Video Summary

This video from More Perfect Union explores the grievances of American cattle ranchers at a beef show in Hudsonville, Michigan, regarding federal trade policies and industry consolidation.

Key takeaways include:

• Outrage over Imports: Ranchers are upset about a government decision to import 300,000 metric tons of discounted foreign beef, which they argue undercuts domestic farmers (0:05-0:16).
• Rising Costs: Producers cite significant increases in the costs of machinery, feed, and fuel, which they partially attribute to economic pressures like conflict in Iran (0:26-0:49).
• Market Monopoly: Despite rising retail prices, ranchers struggle to make a profit because 85% of the meatpacking industry is controlled by only four corporations. These companies set prices for both the cattle they buy and the beef they sell, squeezing farmers (0:56-1:26).
• Consumer Impact: The video highlights that consumers face high grocery prices—with ribeye steaks costing nearly $20—while ranchers do not benefit from these high costs (1:30-1:40).

Ultimately, ranchers interviewed feel that current policies prioritize political optics over the long-term sustainability of American agriculture, warning that if they cannot make a living, it could lead to future food shortages (1:50-2:07).

May 18, 2026 - Video Summary

This video, produced by More Perfect Union, argues that recent efforts to implement stricter voting requirements—such as proof of citizenship via passports—are part of a coordinated, billionaire-funded campaign to suppress working-class voters and consolidate political power (0:00 - 0:40).

Key themes include:

• Barriers to Voting: The video highlights that many Americans, especially lower-income individuals, lack the necessary documentation (like passports or birth certificates) to meet proposed registration requirements, essentially functioning as a modern-day poll tax (2:45 - 3:10, 4:59 - 5:23). Poll data indicates that a significant percentage of working-class voters would find these requirements cost-prohibitive or a deterrent to voting (4:59 - 5:23).
• The Billionaire Connection: The report details the influence of wealthy donors and organizations, such as Leonard Leo, Dick Uihlein, and the Bradley Foundation, in backing groups like the Honest Elections Project and the Election Integrity Network (5:50 - 6:40, 8:10 - 8:50). These groups are described as architecting anti-voter legislation and promoting myths about non-citizen voting to achieve their political goals (7:38 - 8:10).
• Executive Actions and Intimidation: The administration is criticized for using executive orders to bypass legislative hurdles, aiming to restrict mail-in voting and create federal voter databases that experts argue are impractical and prone to error (9:05 - 9:55, 10:05 - 10:20). Furthermore, the video suggests that the potential presence of ICE at polling places and the threat of prosecuting election officials creates an environment of fear and intimidation (10:33 - 11:52).

The video concludes by emphasizing the importance of state-level resistance and legal action to protect voting rights against these top-down efforts (12:45 - 13:20).