{"id":842959,"date":"2026-09-10T13:32:11","date_gmt":"2026-09-10T13:32:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/842959\/"},"modified":"2026-09-10T13:32:11","modified_gmt":"2026-09-10T13:32:11","slug":"ice-at-the-polls-not-the-hottest-election-threat","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/842959\/","title":{"rendered":"ICE at the Polls: Not the Hottest Election Threat"},"content":{"rendered":"

Editor’s Note: This essay is part of the Democracy Project’s Elections 2026<\/a> series.<\/p>\n

War games.\u00a0 Tabletop exercises.\u00a0 Scenario planning.\u00a0 Rapid response drills.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n

They\u2019re all being held to prepare for the 2026 midterm elections.<\/p>\n

And we go to a lot<\/a> of them.\u00a0 A lot.\u00a0<\/p>\n

All of them contemplate ICE at the polls.\u00a0 Usually within the first hour of the exercise.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n

The omnipresence of this threat is reflected everywhere: media coverage (\u201cFearing troops or ICE at the polls, Arizona organizers train hundreds as election observers<\/a>\u201d), public opinion polling (\u201cAmericans Oppose ICE at Polling Places<\/a>\u201d), and public preparation plans (\u201cVoting Rights Groups Are Preparing to Confront ICE at the Polls<\/a>\u201d).\u00a0 We asked ChatGPT, \u201cWhat are democracy advocates most worried that the federal government will do to interfere with the midterm elections?\u201d\u00a0 It gave the second spot<\/a> to \u201cFederal agents\u2014especially ICE\u2014appearing at or near polling places.\u201d\u00a0 (First place: \u201cUsing federal voter data to pressure states to remove voters\u201d).<\/p>\n

Such concern is understandable.\u00a0 Earlier this month, Secretary Markwayne Mullin said<\/a> that ICE could be at voting locations to \u201cenforce specific threats.\u201d\u00a0 Steve Bannon, President Trump\u2019s former chief strategist, has spent much of the year claiming that the Trump administration will send ICE to \u201csurround the polls<\/a>\u201d to prevent \u201canother\u201d stolen election.<\/p>\n

But while the fear is not without foundation, ICE-at-the-polls is something that American elections are well-equipped to handle.\u00a0 The highly decentralized nature of our elections, plus the massive growth of early voting, combined with a strong legal framework, would make widespread ICE interference a heavy lift for the federal government.\u00a0 Ironically, the real threat of ICE-at-the-polls could be in its potential voter-deterrent effect.<\/p>\n

Have Fun Getting to Kaka, Arizona<\/p>\n

Election Day in the United States is \u201cEverything Everywhere All at Once.\u201d\u00a0 The country had nearly 95,000<\/a> voting locations on Election Day in November 2022.\u00a0 For Election Day in November, 2024: 95,815<\/a> polling locations.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n

In contrast, even after accounting for the recent 120% hiring surge<\/a>, ICE has about 22,000 agents.\u00a0 If the Department of Homeland Security attempted to station a lone ICE agent at every voting site, they\u2019d cover about 25% of the country\u2019s polling places.\u00a0 And that\u2019s before a single agent is assigned any other duties to meet agency needs.\u00a0 As the kids say, \u201cthe math ain\u2019t mathing.\u201d<\/p>\n

Now factor in duration.\u00a0 On Election Day, polls in Arizona<\/a>, California<\/a>, and Virginia<\/a> are open for 13 hours a day. \u00a0 Is an ICE-agent supposed to monitor the area for all 13 hours?\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n

And it\u2019s not just Election Day.\u00a0 Almost every state<\/a> allows no-excuse in-person early voting.\u00a0 It\u2019s weeks long in many states.\u00a0 Arizona\u2019s in-person early voting begins 27-days<\/a> before Election Day.\u00a0 ICE agents would have to be deployed to poll-watching duty for a month, not a day.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n

Then there\u2019s getting to the actual voting locations.\u00a0 In Maricopa County, Arizona, election officials operate a voting location<\/a> for the small, very rural tribal village of Kaka, Arizona.\u00a0 It\u2019s a rugged three-hour trip from Phoenix.\u00a0 Electricity, plumbing, and internet connections are in short supply.\u00a0 To the north, in Coconino County, Arizona, election officials hike 8-miles<\/a> down the Grand Canyon to set up a voting location for the Havasupai Tribe.\u00a0 Will ICE be at these locations?<\/p>\n

The ICE-at-the-polls scenario paints an ominous picture of agents descending on Election Day to disrupt voting.\u00a0 But that picture hinges on a dated model of voting habits.\u00a0 In November 2024<\/a>, only 37.4% of Americans voted on Election Day, 35.2% voted early in person, and 30.3% voted by mail.\u00a0 In Arizona<\/a>, roughly 80% of the vote comes from early ballots, and in Georgia<\/a>, early in-person voting accounts for the majority of the votes. California, the state many assume will be ground zero<\/a> for ICE, is overwhelmingly<\/a> vote-by-mail.\u00a0 Election Day isn\u2019t what it used to be.<\/p>\n

The shift away from Election Day is starkest for naturalized citizens \u2013 a presumed demographic target of ICE-at-the-polls.\u00a0 In 2024, naturalized citizens voted by mail at a rate nearly 8 points higher<\/a> than native-born citizens.\u00a0 Ironically, if the administration mobilized ICE on Election Day, those officers would disproportionately encounter American-born Republican voters<\/a>.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n

A hot legal landscape<\/p>\n

Compliance with the law hasn\u2019t been a defining feature<\/a> of the Trump administration.\u00a0 Nonetheless, the law matters, and federal law is ill-disposed to aggressive ICE presence at voting locations.\u00a0 18 U.S.C. \u00a7 592<\/a> states that no federal officer may keep “troops or armed men” at an election site except to repel armed enemies of the United States.\u00a0 The same title of U.S. code prohibits voter intimidation (18 U.S.C. \u00a7 594<\/a>).\u00a0 So too does the Voting Rights Act (52 U.S.C. \u00a7 10307(b)<\/a>) and the National Voter Registration Act (52 U.S.C. \u00a7 20511(1)<\/a>).<\/p>\n

Federal law arguably doesn\u2019t prohibit ICE in the vicinity of voting locations.\u00a0 But the further ICE is pushed away from voting locations, the harder it would be to monitor who enters and exits a voting location, and the more agents would be needed for each voting location.<\/p>\n

Then there\u2019s state law.\u00a0 As told by Sean Morales-Boyle of the Brennan Center<\/a>, \u201cevery state\u2019s laws outlaw voter intimidation, typically by making it a crime. Many states also prohibit carrying guns at or near polling places, drop boxes, or other election facilities.\u201d\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n

There\u2019s also now an entire army of democracy groups (many of them with \u201cdemocracy\u201d in their name) who are likely chomping at the bit to file restraining order requests against ICE:\u00a0 Protect Democracy<\/a>, States United Democracy Center<\/a>, Democracy Defenders<\/a>, Democracy Forward<\/a>, Brennan Center<\/a>, ACLU<\/a>, etc. \u00a0 And, of course, the Democratic Party wouldn\u2019t sit on its hands.\u00a0 Their ever-present legal pitbull Marc Elias would have a field day.\u00a0 If ICE showed up in an intimidating manner to a voting location, I\u2019d bet that a well-drafted lawsuit would be filed within the hour. \u00a0 Furthermore, ICE\u2019s presence, however short-lived, might be grounds for extending polling location hours<\/a>.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n

It\u2019s also important to remember that local officials, not federal officials, are the bosses of this process.\u00a0 Polling sites are selected<\/a> by county or municipal officials, who also recruit and train<\/a> the workers running the voting locations.\u00a0 Many of these local officials \u2013 of all partisan stripes \u2013 aren\u2019t enthusiastic about federal presence at voting locations.\u00a0 During Wyoming\u2019s recent primary, local officials denied<\/a> the peculiar request made by monitors of the U.S. Department of Justice to examine tabulation equipment.\u00a0 Wyoming\u2019s Republican Governor Mark Gordon said<\/a>: \u201cI feel very strongly about the federal government coming in and taking our guns \u2014 I don\u2019t like that.\u00a0 And I don\u2019t like the federal government coming in and taking our votes, either.\u201d\u00a0 Governor Gordon likely would feel similarly about ICE agents at his state\u2019s voting locations.<\/p>\n

And indeed that\u2019s how it has played in some ICE interactions throughout the country.\u00a0 In Bexar County, Texas<\/a>, during the state\u2019s primary, nine ICE agents filled a voting location\u2019s parking lot.\u00a0 The county\u2019s sheriff arrived and told them to get lost.\u00a0 They did.\u00a0 A similar story unfolded outside a Simi Valley, California<\/a> voting location.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n

In short, even if the administration deploys ICE agents, there will be a lot of legal challenges and local resistance to ICE\u2019s sustained, multi-hour presence.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n

But what if they’re strategic about it?<\/p>\n

Some might reasonably argue that DHS won\u2019t try to cover the entire United States.\u00a0 Instead,\u00a0 ICE agents will strategically deploy to battleground states like Michigan, where there are swing races and lower rates of mail-in\/early voting.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n

Maybe so.\u00a0 But even in Michigan, almost 50%<\/a> of voters cast their ballot through early in-person voting or mail voting. \u00a0 And several Michigan cities and counties have \u201cvote anywhere<\/a>\u201d vote centers that allow voters to go to any voting location within their jurisdiction.\u00a0 This means that if ICE is outside one voting location, Michiganders could drive five minutes to another location that might not have an ICE presence.\u00a0 These vote-anywhere vote centers are increasingly common throughout the United States (they are the norm in states like California and Arizona).<\/p>\n

There\u2019s also the downstream consequences of such a move.\u00a0 ICE is hugely unpopular<\/a>; less popular even than Trump\u2019s dramatically downfallen approval numbers (33\u201340%<\/a>).\u00a0 ICE presence at a voting location could provoke massive outrage that could hurt Republican candidates on the ballot and further damage Trump\u2019s popularity.\u00a0 The administration surely knows this and would presumably include it in any cost-benefit analysis of deploying ICE.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cNothing to fear, but fear itself.\u201d<\/p>\n

Ironically, it\u2019s possible that the real voting deterrent might be the perceived inevitability of ICE at the voting locations.\u00a0 It\u2019s not too far-fetched to imagine a newly-naturalized, brown-skinned American in Michigan who only casually follows political news, but hears that ICE might be at the polls.\u00a0 This person knows he\u2019s in a higher-risk category for being mistakenly apprehended by ICE, and he wonders \u201cwhy risk it?\u201d \u00a0 After all, the benefit is simply casting one vote, out of millions, for a statewide contest between two U.S. Senate candidates, perhaps neither of whom inspires this American.\u00a0 The potential cost is being detained for three days<\/a> in poor conditions.<\/p>\n

That\u2019s a tough hypothetical.\u00a0 The answer is likely to first apologize to this American for the state of the world.\u00a0 Then offer him information on mail voting and in-person early voting, or encourage him to go to a polling place with a group of friends.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n

But the solution is also that democracy advocates must be careful in how we describe the election threats posed by the Trump administration.\u00a0 Yes, the administration has taken many unprecedented steps to inject itself into election administration.\u00a0 And yes, Trump himself has recently said<\/a> absolutely crazy stuff<\/a> about elections.\u00a0 But it\u2019s highly unlikely that ICE will be at any individual voting location.\u00a0 And we still believe, with good reason, that the upcoming midterm elections will be safe, secure, lawful, fair, and accurate.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Editor’s Note: This essay is part of the Democracy Project’s Elections 2026 series. War games.\u00a0 Tabletop exercises.\u00a0 Scenario…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":842960,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[18],"tags":[23,3,21,19,22,20,25,24],"class_list":["post-842959","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-united-states","tag-america","tag-news","tag-united-states","tag-united-states-of-america","tag-unitedstates","tag-unitedstatesofamerica","tag-us","tag-usa"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/842959","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=842959"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/842959\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/842960"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=842959"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=842959"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=842959"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}