With November’s midterm elections drawing closer, a handful of Democratic-led states are not waiting to see what the Trump administration does next. They are already rewriting their laws.
Five states, California, Colorado, Connecticut, Maryland, and Washington, have each passed legislation in recent months designed to limit federal access to voting systems, voter rolls, and polling locations. The push, tracked by the Voting Rights Lab and confirmed through additional research, reflects a growing alarm among Democratic lawmakers that the federal government may attempt to disrupt or reshape how their states conduct elections this fall.
The moves come as President Donald Trump has continued pushing unsubstantiated claims of widespread voter fraud, signed executive orders targeting mail-in voting, and directed his Justice Department to seek access to voter registration data in multiple states. When asked last month whether he would deploy Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers or National Guard troops to polling locations, Trump said he would do anything necessary to ensure honest elections. The White House has not formally ruled out such a deployment.
What five states are doing differently
Each state has taken a distinct approach based on its own vulnerabilities and political circumstances.
California passed legislation prohibiting election officials from granting unauthorized access to voter rolls or voting machines without a court order, and made it a crime to remove voted ballots from election officials without a valid warrant. The law came in direct response to a high-profile incident in which the Riverside County sheriff seized 650,000 ballots from a special election as part of what he described as a fraud investigation. The state Supreme Court halted that probe and ordered the ballots preserved while both sides prepare legal briefs.
Colorado enacted a law creating a 100-foot buffer zone around polling locations and ballot drop boxes, prohibiting interference within that perimeter. The law also gives the governor authority to declare an emergency allowing elections to continue if they face disruption.
Connecticut passed legislation barring law enforcement from coming within 250 feet of a polling place, drop box, or vote-counting site without permission from election officials. The law also requires any municipal official who receives a subpoena or warrant related to elections to notify the state attorney general and secretary of state within 36 hours.
Maryland moved to protect its mail ballot counting process, enacting a statute that allows the state to continue counting mail ballots received after Election Day for state and local contests, even if the federal government ends its post-election grace period for federal races. Maryland currently allows a 10-day window for ballots postmarked by Election Day to arrive and be counted.
Washington state created new criminal penalties for anyone who discloses personal information from the voter registration database without authorization from the secretary of state. Violations are now a felony carrying up to five years in prison. Sponsors said the law does not block federal requests but requires them to go through the secretary of state rather than directly to local officials.
The legal terrain ahead
Some Republican lawmakers argue the new laws interfere with legitimate federal oversight of elections. California state Sen. Tony Strickland has said he expects a legal challenge on Supremacy Clause grounds, the constitutional provision that prohibits states from regulating federal government activity. A federal appeals court relied on that same clause earlier this year when it struck down a California law requiring ICE agents to display identification while operating in the state.
Legal scholars are divided on how far this new batch of laws will hold up. Richard Pildes, co-director of the Democracy Project at New York University School of Law, said laws like Washington state’s that regulate the behavior of state officials rather than federal ones are likely on solid constitutional footing. They tell state employees what not to hand over voluntarily. They do not attempt to govern what federal agents may do.
Justin Levitt, a Loyola Law School professor and former White House voting adviser during the Biden administration, said the current situation differs from past federal-state clashes over elections because those disputes centered on congressional legislation. What is different now, he said, is a president acting outside established federal law. He added that the high-profile ballot seizures in Georgia and California have already put judges across the country on notice to scrutinize any future demands for voting materials, particularly once an election is underway.
What the White House says
The White House defended the administration’s approach, saying Trump remains committed to ensuring accurate and updated voter rolls free of errors and unlawfully registered noncitizens. Press secretary Karoline Leavitt said she had not heard the president discuss any formal plans to station ICE agents outside polling locations, though no official has ruled it out.
States, legal experts note, are constitutionally responsible for running their own elections. Congress sets the ground rules for federal contests, but the day-to-day administration of voting has always belonged to the states. Levitt put it plainly. When the president orders something to get done, the states simply do not have to listen.
