In an exclusive sit-down interview, the majority of a group of Democratic attorneys general from across the country told MS NOW that they have become increasingly fearful of ballots being seized from election offices before the midterms are finalized.
“What keeps me up at night is the federal government seizing ballots in a closely contested election and taking custody and control of them after the ballots are cast and before they’re counted,” California Attorney General Rob Bonta told MS NOW.
Five Democratic attorneys general came together to discuss election security while attending a quarterly conference in Detroit: Bonta, Dana Nessel of Michigan, William Tong of Connecticut, Josh Kaul of Wisconsin, and Nick Brown of Washington.
In a wide-ranging discussion about election security, the group expressed concern about the seesaw mail-in ballot fight, the Justice Department’s deployment of election monitors and the administration’s relentless effort to obtain states’ voter rolls.
But when asked what keeps them up at night, the attorneys general gave an answer not about what might happen before an election, but after: the seizure of ballots. In January, FBI agents executed a search warrant in Fulton County, Georgia, and seized hundreds of boxes of documents tied to the November 2020 general election. Fulton County has been a target of President Donald Trump’s repeated and unfounded claims that the 2020 election in Georgia was rigged.
To date, no state has experienced any federal seizure of ballot information while votes are still being counted or before the results have been certified.
“It’s my biggest concern as well,” Kaul said of ballot seizure. “I mean, in Georgia they have seized ballots, and in Arizona they subpoenaed ballots. I think it’s critical for people to know, because we will go to court immediately, and I’m confident we’ll have a lot of success if this happens anywhere.”
The Democratic National Committee sued the Justice Department in August over the department’s refusal to turn over any documents related to planned ballot seizures. The Justice Department has not commented on the lawsuit, and litigation is ongoing in federal court in Washington, D.C.
Trump’s efforts to restrict mail-in ballots have also been a hot-button legal issue this election cycle, with many Democratic states challenging his new mail-in ballot policies in court. Many of the attorneys general said that their states are being targeted, but they also noted that bipartisan support among their states — and others — may be gaining steam.
Brown noted that several Western states, including his own, vote predominantly, if not entirely, by mail — including Utah, a primarily Republican state.
“They haven’t chosen to join our lawsuit, but they’ve spoken pretty clearly about their reliance on mail-in voting, that it works for this largely Republican state, and so they’ve been speaking out in part,” Brown said.
Tong also credited his Republican counterparts in Utah for pushing back on requests to hand over voter roll information.
“The administration and their attempts to get our voter rolls have failed everywhere they’ve tried,” Tong said. “They’re 0 and 23 in trying to get us to turn over lists of voters in red states and blue states.”
But among this group — members of which are their respective states’ highest-ranking law enforcement officials — there is some erosion of faith in the Supreme Court, where many of the voting challenges have landed; mail-in ballots have already been brought before the high court three times this election season. The Supreme Court has sided with the administration at times on this issue, at least temporarily.
“I don’t know that I have that faith or that trust,” Nessel said, referring to the high court’s rejection of the administration’s challenges. “Why are we even going through this right now?”
Bonta was more hopeful. “There’s usually a clear indicator in the law as to who has authority, who doesn’t,” he said. “In all these election cases, the states and Congress determine the time, place and manner of elections. Not the United States Postal Service, not the president.”
The attorneys general also weighed in on the Justice Department’s announcement that it would send more than 1,000 election monitors across the country for November’s midterms.
Harmeet Dhillon, associate U.S. attorney general and head of the department’s Civil Rights Division, made the announcement this summer and launched the effort by placing DOJ staffers in states — including Michigan and California — during primary elections. She recently said that this was a ramp-up to November.
“It was very insulting, actually, to the clerks who were involved in this process, because they were, you know, talking about debunked conspiracy theories as a reason to be there in the first place,” Nessel said, referring to the DOJ staffers in Michigan.
“They checked in at the polling locations and they essentially acted just as observers without causing any problems,” she said. “This was almost a pre-litigation move on their part, so that later on potentially they could say, ‘Well, here are things that we observed during the course of the primary, and that’s why we’re bringing this action or that action.’”
Bonta, whose precincts in California also saw election monitors present, agreed.
“I think they saw a very rigorous system with checks in place and accuracy and reliability — all the things that lead to the accurate elections every year. So, we did think it was an attempt to prepare for November and the future, to justify putting more people at the polls, or or to justify an executive order,” Bonta said.
Dhillon has not said what election monitors have found — if anything — during primary elections, but has said the deployment was necessary to “ensure trust and transparency throughout the country.”
But as much as the states feel the federal government’s presence, the attorneys general said they’re without real partners at the federal level.
Tong, of Connecticut, similarly characterized his state’s relationships with federal law enforcement agencies “as strained, and that’s why we’re here together, relying on each other as a firewall for the American people.”
“The problem is the folks in Washington, at any point in time, can get involved and pull the strings in a way that could cause there to be the undermining of our democracy rather than efforts to protect it,” Kaul said.
“The attorney general of the United States is speaking at political rallies in this moment,” noted Brown, who previously served as a U.S. attorney. “Something that used to be unethical and unheard of. And when we’re operating in that environment, we cannot, in good faith, take their support.”
“When we look back on this period of time,” Nessel said, “I think there’s going to be a lot of questions about, you know, why so many people just capitulated to this very, this lawless administration, and people will wonder about some of the governors, even of our own party. They’ll wonder about CEOs or the generals or the university presidents, but they’ll never have to worry about the Democratic attorneys general.”
“We have done everything that we possibly can within our power to fight back, and we’ve been winning.”
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