State officials preparing if fed government tries interfering with running elections

"Election officials are constantly preparing for the unknown," an official said.

RAPID CITY, South Dakota -- On the sidelines of a gathering of election officials, state leaders from both parties told ABC News they are making preparations in case the federal government tries to interfere with how they run elections in November.

"Just as we always plan for things like a weather event or a bomb threat or a gas leak or a power outage -- this time, we're adding to that list of hazards: we're adding the possibility that the federal government might do something that directly or indirectly affects the election in a negative way," Minnesota Secretary of State Steve Simon, a member of the state's Democratic–Farmer–Labor Party, told ABC News at the National Association of Secretaries of State summer conference last week.

State officials like Simon have raised the possibility that the federal government will try to interfere with them conducting the midterm elections, pointing to the government's pursuit of personal voter data and rhetoric on mail-in voting as examples of how it is trying to have more sway, while the White House has said it wants to partner with states to fix any vulnerabilities or remove ineligible voters. States are constitutionally responsible for the conducting of elections.

The meeting, which convened election officials from around the country, coincided by chance with President Donald Trump's speech on Thursday in which he announced he had declassified a slew of documents that he claimed reveal vulnerabilities in America's elections systems, though state elections have generally been considered secure.

But the heavily redacted documents released by the White House don't appear to back up those claims, many of which Trump has been baselessly pushing since he lost the 2020 presidential election by 7 million votes. Trump has never provided evidence that the results of the election he lost were altered by fraud.

His speech also came the week after the White House forced out the three remaining members of the bipartisan Election Assistance Commission, which helps election officials improve the administration of elections. Some state officials criticized the move as adding unneeded instability and uncertainty to running elections.

Election officials spoke with ABC News before Trump's remarks, which came after the conference had mostly concluded.

Game-planning and 'a Plan B or a Plan C'

Simon told ABC News that Minnesota has been taking actions such as backfilling some of the services and partnerships they usually get from the federal government, and "actively gaming out" potential scenarios of how "there might be some level of interference coming from the federal government. It's not a prediction, but it is a precaution we're taking."

West Virginia Secretary of State Kris Warner, a Republican , has previously criticized the Trump administration's pursuit of private voter information, which the Department of Justice has said it needs that information in order to ensure noncitizens are not voting.

Warner told ABC News, "I don't know that there are going to be changes in these last couple of months going into the election. But if all of a sudden our ballot marking devices would be decertified, for example, we're prepared to go with a paper ballot that would then be read by a scanner," he said.

"If it's determined that we can't use a tabulator, for example, we're prepared to get those ballots counted by hand. All the while remembering that it's all about confidence in elections, and when we have confidence in elections, there's better participation. But I don't think there's anything that can be thrown our way that we're not ready to handle, that we don't have a plan B or a plan C to carry out."

What the White House has said

The Trump White House has said it wants to partner with states on election issues, and Trump said in his speech that the administration is working with states and local jurisdictions to fix "known technical vulnerabilities" before the midterms in November.

"President Trump is committed to ensuring that Americans have full confidence in the administration of elections, and that includes totally accurate and up-to-date voter rolls free of errors and unlawfully registered non-citizen voters," White House spokesperson Abigail Jackson told ABC News in response to a request for comment on concerns by elections officials.

Jackson also said Trump will continue exhorting Congress to pass the SAVE America Act , which would make significant election and voting reforms.

What the public thinks

A Marquette University Law School poll conducted in June found that around 4 in 10 Americans had a great deal or quite a lot of confidence in the people who administer elections in their state, a higher percentage than the amount of Americans who had the same level of confidence in the Supreme Court, their state legislatures, the executive branch of the U.S. government, Congress or several other institutions.

However, there is a partisan split: Most Democrats are confident in their state's election officials (53%) compared to 29% of Republicans who are confident.

'Constantly preparing for the unknown'

Some state officials indicated they're not relying on reassurances from the White House.

Connecticut Secretary of State Stephanie Thomas, a Democrat, told ABC News ahead of Trump's speech that her office is, similar to Minnesota, "scenario-planning" for possible actions by the administration as part of other preparations they're making for the election.

"Election officials are constantly preparing for the unknown. It's what we do, so we're always scenario planning from the most mundane to the most extreme situations. This administration, for better or worse, is just giving us more to plan for," she said.

As for what that planning looks like, she said her office works with state agencies and local election officials "and we sit around the table and brainstorm about everything that might happen."

New Hampshire Secretary of State David Scanlan , a Republican overseeing elections in a state with closely watched presidential primaries and high civic engagement, told ABC News the state has been told election monitors will be deployed at some polling places during New Hampshire's upcoming primaries.

"That's fine. We welcome observers. It's a public process. What we don't want is federal interference in the actual election process itself," he added.

Election monitors from the Department of Justice have been deployed in the past during different presidential administrations.

Asked if his office is preparing for scenarios like that, he said, "Planning for all types of scenarios is part of administering an election. So we have plans for anything that might get thrown at us, whether it's [the] federal government trying to insert themselves or bad weather, major power failure. We're prepared."

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