5 expert takeaways on 2026 midterm election security

Correction: This story has been updated to clarify details around Votebeat's investigation into claims of fraud in Pennsylvania's 2024 presidential results, including misattribution of a statistical model. We regret the error.

With Election Day around the corner, states have been working hard to prepare, with some adopting new congressional maps and voting rules on top of normal election security measures.

While President Donald Trump persists in making unfounded claims about the security and integrity of the nation's elections, the Department of Justice is planning to send 1,000 election monitors to all 50 states, more than double the number dispatched during the 2022 midterms.

READ MORE: How some states are responding to DOJ's plan to send 1,000 monitors on Election Day

As part of our coverage of the midterm groundwork happening across the country, PBS News' Liz Landers and Votebeat editorial director Jessica Huseman hosted a Reddit "Ask Me Anything" Q&A on Wednesday to address people's questions on election security.

Several questions touched on people's concerns about their vote being tampered with or not being counted, alongside broader concerns about possible meddling from the federal government.

The Trump administration is attempting measures that haven't been tried before, Huseman said. Those actions include attempts to change election rules through executive orders, repeated demands for voter data and efforts to expand the government's role – specifically the executive branch – in elections. All of this amounts to an "unprecedented environment now," she said.

And yet, "elections officials are confident the system will hold," she added.

Here are five major takeaways from the Reddit AMA.

Evidence shows that illegal voting is extremely rare

Ballots for the upcoming midterm elections are stacked inside a locked, secured and monitored cage at the Durham County Board of Elections, as election officials boost security to fortify the building and protect staff in preparation for the upcoming midterm elections, in Durham, North Carolina, on Aug. 31, 2026. Photo by Jonathan Drake/ Reuters

Trump has routinely cast doubt on the security of the vote, making false claims of "rampant" voter fraud even a week ahead of Nov. 3.

The president, who has continued to falsely claim that the 2020 presidential election was "rigged," has fixated on rooting out what he claims is election fraud this election cycle. The Trump administration has issued more than 100 subpoenas to more than a dozen states requesting voter roll data, expanding its efforts to tamp down alleged noncitizen voting. But illegal voting by noncitizens voting is vanishingly rare.

READ MORE: Trump's focus on noncitizen voting has led to 160 arrests. That shows it's rare, experts say

Votebeat spent more than a year investigating claims from a nonprofit group called the Election Truth Alliance that promoted a researcher's statistical analysis suggesting votes in the 2024 election had been manipulated in Pennsylvania, she said.

Much of that analysis did not stand up to scrutiny, Votebeat's reporting found.

WATCH: Inside Georgia's push to rebuild trust in elections after Trump's false claims

Huseman said it's worth remembering that "elections are not black boxes."

"In the places where the Election Truth Alliance alleged truly incredible problems, there were audits, observers, paper ballots and an entire staff of people whose jobs are ensuring the accuracy of these numbers," she said. "We can scrutinize the evidence as it's presented, but when we have it, we have to look it squarely in the face and call it what it is."

Trump can't declare a national emergency to interfere with elections

Nowhere in the U.S. Constitution does the president of the United States have express authority over how elections are run.

As laid out in the country's founding document, states determine the time, place and manner of elections. And Congress has a role in passing legislation over federal elections, though they have not passed major laws like this in a while, Landers said.

READ MORE: Immigrants seeking U.S. citizenship targeted in Trump administration's illegal voting crackdown

To put a finer point on it: The president cannot declare some kind of national emergency and expect all 50 states to stop their elections.

"I know from speaking with election officials across the country that they will not stop their election administration just because the president declared something over a process he does not have any legal authority," Landers said.

She also asked Trump in February if he would declare a national emergency — as some of his allies have urged. He said no at the time, adding he'd never heard about that.

Federal election monitors are there to observe

The Justice Department is planning to dispatch more than 1,000 federal election monitors to observe proceedings on Election Day. What they can do at polling places is fairly limited.

WATCH: DOJ monitoring plans and DHS voter checks raise concerns of election interference

To be clear: Federal election monitors are a normal part of both midterm and presidential elections, and the Biden administration deployed them in the 2024 presidential election cycle.

Watch the segment in the player above.

What is different this year is the number of federal election monitors that are being used, as well as the Trump administration's big public effort around it. A senior DOJ official told PBS News two weeks ago that they plan to send those 1,000-plus monitors to all 50 states.

WATCH: Examining the DOJ's effort to prosecute non-citizens accused of voting

These monitors must work within local and state laws and are only there to observe and take notes. If — and a big if — they see some kind of miscarriage of federal voting law, they are supposed to alert Main Justice headquarters in Washington, D.C., who will investigate after Election Day, Landers said.

In the last few months, PBS News has also heard from lawyers and voting experts about an increased presence of other kinds of observers at the polls, from across the spectrum.

One suggestion from a former career lawyer at the Justice Department is that if voters see anything at a polling location that seems weird or concerning to them, they should document what happened and share the information with a member of Congress, a local official, a voting rights organization or even speak with a news organization about it.

You can also ask your local election office if you can observe their work, Landers said. Many large and small jurisdictions, including Maricopa County in Arizona, and Paulding County in Georgia, have observation rooms or livestreams where the public can see how the business of elections is carried out.

A reminder about voter roll 'purges'

When it comes to states updating their voter rolls, including instances where eligible voters were kicked off the lists ahead of an election, Huseman noted that Votebeat is careful when using the word "purge" (like in "voter roll purge.")

This is because "list maintenance," or removing people from voter rolls is a "normal, necessary and actually enfranchising thing to do," she said, whereas "purge" suggests something bad happened.

WATCH: State voting officials join CISA security call with election 85 days away

"People die, move or otherwise become ineligible," she said. "Removing them from the rolls allows you to make sure they are on the right one, and voter registration outreach does not happen if someone appears to be registered even if they haven't lived in that place for years."

This is an important part of the process, she added. "When you see a headline saying that a state has removed 100,000 voters, that doesn't really tell you that much."

The questions instead should be: How many eligible voters were incorrectly removed, and did that actually prevent anyone from voting?

Huseman pointed to Votebeat's work with ProPublica and The Texas Tribune investigating Texas Gov. Greg Abbott's claim that the state had removed more than 6,500 noncitizens from the rolls. The outlets found the governor's claim misleading and identified U.S. citizens who'd been incorrectly flagged or removed from the state's list.

"That's a huge problem, but it's also important to distinguish between someone being flagged for investigation and actually losing their registration," Huseman said.

What have elections officials said about certifying the vote?

We received a handful of questions about election certification.

Landers pointed to the most prominent example involving election certification — or the refusal to do so — out of Otero County, New Mexico, where a county commissioner there refused to certify an election in June 2022 after questioning Dominion Voting Systems machines used in that election. The state Supreme Court forced the board to eventually certify the results.

This is a pretty cut-and-dry example of how the system works: If local election officials refuse to certify an election, it will be litigated by the candidates on the ballot and a judge will step in.

This also occurred in Cochise County, Arizona, in 2022, but the election was eventually certified there as well after a legal battle, even though the county did miss the state certification deadline.

This election cycle, Landers has spoken with a handful of local and state elections officials about the possible scenario of someone refusing to certify.

"No one I have talked with is worried that this will actually happen and stop the certification," she said. "Basically, there are checks and balances and deadlines for certification that campaigns are ready to sue over and state officials are ready to enforce."