The 2026 midterms are shaping up to be the most intensely observed, recorded, dissected and challenged election in American history.
Why it matters: A small army of partisan and nonpartisan observers will show up. So will a surge of Justice Department monitors, organizers looking for signs of ICE and citizen journalists broadcasting their search for illegal voting in real time.
Between the lines: More nonpartisan observation can bolster confidence in elections, studies show. But officials worry that activists expecting to find wrongdoing could misread routine events.
- Election officials have been raising concerns that "vigilante citizen journalists" could interfere with the election, said Andrew Walchuck of Common Cause, a nonprofit organization that's also recruiting nonpartisan election observers.
- "I worry that people are going to go in and claim they're seeing things that they aren't," said Andrew Garber of the Brennan Center.
- "Just minor, innocuous things that are going to happen as millions and millions of ballots get cast and counted, then it gets spun into something nefarious or untrue," Garber said.
The intrigue: After the 2020 election, claims from observers and activist sleuths helped fuel challenges to the results.
- It was then channeled into numerous lawsuits from the Trump campaign. The cases were almost all dismissed or denied relief in court.
Influencers and online activists can turn real-time claims about wrongdoing into national controversy before officials can weigh in or push back — including while votes are being cast or counted.
- "What gives me concern is that we have an administration that is trying to spread conspiracy theories and spread lies about our elections and... [then] having more people out there with that purpose behind their work troubles me," Walchuck said.
The other side: "Despite extreme Democrats and the media claiming it never happens, the evidence of voter fraud continues to pile up. Anyone who illegally votes in our elections will be held accountable," Lauren Bis, a White House spokeswoman, said in a statement.
- This year there have been more than two dozen federal charges against people for voting when they're not eligible and about 160 arrests, according to the Justice Department.
- A review from the Center for Election Innovation & Research, a nonpartisan organization, says instances of illegal voting are "extremely small."
Zoom in: The DOJ plans to train 1,000 election monitors to deploy across the country, one of the largest-ever efforts from the agency. It builds on a significant increase in observers in 2024.
- The Senate Democrats have spun up their own arm of election observers, using office staff to monitor the polls. That's in addition to a new 50-state-plus-territories recruitment program by a coalition of Democratic state parties, aiming to recruit at least 10,000 election watchers.
- The Republican National Committee is building on its election watch network set up in 2020 to counter perceived voter fraud. GOP partisans have signed up in record numbers to be poll workers and the party is hosting virtual and in-person trainings for observers and challengers.
- A network of anti-ICE activists is transitioning ICE watch trainings into poll watching trainings, responding in part to the Trump administration saying ICE could make arrests at the polls. When asked in September about deploying agents, Trump told TIME magazine he hadn't thought of it.
Zoom out: These efforts will coexist with a slew of nonpartisan observing efforts, ranging from voter protection groups to international election observers.
- There will also be state party and campaign staffers who regularly monitor the polls for concerns. These are typically more mundane, including monitoring accurate opening and closing times for polling locations that can be remedied with quick litigation.
- The rules and terminology for observers vary by state laws, which also govern how close an observer can be to voting machines or tabulation processes and how to document concerns about malpractice.
The bottom line: "Having questions and wanting to understand more about the election process as a sort of curious citizen is a good thing," said Avery Davis-Roberts of the Carter Center, which monitors elections internationally and will have volunteers in five states in November.
- "And we hope that people will use observation and the findings of our observation as a way to better understand how the process works and maybe have some of those questions answered."