With the 2026 midterms just weeks away, election-security experts are sounding the alarm over what they see as a potentially dangerous new battleground devised by the Trump administration.
The concern isn’t simply about Election Day itself.
It’s about what happens when the polls close, the votes are still being counted and Americans are waiting to find out who won.
Election experts are warning that during the crucial hours and days after November’s midterm elections, Donald Trump and his allies could use that window to challenge or disrupt results after facing legal setbacks in their efforts to reshape voting rules.
That period, sometimes lasting days or even weeks, could become an opening for Trump and Republicans to challenge election results, amplify unsubstantiated claims of fraud or raise allegations of foreign interference, according to former federal officials and election-security experts.
And one Brennan Center official called the situation particularly concerning.
“To me, this is the biggest threat right now,” said Larry Norden, vice president of the Brennan Center’s Elections and Government Program, according to The Guardian.
Why?
Because Americans have grown accustomed to expecting election results almost immediately.
But that’s not how elections actually work.
Some states count ballots for days after Election Day. California can take considerably longer. And if control of the House or Senate comes down to a handful of close races in states where counting takes longer, the country could spend days waiting for definitive results.
That waiting period is precisely what election-security experts say Trump and his allies could exploit to disrupt the results.
Caitlin Durkovich, a former deputy homeland security adviser for resilience and response on the National Security Council, warned that Trump’s administration could potentially turn to allegations of foreign interference after Election Day.
“I think because the administration has lost so many of their attempts to disrupt the normal process in court, that they are going to use the claim of foreign interference at the end of voting days to either seize equipment or to seize ballots,” Durkovich said during a Brennan Center briefing.
She added that such actions could occur “whether they’re legally justified to do so or not.”
That’s a warning about a possible scenario — not a claim that such a seizure is currently underway.
But experts say the potential consequences are serious.
Once voting ends, election officials still have to count ballots, resolve discrepancies, conduct required checks and audits, and certify the results.
That takes time.
And that time can create something that has become increasingly valuable in American politics: doubt.
“That period, that waiting time, is where doubt begins to surface,” Durkovich said.
She warned that doubt can then be amplified by foreign actors and domestic actors alike.
The concerns come after the Trump administration suffered legal setbacks in its efforts to impose new restrictions on voting.
The Supreme Court recently left in place an injunction blocking the administration from using the U.S. Postal Service and Department of Homeland Security to impose new requirements on mail-ballot deliveries for the 2026 midterms.
But other battles over election administration continue.
The administration has pursued voter-registration information from states, sought federal involvement in identifying potentially ineligible voters and continued to argue that federal intervention is necessary to protect elections.
Those efforts have generated lawsuits and opposition from voting-rights organizations.
The Brennan Center has also warned that the administration’s broader efforts could increase federal involvement in election administration and create new disputes over how elections are conducted.
That is why former election officials are telling voters to understand the process before the inevitable post-election arguments begin.
Ben Hovland, a former chair of the U.S. Election Assistance Commission, emphasized that ballots are already being cast.
“Every state in the country now has live ballots out,” Hovland said. “That really means the election is here.”
And that means any legal or political dispute over election procedures has to be viewed against the reality that voting is already underway.
Norden said state election officials are trying to educate voters now about what happens after the polls close.
The goal is straightforward: don’t let the normal counting process look like evidence that something has gone wrong.
“In the history of American elections in some ways, there have never been more options for the way that people can vote,” Norden said.
He also pointed to early voting as one way voters can avoid some of the uncertainty surrounding Election Day itself.
But the biggest concern isn’t necessarily how people vote.
It’s whether they trust the results once the votes have been counted.
Much of Trump’s election rhetoric has focused on foreign interference.
But election-security experts say there’s an important distinction between foreign influence and foreign interference.
Foreign influence can include propaganda, disinformation and other attempts to shape public opinion.
Foreign interference in the technical sense involves actually disrupting or manipulating the election process itself.
Former deputy director of national intelligence Beth Sanner said there is no evidence that a foreign government technically interfered with the 2020 election.
“It just didn’t happen,” she said.
That distinction could become particularly important if allegations of foreign interference emerge during the post-election counting period.
Election security has changed since 2020
There is another part of the story that can get lost in the political noise.
Election systems have been strengthened since the 2020 election, partly in response to the false claims that followed Trump’s defeat.
States conduct audits of election results, and election officials have spent years strengthening cybersecurity and election infrastructure.
Geoff Hales, a former senior official at the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency, said election officials around the country have taken cybersecurity seriously.
But he also warned that federal support for those efforts has been reduced.
“The federal support that used to be there has pulled back sharply,” Hales said, arguing that cybersecurity services, information-sharing programs and threat briefings have been reduced.
That creates another concern: states could be dealing with a more politically charged election environment while receiving less federal support for some cybersecurity functions.
And then comes the waiting
That’s what has election experts watching the post-election period so closely.
The votes will be cast. The ballots will be counted. But the results won’t necessarily arrive all at once.
And if control of Congress comes down to a handful of extremely close races, Americans could spend days watching partial results while rump’s claims about fraud, foreign interference or irregularities spread across social media and the news.
That’s the window experts are worried about.
