How election officials are working to mitigate growing distrust ahead of midterms

DALLAS, Ga. -- Election officials from coast to coast are facing a slew of challenges ahead of the high-stakes midterms, from the Trump administration's bid to impose itself on state-run elections to last-minute court challenges and threats faced by election workers -- all under a persistent sense of distrust in the voting process itself, some experts told ABC News.

"Usually the temperature is much higher -- and emotions run much hotter -- in a presidential election year than in a midterm election year," said Wendy Weiser, vice president of the nonprofit Brennan Center for Justice at New York University School of Law. "This year, though, the temperature is staying up at a high level."

Election experts broadly lay blame for the elevated sense of distrust in elections this year at the feet of President Donald Trump, whose administration has taken unprecedented steps to question the outcome by levelling unfounded claims of widespread voter fraud.

Trump administration officials says steps they've taken in recent weeks -- including lawsuits in California and Alaska and threats to prosecute election workers -- are meant to ensure the integrity of the election. 

But under the weight of those allegations, state officials say the once-collaborative rapport between the federal government and state leaders has in some cases given way to a deep sense of suspicion.

"There's no trust in that relationship," Nevada Secretary of State Francisco Aguilar told ABC News. "In order to have a working relationship, there has to be trust, and the fact that they continue to tear that trust apart and spread the misinformation and the lies that they are about our elections is wrong."

At the same time, people who oversee voting at the county level across the country are frequently fielding questions from voters who say they lack faith in the electoral process. About 6 in 10 Americans are confident the midterm elections will be conducted fairly and accurately, while nearly 4 in 10 Americans and about 3 in 10 voters are not confident , according to an ABC News/Washington Post/Ipsos poll conducted using Ipsos' KnowledgePanel.

"No matter how transparent we are, people always are questioning what we're doing [and] how we're doing it," Deidre Holden, the director of elections and voter registration in Paulding County, Georgia, told ABC News. "I try to explain [that] we have nothing to hide. You're welcome to come in and watch the process."

'You never know what someone's going to do'

Holden, who has been an elections official in Georgia for 25 years, said that in her early years in the role, she "used to train people on how to smile and hand out an 'I voted' sticker."

Yet over the last several years, Holden has devoted much of her time to ensuring that everyone at polling places and in the county's ballot processing facility are safe. She currently has a sheriff's deputy stationed at every polling location, and in 2024 she first showed ABC News the active shooter training her poll workers were undertaking as a precaution.

"I'm forever concerned with the security of my staff, with my poll workers, with my voters," Holden said. "You never know what someone's going to do."

Paulding County was once a solidly Republican area, but as the suburban sprawl around Atlanta has increased, the county's population has quadrupled and it is now a purple county with Democrats and Republicans living side by side. With such a partisan divide, Holden said transparency about the process is key.

"Some of our best poll workers have come from the naysayers that didn't trust us and we invited them in and now they're our best workers and our biggest advocates because they get to see behind the scenes, they get see how the sausage is made, how we do things and how we do those things with integrity," Holden said.

'I just want to find 11,780 votes'

The official once again overseeing the election at the state level in Georgia this November is Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger, a Republican who rose to national prominence in January 2021 after receiving a phone call from President Donald Trump.

"All I want to do is this: I just want to find 11,780 votes," Trump told Raffensperger at the time, claiming it was "not possible" that he lost Georgia's 2020 presidential election.

Joe Biden won the 2020 election in the Peach State and Raffensperger certified the results, despite facing criticism from some other Republicans.

"At the end of the day we did our job, we followed the law and we followed the constitution," Raffensperger told ABC News in a recent interview.

"I know I did the right thing, and I feel sorry for people that didn't do the right thing, because at some point, they're going to have to look at themselves in the mirror," he said.

Raffensperger's time in office will end in January. Early voting for the midterms is currently underway in Georgia, and Raffensperger said he is confident that residents will have an accurate idea of the projected election results by midnight after the polls close.

"Those ballots actually in effect will be counted three times just to verify the result, so at the end of the day, we know that the winner won and that's our job," Raffensperger said.

'What they've been able to uncover is nothing'

While Raffensperger was on the phone with Trump in 2021, many recent dustups between the federal government and state agencies have involved staffers going back and forth over email and video conferencing.

At the core of the growing friction is the claim by President Trump and DHS officials that the country has a "broken" election system, where they claim 278,000 people who are not U.S. citizens have registered to vote illegally.

Weiser told ABC News that the Trump administration has been attempting to "substantiate their theory that our country is plagued by widespread voter fraud."

"What they've been able to uncover is nothing," Weiser said. "Our elections, in fact, are safe and secure."

The allegations of widespread noncitizen voting have not just been made at press conferences. Over the summer, DHS employees reached out to states around the U.S., sending letters and holding meetings about "the concerning results" of what they called a "preliminary review" of potential noncitizens registered to vote.

Aguilar, the Nevada secretary of state, said members of his office ended up on a video conference call in August with DHS representatives alleging that there could be as many as 15,903 noncitizens registered to vote in Nevada.

One of the DHS officials on the call was Heather Honey, a known election denier and a key figure in the fight to overturn the results of the 2020 presidential election.

While not overtly hostile, a recording of the video conference obtained by ABC News shows palpable tension and some awkward exchanges, as Nevada officials seemed deeply skeptical of the claims made by DHS.

"So what you're saying is the 15,000 number has not been vetted?" a Nevada official asked, according to a recording of the video conference.

"I probably wouldn't use the sentence, 'It hasn't been vetted,'" a DHS representative responded, adding that each out has not "had a full manual review."

Following the meeting, DHS officials emailed Nevada officials with a new figure -- claiming they found 185 noncitizens on the state's voter rolls during a preliminary sweep. Officials in Nevada said the DHS was wrong, replying later that, after their own review of those 185 individuals, "our records indicate that they were citizens."

In response to a request by ABC News for comment, DHS stood by their work, which they called "a service to Nevada's citizens," and accused Nevada officials of knowingly harboring illegal voters on its lists.

"Nevada knows the 185 names they keep waving around were never the full list of illegal voters," a Homeland Security spokesperson said in an email. "They were only the files [that immigration officials] had finished reviewing at the moment of the call. Since then, [immigration officials] have manually confirmed about 2,000 more aliens from the same list. The review is just beginning."

Trusting the process

While voting in the upcoming election will conclude on Nov. 3, there is concern among some election experts that the relationship between federal leaders and their counterparts at the state and local levels might not be easily repairable.

The federal government has traditionally supported state and local officials on a slew of election-related matters, from mitigating foreign threats to cybersecurity. With the fragile state of affairs, some experts fear any Election Day complications could threaten the integrity of the vote.

"Our state and local election officials are going to have fewer resources at their disposal, less intelligence and less ability to coordinate in responding to what might be significant threats going forward because they don't trust the federal government as a partner the way they did," Weiser said.

While trust in how elections are being conducted remains top of mind for voters, election officials like Holden, Aguilar and Raffensperger are working to assure their residents that they should still have faith in the process.

"There's no reason for a voter to ever doubt their ballot," Holden said.