The final day of voting in the US midterm elections is taking place Tuesday amid what the source describes as an unprecedented campaign of electoral interference led by President Donald Trump. Asked on October 27 whether he would accept an unfavorable result, Trump said he would if the results were “honest.” Polls cited in the report point to a possible loss of Republican control of Congress.

Trump has repeatedly questioned election results he lost without providing evidence. He challenged Joe Biden’s 2020 victory and, ahead of the 2024 election, signaled that he might not accept a Kamala Harris win, raising concerns about possible reactions from his supporters.

The midterms are held halfway through a presidential term. This year, voters are choosing all 435 members of the House of Representatives and 35 of the Senate’s 100 seats. They are also electing governors in 36 states, along with state legislators and local officials.

Trump continues to allege widespread election fraud, a claim the report says has not been substantiated. US elections are administered by the states, a decentralized system that can slow the count but makes it extremely difficult to alter ballots.

The Justice Department has become a central focus of concerns about federal involvement. Traditionally, the department has had a degree of independence from the president, but under Trump it has pursued cases against political opponents and brought election-related lawsuits. Its first attorney general in the current term, Pam Bondi, was dismissed after her handling of public pressure over the Epstein files. Her successor, Todd Blanche, Trump’s former personal lawyer, has continued the approach, while facing court defeats, the report says.

The Justice Department’s election work has shifted toward what it calls protecting “the integrity of the vote,” including investigations into alleged fraud. Meanwhile, Republican-led state governments and groups have pursued cases that led to Supreme Court rulings weakening the Voting Rights Act of 1965, a landmark law that sought to end discriminatory barriers to voting, including literacy tests used against Black voters in Southern states.

The report says the court decisions allowed Republicans to use new, favorable electoral maps in at least seven states. Despite countermeasures by Democrats in California and Utah, the redistricting effort is estimated to give Republicans nine more seats than would otherwise be expected.

Many of the Justice Department’s actions have been rejected by courts and, according to the opposition, have had a greater effect on public confidence than on election administration. Department lawyers have sued 30 states, many of them Democratic-leaning, over their refusal to provide voter data for federal checks. CNN reported in October that data obtained by the department ended up with ICE, the US immigration agency.

In January, the FBI seized hundreds of boxes of ballots from Georgia’s 2020 presidential election, a state central to Trump’s effort to overturn his defeat to Biden. The operation, which experts described to US media as highly unusual, was based on alleged signs of fraud. No fraud was found, and the Democratic Party called the action “an attack on democracy.”

The Justice Department also challenged California over 20,000 mail-in ballots cast in this year’s elections, arguing they should not be counted because they might have been sent by noncitizens. The list came from the Department of Homeland Security, which oversees ICE, but contained numerous errors: more than 40% of the people named were not registered California voters, while others were naturalized citizens. The government lost at every level, including at the Supreme Court, which ruled on Monday.

On Tuesday, the Justice Department said it had sent more than 1,000 election “monitors” to all 50 states for the first time, saying they would document possible problems for investigation after the vote. At the time the report was published, no problems at polling places had been reported.

Sources: Folha Mundo.