Five Takeaways From ProPublica’s Midterm Election Coverage

Key Points:

• ProPublica's investigation reveals that the Trump administration systematically dismantled institutional safeguards to overturn the 2020 election, including efforts to find noncitizen voters and restrict mail-in voting, while seeking greater federal control over elections.
• The administration replaced numerous nonpartisan career officials with Trump loyalists, many connected to conservative groups like the Election Integrity Network, which promotes legislation such as the SAVE America Act aimed at tightening voter ID and citizenship verification requirements.
• Trump officials requested the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) to secretly acquire and hack a voting machine, a request deemed impossible and indicative of attempts to politicize and weaken the agency’s election security mission.
• The White House proposed a drastic mail-in voting change requiring ballots to be delivered via certified mail, which would have severely limited mail voting, but dropped it after USPS warned of implementation difficulties; the Supreme Court blocked later USPS ballot delivery rules before the midterms.
• Postal Service cost-cutting measures, including mail processing consolidations and reduced pickups in rural areas, have caused delays that risk ballot validity, disproportionately affecting regions that supported Trump in 2024, though USPS claims special measures will mitigate delays for the November general election.