The Trump strategy of planting the seeds of doubt within the mantra of election integrity is his bona fide plan.

With that, challenges to the 2026 midterm elections will grow. 

This has never been clearer than his unsupported and even preposterous claims during his July 16 address to the nation.

The Brennan Center for Justice in a recent research report stated, “Election deniers are abusing voter roll procedures, using false claims of widespread fraud to contest people’s eligibility to be on the rolls or a cast a ballot.”  

The Republican Party has been relentless in their claims of election “fraud” all designed to fuel voter doubt. 

In the same report, Brennan Center Counsel Andrew Garber said, “Eligible voters facing challenges sometimes don’t vote simply because the process is too confusing. Responding to a challenge requires numerous steps that can trip up voters. They may not understand their options for verifying their identity.” 

Garber found that “mass voter challenges have become a key element in the campaign to use election integrity as a pretext for voter suppression.”

In 2024, he found, election deniers lodged challenges, “in addition to spreading lies about widespread voter fraud, refusing to certify elections, discrediting voting machines, engaging in bad faith poll watching, filing frivolous lawsuits, and threatening election officials with physical harm or criminal penalties.”

This year, Garber warned, such challenges are likely to be an “integral strategy in the playbook to undermine the democratic process.”

So, who’s filing these challenges?

Certain private citizens who allege that other certain individuals who voted should not have been eligible. 

“Eligible voters facing challenges sometimes don’t vote simply because the process is too confusing. Responding to a challenge requires numerous steps that can trip up voters. They may not understand their options for verifying their identity,” Garber said. 

The Trump administration counts on this.

Garber found that “mass voter challenges have become a key element in the campaign to use election integrity as a pretext for voter suppression.”

Mass challenges, he said, “add basically zero value to elections while creating new costs.”

“There are instances of eligible voters being removed from the rolls and learning of their removal after the deadline to register and vote in the next election,” the report said. “As is often the case with voter suppression, vulnerable individuals frequently suffer the effects.”

Trump is demanding Congress require people show proof of citizenship when they register to vote and photo IDs at the polls. 

And the pressure is mounting on lawmakers to appease Trump by passing his SAVE America Act—a measure that would indeed restrict voting. 

Today Donald Trump still maintains the 2020 election was marred by voter fraud though investigation after investigation has shown his claims are unsubstantiated—there was no widespread fraud, period. 

Election officials across the nation have shown that voters rolls are accurate.

The good news—election deniers and the mass challenges filed have rarely been successful.

“These challenges were widely rejected for lack of evidence or failure to comply with state law,” the Brennan Center found.

“One takeaway is evident: With only around 3 percent of challenges clearly accepted, challenges contributed little to list maintenance in 2024,” the Brennan report found.

And Trump’s latest demands and threats over voter files only amplify this administration’s plan of suppressing the American vote.