Editor's Note: This essay is part of the Democracy Project's Elections 2026 series.

War games.  Tabletop exercises.  Scenario planning.  Rapid response drills.  

They’re all being held to prepare for the 2026 midterm elections.

And we go to a lot of them.  A lot. 

All of them contemplate ICE at the polls.  Usually within the first hour of the exercise.  

The omnipresence of this threat is reflected everywhere: media coverage (“Fearing troops or ICE at the polls, Arizona organizers train hundreds as election observers”), public opinion polling (“Americans Oppose ICE at Polling Places”), and public preparation plans (“Voting Rights Groups Are Preparing to Confront ICE at the Polls”).  We asked ChatGPT, “What are democracy advocates most worried that the federal government will do to interfere with the midterm elections?”  It gave the second spot to “Federal agents—especially ICE—appearing at or near polling places.”  (First place: “Using federal voter data to pressure states to remove voters”).

Such concern is understandable.  Earlier this month, Secretary Markwayne Mullin said that ICE could be at voting locations to “enforce specific threats.”  Steve Bannon, President Trump’s former chief strategist, has spent much of the year claiming that the Trump administration will send ICE to “surround the polls” to prevent “another” stolen election.

But while the fear is not without foundation, ICE-at-the-polls is something that American elections are well-equipped to handle.  The highly decentralized nature of our elections, plus the massive growth of early voting, combined with a strong legal framework, would make widespread ICE interference a heavy lift for the federal government.  Ironically, the real threat of ICE-at-the-polls could be in its potential voter-deterrent effect.

Have Fun Getting to Kaka, Arizona

Election Day in the United States is “Everything Everywhere All at Once.”  The country had nearly 95,000 voting locations on Election Day in November 2022.  For Election Day in November, 2024: 95,815 polling locations.  

In contrast, even after accounting for the recent 120% hiring surge, ICE has about 22,000 agents.  If the Department of Homeland Security attempted to station a lone ICE agent at every voting site, they’d cover about 25% of the country’s polling places.  And that’s before a single agent is assigned any other duties to meet agency needs.  As the kids say, “the math ain’t mathing.”

Now factor in duration.  On Election Day, polls in Arizona, California, and Virginia are open for 13 hours a day.   Is an ICE-agent supposed to monitor the area for all 13 hours?  

And it’s not just Election Day.  Almost every state allows no-excuse in-person early voting.  It’s weeks long in many states.  Arizona’s in-person early voting begins 27-days before Election Day.  ICE agents would have to be deployed to poll-watching duty for a month, not a day.   

Then there’s getting to the actual voting locations.  In Maricopa County, Arizona, election officials operate a voting location for the small, very rural tribal village of Kaka, Arizona.  It’s a rugged three-hour trip from Phoenix.  Electricity, plumbing, and internet connections are in short supply.  To the north, in Coconino County, Arizona, election officials hike 8-miles down the Grand Canyon to set up a voting location for the Havasupai Tribe.  Will ICE be at these locations?

“She doesn’t even go here” – changed voting habits

The ICE-at-the-polls scenario paints an ominous picture of agents descending on Election Day to disrupt voting.  But that picture hinges on a dated model of voting habits.  In November 2024, only 37.4% of Americans voted on Election Day, 35.2% voted early in person, and 30.3% voted by mail.  In Arizona, roughly 80% of the vote comes from early ballots, and in Georgia, early in-person voting accounts for the majority of the votes. California, the state many assume will be ground zero for ICE, is overwhelmingly vote-by-mail.  Election Day isn’t what it used to be.

The shift away from Election Day is starkest for naturalized citizens – a presumed demographic target of ICE-at-the-polls.  In 2024, naturalized citizens voted by mail at a rate nearly 8 points higher than native-born citizens.  Ironically, if the administration mobilized ICE on Election Day, those officers would disproportionately encounter American-born Republican voters.   

A hot legal landscape

Compliance with the law hasn’t been a defining feature of the Trump administration.  Nonetheless, the law matters, and federal law is ill-disposed to aggressive ICE presence at voting locations.  18 U.S.C. § 592 states that no federal officer may keep "troops or armed men" at an election site except to repel armed enemies of the United States.  The same title of U.S. code prohibits voter intimidation (18 U.S.C. § 594).  So too does the Voting Rights Act (52 U.S.C. § 10307(b)) and the National Voter Registration Act (52 U.S.C. § 20511(1)).

Federal law arguably doesn’t prohibit ICE in the vicinity of voting locations.  But the further ICE is pushed away from voting locations, the harder it would be to monitor who enters and exits a voting location, and the more agents would be needed for each voting location.

Then there’s state law.  As told by Sean Morales-Boyle of the Brennan Center, “every state’s laws outlaw voter intimidation, typically by making it a crime. Many states also prohibit carrying guns at or near polling places, drop boxes, or other election facilities.”  

There’s also now an entire army of democracy groups (many of them with “democracy” in their name) who are likely chomping at the bit to file restraining order requests against ICE:  Protect Democracy, States United Democracy Center, Democracy Defenders, Democracy Forward, Brennan Center, ACLU, etc.   And, of course, the Democratic Party wouldn’t sit on its hands.  Their ever-present legal pitbull Marc Elias would have a field day.  If ICE showed up in an intimidating manner to a voting location, I’d bet that a well-drafted lawsuit would be filed within the hour.   Furthermore, ICE’s presence, however short-lived, might be grounds for extending polling location hours.  

It’s also important to remember that local officials, not federal officials, are the bosses of this process.  Polling sites are selected by county or municipal officials, who also recruit and train the workers running the voting locations.  Many of these local officials – of all partisan stripes – aren’t enthusiastic about federal presence at voting locations.  During Wyoming’s recent primary, local officials denied the peculiar request made by monitors of the U.S. Department of Justice to examine tabulation equipment.  Wyoming’s Republican Governor Mark Gordon said: “I feel very strongly about the federal government coming in and taking our guns — I don’t like that.  And I don’t like the federal government coming in and taking our votes, either.”  Governor Gordon likely would feel similarly about ICE agents at his state’s voting locations.

And indeed that’s how it has played in some ICE interactions throughout the country.  In Bexar County, Texas, during the state’s primary, nine ICE agents filled a voting location’s parking lot.  The county’s sheriff arrived and told them to get lost.  They did.  A similar story unfolded outside a Simi Valley, California voting location.   

In short, even if the administration deploys ICE agents, there will be a lot of legal challenges and local resistance to ICE’s sustained, multi-hour presence.   

But what if they're strategic about it?

Some might reasonably argue that DHS won’t try to cover the entire United States.  Instead,  ICE agents will strategically deploy to battleground states like Michigan, where there are swing races and lower rates of mail-in/early voting.  

Maybe so.  But even in Michigan, almost 50% of voters cast their ballot through early in-person voting or mail voting.   And several Michigan cities and counties have “vote anywhere” vote centers that allow voters to go to any voting location within their jurisdiction.  This means that if ICE is outside one voting location, Michiganders could drive five minutes to another location that might not have an ICE presence.  These vote-anywhere vote centers are increasingly common throughout the United States (they are the norm in states like California and Arizona).

There’s also the downstream consequences of such a move.  ICE is hugely unpopular; less popular even than Trump’s dramatically downfallen approval numbers (33–40%).  ICE presence at a voting location could provoke massive outrage that could hurt Republican candidates on the ballot and further damage Trump’s popularity.  The administration surely knows this and would presumably include it in any cost-benefit analysis of deploying ICE.    

“Nothing to fear, but fear itself.”

Ironically, it’s possible that the real voting deterrent might be the perceived inevitability of ICE at the voting locations.  It’s not too far-fetched to imagine a newly-naturalized, brown-skinned American in Michigan who only casually follows political news, but hears that ICE might be at the polls.  This person knows he’s in a higher-risk category for being mistakenly apprehended by ICE, and he wonders “why risk it?”   After all, the benefit is simply casting one vote, out of millions, for a statewide contest between two U.S. Senate candidates, perhaps neither of whom inspires this American.  The potential cost is being detained for three days in poor conditions.

That’s a tough hypothetical.  The answer is likely to first apologize to this American for the state of the world.  Then offer him information on mail voting and in-person early voting, or encourage him to go to a polling place with a group of friends.  

But the solution is also that democracy advocates must be careful in how we describe the election threats posed by the Trump administration.  Yes, the administration has taken many unprecedented steps to inject itself into election administration.  And yes, Trump himself has recently said absolutely crazy stuff about elections.  But it’s highly unlikely that ICE will be at any individual voting location.  And we still believe, with good reason, that the upcoming midterm elections will be safe, secure, lawful, fair, and accurate.