Fear of federal interference in the 2026 midterms, from intimidation stoked by armed officials at the polls to seizure of ballots, has been growing in the United States. That’s led state and local voting officials across the country to draw up plans for scenarios requiring them to summon law enforcement or prepare legal filings so they can keep the polls open.

In an interview with The Conversation’s politics and legal affairs editor Naomi Schalit, election law scholar Justin Levitt takes the temperature down a bit. Levitt says that while voting officials’ preparations mean they are doing their jobs, the anticipated election interference won’t happen – in part because of that preparation.

Schalit: Could we see widespread intimidation and challenging of voters at the polls?

Levitt: It’s extremely unlikely. I completely understand that Americans are freaked out. They are at an electric level of anxiety right now, not just about the world but about the coming elections. But I don’t think the intimidation and challenges they’re fearing or forecasting are going to manifest for a couple reasons.

I have run a nationwide election protection program. It’s real work to get people to dedicate a full day to helping others. It’s that much harder to recruit a group of people to show up and look for fraud, and fraud at scale doesn’t really happen. It’s even harder to recruit people to show up to actively intimidate voters.

Not that many people are in for it – there are keyboard warriors who love to act out online, but to actually show up is a totally different thing. And they’re really risking either getting thrown out of the polling place or going to jail, because intimidating voters is a crime.

What about intimidation and challenges by government officials?

On the government side, which is something people are also really freaked out about, we are a giant country and there are almost........

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