A former Colorado county clerk convicted of tampering with voting equipment sat down with President Trump at the White House this month to push a plan that would have the federal government scrutinize voting machines for foreign-made parts. Trump granted Peters a pardon, but it did not erase her state conviction. She urged him to have his administration examine machines she believes pose a security risk. The meeting comes as federal agencies ramp up an array of election-security efforts just weeks before the midterms.
According to The New York Times, Peters is a former Mesa County clerk convicted of tampering with voting machines, and she has said voting machines with foreign-made parts raise security concerns. Her path back into the political arena followed a dramatic reversal of her legal fortunes. Colorado Governor Jared Polis commuted her nine-year state prison sentence on May 15, 2026, according to CBS News, and she was released on parole on June 1, 2026, after serving less than a quarter of that sentence for the 2025 conviction on seven counts related to unauthorized access to Mesa County voting machines. Her October meeting with Trump, as reported by News From The States, centered on a strategy urging the Department of Commerce to examine voting equipment under national security authorities tied to a 2019 executive order.
David Becker questioned the Commerce secretary's authority and criticized conspiracy theories.
Technical Standards Undercut Hacking Claims
Despite the renewed push around voting machine security, the equipment used nationwide is built with specific safeguards against the kind of remote tampering that fuels these fears. The U.S. Election Assistance Commission's Voluntary Voting System Guidelines 2.0 prohibit voting systems from establishing wireless connections but permit wireless hardware if it is disabled, and 38 states embed those standards directly into state statute, per the U.S. Election Assistance Commission.
Election security experts have found no evidence of widespread manipulation in recent elections, the Times reports.
DOJ Lawsuits and a Blocked Federal Database
Separately from the machine-security push, the Department of Justice's Civil Rights Division has filed federal lawsuits against 30 states and the District of Columbia between September 2025 and October 2026, demanding unredacted statewide voter registration records to screen for noncitizens. According to ProPublica, federal judges issued final rulings in 26 of those cases and rejected the government's arguments on legal and factual grounds. Hoodline has previously reported on a related suit against California seeking to block roughly 20,000 ballots just 19 days before Election Day.
The legal fight over database-driven voter checks has also hit turbulence. U.S. District Judge Sparkle Sooknanan issued an order on October 9 blocking the Department of Justice from using the federal SAVE database to review state voter rolls, finding the policy had erroneously canceled the registrations of naturalized U.S. citizens, according to Courthouse News Service. That lawsuit was brought by Common Cause on behalf of citizens whose registrations were wrongly canceled. Just weeks earlier, on September 25, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled 6-3 in Department of Homeland Security v. League of Women Voters to stay a lower court injunction, allowing DHS to temporarily resume bulk voter roll checks against Social Security Administration data through the modified SAVE system.
The administration's voter-roll efforts have raised concerns about possible matching errors, according to the Times. The Justice Department also sent a letter to California officials concerning noncitizen voting, the Times reports. Critics fear conspiracies could justify actions disenfranchising voters before the election, and worry the administration could cite officials' refusal to address dubious claims as grounds to argue results are invalid.
Nursing Home Voting Rules Rewritten
Trump has claimed that thousands and thousands of crooked votes were cast in Wisconsin nursing homes, an allegation the Times reports was unfounded.
Those claims nonetheless preceded a concrete policy shift. The Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services issued Memorandum QSSAM-26-04-NH on July 20, rescinding 2020 and 2024 guidance that had instructed nursing homes to proactively help residents vote, replacing it with warnings about voter fraud and coercion, according to the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services. The new guidance warns about voter fraud and coercion. The Department of Health and Human Services issued its own voting assistance guidance reminding facilities and staff they cannot engage in inappropriate coercion or violations of residents' rights.
Voting rights advocates feared the guidance could discourage nursing-home aides from lawfully assisting elderly voters, the Times reports.
Activist Groups Mobilize in Battleground Districts
Cleta Mitchell's Election Integrity Network has moved quickly to operationalize the new federal posture. In September, the group published a Protecting Vulnerable Voters toolkit and mapped long-term care facilities across competitive congressional districts in Arizona, California, New Hampshire, Pennsylvania, and Virginia, directing volunteers to monitor nursing home voting, according to coverage from Wondermint.
Trump has recently encouraged supporters to vote by mail and has voted by mail in a Florida Republican primary, the Times reports.
What the Research Shows About Noncitizen Voting
Experts say noncitizen voting is exceedingly rare, even as federal agencies have dedicated hundreds of investigators to the issue, the Times reports.
The U.S. Supreme Court has also rejected a separate Trump administration plan to change mail voting through the U.S. Postal Service, which would have included denying ballot-delivery mail services in states that refused to comply, according to the Times.
Voting rights advocates say they fear the federal government may be used to cast doubt on the midterm results, discourage participation, or delegitimize the outcome. David Becker criticized conspiracy-driven policy, while courts have blocked many Trump efforts.
