Inside the Democratic task force preparing for if Trump interferes in the midterms

A view of voting booths at the Santa Clara County registrar of voters office in San Jose, Calif. Justin Sullivan/Getty Images hide caption

Congressional Democrats are preparing for a new kind of midterm challenge: the risk that President Trump will attempt to undermine November's elections by claiming fraud or interfering in the voting process.

At the center of their effort is a task force of at least 11 senators, as well as staff and a constellation of outside experts and groups convened by top congressional Democrats to protect against what Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., describes as "direct threats posed by President Trump and MAGA Republicans."

"The goal of our task force is to ensure that every vote counts, and every American can participate in our democracy without coercion, intimidation or threats from Donald Trump or anyone else," Schumer said in April while announcing the initiative.

Members have already played a central role in challenging preelection maneuvers by the administration — including efforts to obtain state voter rolls and limit mail-in voting — even as they collectively prepare for an array of scenarios they fear could unfold over the coming 10 weeks. Senate task force staff have a list of roughly 100 possible threats, including the prospect of a national election emergency declaration from the White House and the presence of federal troops and law enforcement at polling locations.

This account of that effort is based on interviews with more than a dozen people involved in those preparations, including Democratic lawmakers, their staff, election litigators and experts in academia and at nonpartisan good governance organizations.

Those conversations reveal a Democratic establishment intent on avoiding what multiple people described as a "failure of imagination" that prevented lawmakers from anticipating the Jan. 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol, but also Democratic lawmakers limited by both a lack of Republican buy-in and a shortage of legislative maneuvers to address the risks they see.

Even as task force members acknowledged there is no magic "protect democracy" button tucked away in a Capitol cloakroom, they each emphasized the power of legislators as messengers and organizers, able to prepare the public and their state and local counterparts to act when necessary to ensure a legitimate election.