On the menu today: Back in May, Connecticut’s general assembly passed a bill that blocked law enforcement officers from coming within 250 feet of a polling place. Besides the fact that many Connecticut polling places are in municipal buildings where local police work, and the fact that plenty of routine police duties might bring them within that radius, the law risked turning many otherwise law-abiding cops into criminals because they hadn’t gotten previous authorization to come near a polling place. Unsurprisingly, local police were more than a little irked; Connecticut’s secretary of state, Stephanie Thomas, issued clarification that the law permits police to perform any duty that does not interfere with the election site or the administration of the election, and that police are allowed to cast their own ballots while on duty or off duty, including while wearing a police uniform.
There’s a lot of fear that the 2026 midterm elections will be disrupted by some authority, either federal or local, harassing and intimidating voters, seizing ballots, or closing polling places. That fear, so far, appears unfounded. Read on.
Ballot-Box Scare Tactics
As of this morning, more than 31 million Americans have cast ballots in the 2026 midterm elections.
So far, none of them have had an incident with U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents or National Guard troops.
The National Police Accountability Project has published a bilingual “Know Your Rights” guide for voters who encounter police or ICE agents at their polling place.
As their guide notes, voters should probably go to the polls understanding that the presence of police near or in a polling place is not automatically intimidation; as the guide says, “local police officers are often responsible for keeping the peace at polling locations and enforcing election-related laws, they are permitted to enter voting sites when election officials or members of the public call for assistance.” For example, most states prohibit electioneering in the immediate vicinity of polling places, and sometimes someone calls the cops over a dispute over whether someone is electioneering.
You are extremely unlikely to see any federal agents at your polling place. Federal law bars any “person employed in any administrative position by the United States,” including the federal government, “interfering with, or affecting, the nomination or the election of any candidate.” This would cover ICE agents.
Federal law also bars anyone who “knowingly and willfully intimidates, threatens, or coerces, or attempts to intimidate, threaten, or coerce” any person attempting to vote.
There have been a handful of incidents that have not proven to be anything nefarious.
On Monday, two U.S. Customs and Border Patrol officers were seen at an early voting site in Tallahassee, Fla. But election officials determined the two officers were attempting to vote early after realizing they would not be in the state on Election Day. (It is not exactly reassuring to learn that the officers were at the wrong polling place to vote, but it happens.)
On October 21, “Monroe County Supervisor of Elections Sherri Hodies said she has launched an investigation after a voter reported seeing armed, masked federal agents conduct a stop Tuesday at the entrance to the Murray Nelson Government Center in Key Largo, one of the county’s early voting sites.”
So far, there is no further information on that report from a voter; the government center is a four-acre, two-story governmental and cultural arts complex, and if there was an arrest — which has not yet been confirmed–– it may have had nothing to the person intending to cast a ballot early. Other Florida counties say they have no reports of immigration enforcement agents near early voting locations.
Earlier this month, in Washington, D.C., there was concern about National Guard troops standing near a ballot drop box:
The troops shown loitering by a D.C. ballot box in the Foggy Bottom neighborhood Thursday in a video that spread across social media were not trying to guard the box, two National Guard officials told The Washington Post on Friday.
U.S. law prohibits the positioning of “any troops or armed men at any place where a general or special election is held,” and the images prompted concern across social media that the service members could interfere with voting access.
The two officials, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to provide details on the incident that had not yet been made public, said the troops were part of a larger group that had paused as part of a patrol but were not specifically guarding the box.
The service members receive training about not standing by ballot boxes, one of the officials said. “They’re not there to guard the boxes, and that will be reiterated to the soldiers, to, you know, be more aware of where they’re standing,” one of the officials said.
In Texas, Leticia Gutierrez, a Democratic candidate for state senate, said, “she saw a state trooper parked at the Martin L. Flukinger Community Center in Channelview.” Again, the mere presence of a police officer at a voting site is not de facto intimidation or an attempt to interfere with someone voting. Remember, cops are allowed to show up and vote, too, and in most jurisdictions, they are permitted to vote while on duty.
It is extremely safe to vote. I understand that in a post-January 6 world, a lot of things that once seemed unthinkable are now thinkable. But no one who is legally eligible to vote should feel any concern about going to a polling place during the early voting period, or on Election Day, and you should feel confident that your ballot will be counted.
With that said, I have my doubts about wisdom of localities using drop boxes; back in 2024, unknown assailants torched drop boxes in Washington and Oregon. In Oregon, things turned out okay; “fire suppressant inside the ballot box protected virtually all the ballots. Only three ballots suffered damage, and [Multnomah County Elections Division] will contact those three voters, via unique identifiers on their ballot envelopes, so they can receive replacement ballots.” But in Clark County, Wash., it was a different story; while authorities could identify 488 damaged ballots retrieved from the ballot box, “Elections personnel were unable to identify 6 of the ballots. Other ballots may have been completely burned to ash, and therefore, unidentifiable.”
This year, before the California primary, Los Angeles election officials discovered a small number of vote-by-mail ballots with fire damage in a drop box near the Civic Center. So far, there have been no reports of attempted arson at drop boxes in the run-up to the general election.
At minimum, local governments ought to locate ballot drop boxes in secure locations, such as inside a government building that gets locked up at night.
In 2024, there were incidents of incendiaries placed in the mailbox in Arizona and the hijacked mail truck in California.
This year, in San Mateo County, Calif., local officials think that a mail theft may have included some mail-in ballots, but “officials do not know whether any ballots were actually taken and do not believe the thieves targeted the mail because it contained ballots.” In Salt Lake City, authorities believe a string of mail thefts may have taken four ballots from people’s mailboxes. In Sacramento, federal postal inspectors are investigating a theft of mail from a U.S. Postal Service truck that may have involved election ballots. And in Seattle, 92 undelivered mail ballots were discovered in a dumpster.
I’m not saying your mail-in ballot isn’t safe; I’m saying it is about as safe as everything else you send through the mail. If that makes you nervous, then you probably ought to turn in your ballot yourself at an early voting polling place.
It is not good that the likes of Steve Bannon say things like, “We’re going to have ICE surround the polls come November.” (You may have noticed Bannon says a lot of things.) It is also extremely suboptimal that our octogenarian president said in an interview with Reuters, “When you think of it, we shouldn’t even have an election,” or this exchange in August:
Wayne Allyn Root: So let me, so let me, let me put an idea in your head, okay? Because it’s so hard to get the Senate to do anything, now they’re on recess. They don’t get anything done if they never get the Save America Act done. You have the right to declare a national security emergency for elections. And the Supreme Court ruled in 1983 under Reagan, uh, that INS v. Chadha, that if you declare a national security emergency as the president of the United States, they can’t challenge it. It can only be overturned by a two-thirds vote of both houses of Congress. So if you do this in the next month, we will get photo ID, proof of citizenship, and a limit to mail-in ballots and get to even need—
Donald Trump: Let me just say that stranger things have happened.
When someone suggests declaring “a national security emergency for elections” and unilaterally rewriting state election laws, and your response is not, “No, I am not going to do that. That is beyond the legitimate scope of my powers as president,” it is very hard to believe that you are “preserving, protecting, and defending the Constitution of the United States of America,” as promised in the presidential oath of office.
But, like Bannon, Trump says a lot of things. (Our Jeff Blehar notes the president’s odd, intensifying fascination with discussing men’s derrieres.) You should not let any presidential statement deter you from casting a ballot that is your legal right.
Abdul El-Sayed’s Early Desire for Sharia Compliance
The first time Abdul El-Sayed was quoted in the New York Times, it was 2009, and he was singing the praises of Ann Arbor-based University Bank, and its “entire subsidiary devoted to financial products that comply with Muslim religious law, or Shariah.” At that point, University Bank had “done nearly $80 million in Islamically approvable ‘mortgage-alternative’ financing for residential and commercial real estate in 15 states”:
For customers like Abdul El-Sayed, though, the bank was literally a godsend.
A medical student and Rhodes scholar, Mr. El-Sayed bought a $123,000 condominium in Ann Arbor with a mortgage-alternative arrangement. A generation earlier, Mr. El-Sayed’s father had had no choice under Shariah but to save up until he could buy a home with cash.
“Ultimately, the question is,” Mr. El-Sayed, 24, said in an interview, “when I die and I stand before God and go through everything I did in my life, I don’t want to say I did it the easy way instead of the Shariah-compliant way. Not because of fear but because of obligation.”
The article notes that while Islam’s rules and restrictions on loans involve “some complicated theological and financial concepts,” generally usury or interest is barred; interest on loans is central to most traditional banking. The article goes on to explain:
Mortgage alternatives, which are the most popular financial product for Islamic consumers in the United States, essentially add what would have been the monthly interest into the purchase price of a home.
In one variation, the bank actually buys the house at a qualified customer’s direction, and then sells it to that customer through monthly installments modeled on the payments of a 30-year mortgage. In two other common methods, the customer either acquires the home from the bank on a lease-to-own arrangement or purchases the home in partnership with the bank and gradually buys out the bank’s share.
From those comments in 2009, some critics of Abdul El-Sayed have contended he wants sharia law in the United States. That is stretching what he said, but it is clear that at age 24, El-Sayed’s personal compliance with sharia law was very important to him.
ADDENDUM: Despite the violence in France forcing the cancellation of a fan event, NFL commissioner Roger Goodell says the NFL will return to Paris. Over in the Washington Post, I imagine what that football game could be like a year from now, under a President Marine Le Pen.