Sen. Elissa Slotkin of Michigan will introduce legislation Thursday designed to prevent the president from stationing armed military personnel or federal agents at polling places during elections. The bill comes as Democrats increasingly worry that the White House might attempt exactly that.
The measure, called the Protect Our Polls Act, would require congressional approval before the president could send armed federal forces to polling sites, even under the narrow legal exception that currently permits such deployment only "to repel armed enemies of the United States." Federal law has barred this practice since the Civil War, but Slotkin and other Democrats fear the current administration views those restrictions as negotiable.
The bill has drawn support from senators representing competitive battleground states, including Ruben Gallego and Mark Kelly of Arizona, Jacky Rosen of Nevada, Raphael Warnock of Georgia, and Tammy Baldwin of Wisconsin. Mark Kelly invoked the century-old prohibition in a statement released Thursday. "Federal law has protected polling places from military interference since the Civil War for a reason," Kelly said. "President Trump has made clear he thinks he can ignore those limits. We're making sure he can't."
Trump's public statements on election oversight have fueled these concerns. In a podcast appearance earlier this year, he said Republicans "ought to nationalize the voting" in at least 15 locations. He later told NBC News that Republicans should seize control of election systems in specific cities within Georgia, Michigan, and Pennsylvania, all swing states. Local officials from both parties in those states objected strongly to the remarks.
The president's comments carried particular weight given his track record. In a January 2025 interview with The New York Times, Trump did not dispute reporting that he had considered using the National Guard to seize ballot boxes during the 2020 election, which he continues to claim without evidence that he won. "I should have," Trump said. When asked whether he would consider such action in a future election, he did not rule it out, though he questioned whether the National Guard possessed the necessary sophistication for the task.
Additionally, Trump has already moved against election infrastructure during his current term. The FBI executed a search warrant at an elections facility in Fulton County, Georgia, in January seeking documents from the 2020 presidential election. The Justice Department has also attempted to obtain voter rolls from multiple states, but federal judges in Oregon, California, and Michigan rejected those requests.
Slotkin has pressed the administration on potential polling place deployments for months. In April, she raised the scenario directly, prompting Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth to dismiss it as a "gotcha hypothetical." Earlier, in February, a Department of Homeland Security official assured state election administrators that ICE agents would not appear at polling sites during midterm elections.
Senate Majority Leader John Thune, a South Dakota Republican, also distanced himself from the president's federalization proposals after Trump's remarks became public. The White House has not yet responded to the new legislation.
Author Sarah Mitchell: "Democrats are right to worry and right to act on this, but a bill requiring congressional approval to deploy troops at polls shouldn't need to exist in the first place, and the fact that we're legislating against an obvious abuse speaks volumes about where we are."
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