Since early 2025, the Justice Department has filed 31 lawsuits seeking states’ voter data, in an effort to obtain voter rolls containing sensitive information about registered voters in their states. The Justice Department’s reasoning for filing these suits is that they believe more information is needed to ensure states are complying with two federal voting laws, the Help America Vote Act and the National Voter Registration Act. Both are in place to ensure states have the ability to maintain accurate voter rolls. According to CBS News, out of the 31 suits filed, the Justice Department has lost 26 cases, and no appeals court has ruled in its favor.

This effort showcases that the Trump administration’s midterm election efforts are better understood as a legitimacy strategy than a rules strategy. Their main product from these undertakings is creating public doubt about elections, which can be used after the midterm ballots are tallied. Rather than focusing on changing actual laws and regulations, Trump and his administration are focusing on public narrative by attacking the credibility, trustworthiness, and validity of the institution itself.

This past April, the Justice Department subpoenaed the identities of every person who worked on the 2020 election in Fulton County, Georgia. According to the New York Times, the county called the subpoena an attempt to “target, harass, and punish” the president’s perceived opponents. Even though 2020 election results were certified long ago, the administration is still pursuing records in several states. Meanwhile, the Department of Homeland Security’s search for noncitizen voters has found that out of 1,600 voter fraud cases since January 2025, 160 have led to arrests; this represents around 0.00009% of the roughly 174 million registered voters in the US.

Sean Morales-Doyle of the Brennan Center, quoted in the New York Times, states that the campaign is not mainly about policy, because the administration lacks the authority to change policy. He claims its goal is to create distrust and confusion before the election, as well as both discouraging people to participate and laying groundwork for challenging the result afterwards.

In their piece, The Breakdown of Democratic Regimes, Juan Linz and Alfred Stepan argue that democracies break down when citizens stop seeing them as the “least bad alternative.” Legitimacy lets a regime count on the passive obedience of most citizens. That makes it a more important target than any single rule. A campaign that persuades voters their elections are corrupt works even if every court rules against it.

Additionally, Levitsky and Ziblatt discuss the norm of accepting election results. The insurrection on January 6th, 2021, severely tested this norm, and the current campaign tests it further. The president’s clemency grants to nearly 1,600 January 6 defendants, and his expressed regret about not seizing voting machines after 2020, signal that the norm is not a constraint on this administration. If voters and officials treat conceding as optional, elections stop functioning as a way to sanction anti-democratic behavior.

Ozan Varol’s piece on stealth authoritarianism explains why legal action continues despite losses handed by the courts. He argues that the state has far more resources than its targets, so a suit imposes costs wherever its merits. Each voter-roll lawsuit forces states to spend resources defending themselves and keeps the claim of fraud in the public’s view.

The Trump administration states it wants accurate voter rolls and the prosecution of non-citizen voting. While it is true that verifying rolls is a legitimate government activity, these efforts have been pursued clumsily, and the loss of credibility is a side effect. Over the next few weeks, and after the midterm elections on November 3rd, it is important to monitor what the administration chooses to do. I think that the danger is not that the Trump administration will significantly change major policies or regulations prior to the midterms. However, I think that the danger is that Americans will accept a version of events in which any unfavorable result is illegitimate.