Election Security Under Siege

Executive summary

With the 2026 midterms less than seven months away, the Trump administration is dismantling the federal election-security architecture built after 2020 — and most Americans either oppose it or don't yet know enough to have an opinion. A new pulse survey of 86 respondents finds that only 1 in 5 actively supports reducing these safeguards, while nearly 4 in 10 oppose the move and an almost equal share remains genuinely unsure.

That massive undecided bloc is the story. It doesn't signal apathy — it signals an information gap at precisely the moment when concrete, irreversible changes are accelerating. CISA's election security program faces elimination in the FY2027 budget. At least 75 career election-security officials have already been pushed out. And public trust in accurate vote-counting has fallen 17 points nationally since Election Day 2024.

Four takeaways define this moment: opposition to safeguard reductions is a plurality, not a majority, leaving a large persuadable audience; the reductions are already happening at scale, not hypothetical; no single level of government commands majority support for controlling elections; and psychological traits — not just party affiliation — predict who's most skeptical of the federal system.

Context

This pulse survey was fielded in April 2026 — the same week ProPublica published its investigation into what it described as a White House effort to 'take over' the midterm elections. Eighty-six respondents answered four questions on election safeguards, security trust, and governance preferences. It is a directional sample, not a nationally representative poll, but its signals align closely with large-scale benchmarks from UC San Diego, States United Democracy Center, and The Center Square — giving the findings real interpretive weight.

The backdrop matters enormously. Since January 2025, the federal government's election-security infrastructure has been systematically reduced. The Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) — which since 2018 has helped state and local election officials defend against foreign interference from Iran, Russia, and China — has lost an estimated 1,000 employees. The FY2027 budget proposes eliminating CISA's election security program entirely, cutting roughly $360 million in net funding and shuttering the Elections Infrastructure Information Sharing and Analysis Center (EI-ISAC), the primary threat-intelligence hub for state and local officials.

At the same time, the Department of Justice has demanded voter registration databases including partial Social Security numbers from nearly 38 states, filed lawsuits against eight states that refused to comply, and refilled its voting-rights enforcement unit with attorneys who participated in challenging the 2020 election outcome. A DHS group calling itself 'Team America' has been implementing Trump's March 2025 elections executive order using federal levers that push against the Constitution's delegation of election administration to states.

This is the environment in which 37.2% of respondents said they simply weren't sure how to feel — not a complacent non-answer, but a meaningful signal that public awareness of these specific, documented changes has not yet caught up to the pace of the changes themselves. The survey captures a public at an inflection point, before the 2026 midterm campaign fully crystallizes the stakes.

Conclusion

The 2026 midterms are now the testing ground for the most significant restructuring of U.S. election security since CISA was created. The public hasn't fully absorbed what's already happened — 1,000 CISA employees gone, career officials replaced by election-denial movement figures, EI-ISAC on the chopping block — and that awareness gap is the most consequential variable going into November.

Watch three things between now and Election Day. First, whether the CISA budget cut survives Congressional appropriations — its fate determines whether state and local officials have any federal backstop against Iranian or Russian cyberattacks. Second, how the DOJ voter-database lawsuits resolve in the eight resisting states; the outcome sets the precedent for federal versus state authority over voter rolls. Third, whether the 37% of Americans who reportedly expect ICE officers at polling places in 2026 translates into actual suppressed turnout — particularly among communities of color, where trust is already fragile.

The practical implication for anyone tracking election integrity: the persuadable third of the public is movable, and they respond to competence and transparency arguments more than partisan ones. The window to inform that audience is closing fast.