Will Huff
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MMA
07/30/26
Multiple figures behind the proposal have also urged Trump to declare a “national emergency” over the midterm elections
Written by Alex Kaplan
Published 07/30/26
A group of activists in the election denial community — including Tina Peters, a former Colorado election official convicted of charges related to the 2020 election, and Clay Parikh, who has served as a “special government employee” for the Trump administration — claim they presented a key government agency responsible for protecting elections with “operational guidance” for the midterms in the form of a “risk mitigation” and “practical election-security plan” to implement in the 100 days before the elections. The proposal appears to be the latest attempt to push the Trump administration to take over election processes ahead of the midterms.
The new proposal, dated July 22 and called the “100-Day Risk Mitigation Election Plan” and “Operational Guidance for the November Federal Election – 2026,” urges the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency — an agency housed under the Department of Homeland Security that is “one of the main federal partners for states on election security, sharing intelligence on potential threats to voting infrastructure and providing quick regional support,” per MS NOW — to “concentrate on six achievable measures,” including “transition[ing] the general electorate away from ballot-marking devices (BMD) to hand-marked paper ballots” and “insisting that the official count can only be certified after a full hand-count of every ballot.”
It also lays out an implementation framework that would involve classifying all counties based on current election processes and their ability to transition ahead of the midterms and then providing each county with implementation plans. During a podcast interview discussing the plan, Peters acknowledged that “CISA is not a forceful body that they can make people do things, but they can actually make recommendations,” and suggested that DHS could use a recently announced grant for states “that comply with certain things like paper ballots and so on and so forth” as an “incentive.”
Voting machines and tabulators have been the target of election conspiracy theories for years, sparking campaigns to replace them with full hand-counts. As experts have explained, a system of hand-counted paper ballots would be less accurate, more expensive, impractical, and “potentially riskier than the current system of machines with auditable paper trails that almost all cities and states use.” Studies have actually shown that “hand-counting ballots produces more errors than machine tabulation,” and as the Brennan Center for Justice has explained, “Many checks exist to ensure that voting machines count ballots correctly and produce accurate election results.”
Peters released the new proposal, which she called a “practical election-security plan,” on her website along with a July 24 letter to the acting director of the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency thanking him “for meeting with us … and for giving us the opportunity to present our concerns and proposed path forward for the 2026 federal election.”
These are the figures who signed the letter to CISA:
Peters, who publicly released the plan, is the former county clerk of Mesa County, Colorado, and was “convicted in 2024 for her role in a brazen plot to examine voting machines under her control after the 2020 election” before Democratic Colorado Gov. Jared Polis commuted her sentence. She met with Trump at the Oval Office in late June, later claiming that she told him, “If we don’t fix these machines, if we don’t get rid of these machines, we’re going to lose the next election.”
Parikh, who has served as a “special government employee” in the Trump administration and who was cited in the FBI’s warrant for its raid of a Fulton County, Georgia, election facility. Parikh was also involved in Kari Lake’s unsuccessful legal effort to claim fraud was involved in her 2022 Arizona gubernatorial election defeat and has reportedly “served as a witness in other cases … challenging the use of voting machines.”
Conrad Reynolds, a podcast host who reportedly ”thinks Arkansas voting machines could be flipping votes” and who was involved with Restore Election Integrity Arkansas and its push for an amendment “aimed at requiring all elections in Arkansas to be conducted with paper ballots and removing language in the Arkansas Constitution that permits elections to be conducted by voting machines.” Reynolds has also run the Arkansas Voter Integrity Initiative, which has aimed for “getting rid of voting machines” in favor of paper ballots.
Will Huff, who often co-hosts Reynolds’ podcast and has pushed election-related conspiracy theories about “dirty voter rolls” and “the mail-in ballot scheme.” Huff has also been involved with Restore Election Integrity Arkansas and the Arkansas Voter Integrity Initiative.
Peters also explained the proposal during a July 27 podcast appearance, claiming that Trump's July 16 speech indicated “a lot has come out about the vulnerabilities of our election infrastructure.”
Video
Citation
From the July 27, 2026, edition of America, Can We Talk?, streamed on Rumble
TINA PETERS (GUEST): Now, so — and that’s in that 14-page memo to CISA. But here’s what you can do. If we cannot physically get rid of the machines before November, then having — you know, taking the preliminary count that comes from the machines, but not certifying the election until — and however long it takes — until finishing up the hand-count. Then, if those two things don’t meet, then then you know.
So it’s a way if you’re — if you use that as your preliminary results and then you have — I’m going to say it again — then you have an actual hand-count, however long it takes to get it done, and then you have the certification. The thing of it is is that a lot of the judges that are put in the place to certify the results are taking the word of an electronic device. They can't actually see that, yes, we had a group of people, Democrat and Republican, that have checked this out.
It’s just like, you would always check your bank ledger, right? You just, you know, check, make sure everything is, you know, before you realize that it’s valid. That’s what we need. And if it take — right now, they’re taking how many weeks to finish an election anyway, right?
Additionally, Peters said on the podcast that she had urged Trump during their Oval Office meeting to fire members of the Election Assistance Commission — which Trump subsequently did.
Trump has taken actions to expand his control over election processes, and election deniers have been proposing policies for even more power ahead of the midterms
In recent months, Trump and his right-wing media allies have advocated for passage of the SAVE America Act and other policies to increase federal control of the midterms. As USA Today reported, “Trump is working to gain unprecedented control of the 2026 U.S. midterm elections” with “a series of new assertions of presidential power.”
These actions have included firing key leaders of the federal Election Assistance Commission, putting election deniers in administration positions that oversee elections, and issuing executive orders that would tighten rules for mail-in voting and create a federal list of U.S. citizens eligible to vote.
ProPublica also noted that Trump “eviscerat[ed] CISA” at the start of his second term, replaced career election specialists at the Department of Homeland Security with his allies, including some who have ties to the election denial movement, and “discarded or diminished other federal initiatives with roles in protecting election integrity or blocking foreign interference.”
Right-wing media and election deniers have called for the president to further expand his power by issuing a national emergency executive order that would supposedly give Trump “essentially king-like powers” over the midterms. Two of the signatories of the letter to CISA — Reynolds and Huff — have called for the declaration of such a “national emergency,” and Peters has said she believes “Trump could sign an executive order to get rid of the machines and say that they are — that a vendor cannot have that much influence over our elections.”
As part of those calls, election deniers reportedly circulated a draft of a proposed executive order within the administration, and right-wing media figures appear to be weaving together a narrative about foreign interference in American elections by countries like China and Venezuela that could be used as a “predicate” for a national emergency.
The new proposal to CISA from Peters and the others in the election denial community appears to be the latest attempt to control election processes for the midterms.
//
06/30/26 10:00 AM EDT
The plot to subvert the midterms is getting stranger and more dangerous
07/02/26 10:05 AM EDT
02/26/26
-=-=-=---
MMA
07/30/26
Multiple figures behind the proposal have also urged Trump to declare a “national emergency” over the midterm elections
Written by Alex Kaplan
Published 07/30/26
A group of activists in the election denial community — including Tina Peters, a former Colorado election official convicted of charges related to the 2020 election, and Clay Parikh, who has served as a “special government employee” for the Trump administration — claim they presented a key government agency responsible for protecting elections with “operational guidance” for the midterms in the form of a “risk mitigation” and “practical election-security plan” to implement in the 100 days before the elections. The proposal appears to be the latest attempt to push the Trump administration to take over election processes ahead of the midterms.
The new proposal, dated July 22 and called the “100-Day Risk Mitigation Election Plan” and “Operational Guidance for the November Federal Election – 2026,” urges the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency — an agency housed under the Department of Homeland Security that is “one of the main federal partners for states on election security, sharing intelligence on potential threats to voting infrastructure and providing quick regional support,” per MS NOW — to “concentrate on six achievable measures,” including “transition[ing] the general electorate away from ballot-marking devices (BMD) to hand-marked paper ballots” and “insisting that the official count can only be certified after a full hand-count of every ballot.”
It also lays out an implementation framework that would involve classifying all counties based on current election processes and their ability to transition ahead of the midterms and then providing each county with implementation plans. During a podcast interview discussing the plan, Peters acknowledged that “CISA is not a forceful body that they can make people do things, but they can actually make recommendations,” and suggested that DHS could use a recently announced grant for states “that comply with certain things like paper ballots and so on and so forth” as an “incentive.”
Voting machines and tabulators have been the target of election conspiracy theories for years, sparking campaigns to replace them with full hand-counts. As experts have explained, a system of hand-counted paper ballots would be less accurate, more expensive, impractical, and “potentially riskier than the current system of machines with auditable paper trails that almost all cities and states use.” Studies have actually shown that “hand-counting ballots produces more errors than machine tabulation,” and as the Brennan Center for Justice has explained, “Many checks exist to ensure that voting machines count ballots correctly and produce accurate election results.”
Peters released the new proposal, which she called a “practical election-security plan,” on her website along with a July 24 letter to the acting director of the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency thanking him “for meeting with us … and for giving us the opportunity to present our concerns and proposed path forward for the 2026 federal election.”
These are the figures who signed the letter to CISA:
Peters, who publicly released the plan, is the former county clerk of Mesa County, Colorado, and was “convicted in 2024 for her role in a brazen plot to examine voting machines under her control after the 2020 election” before Democratic Colorado Gov. Jared Polis commuted her sentence. She met with Trump at the Oval Office in late June, later claiming that she told him, “If we don’t fix these machines, if we don’t get rid of these machines, we’re going to lose the next election.”
Parikh, who has served as a “special government employee” in the Trump administration and who was cited in the FBI’s warrant for its raid of a Fulton County, Georgia, election facility. Parikh was also involved in Kari Lake’s unsuccessful legal effort to claim fraud was involved in her 2022 Arizona gubernatorial election defeat and has reportedly “served as a witness in other cases … challenging the use of voting machines.”
Conrad Reynolds, a podcast host who reportedly ”thinks Arkansas voting machines could be flipping votes” and who was involved with Restore Election Integrity Arkansas and its push for an amendment “aimed at requiring all elections in Arkansas to be conducted with paper ballots and removing language in the Arkansas Constitution that permits elections to be conducted by voting machines.” Reynolds has also run the Arkansas Voter Integrity Initiative, which has aimed for “getting rid of voting machines” in favor of paper ballots.
Will Huff, who often co-hosts Reynolds’ podcast and has pushed election-related conspiracy theories about “dirty voter rolls” and “the mail-in ballot scheme.” Huff has also been involved with Restore Election Integrity Arkansas and the Arkansas Voter Integrity Initiative.
Peters also explained the proposal during a July 27 podcast appearance, claiming that Trump's July 16 speech indicated “a lot has come out about the vulnerabilities of our election infrastructure.”
Video
Citation
From the July 27, 2026, edition of America, Can We Talk?, streamed on Rumble
TINA PETERS (GUEST): Now, so — and that’s in that 14-page memo to CISA. But here’s what you can do. If we cannot physically get rid of the machines before November, then having — you know, taking the preliminary count that comes from the machines, but not certifying the election until — and however long it takes — until finishing up the hand-count. Then, if those two things don’t meet, then then you know.
So it’s a way if you’re — if you use that as your preliminary results and then you have — I’m going to say it again — then you have an actual hand-count, however long it takes to get it done, and then you have the certification. The thing of it is is that a lot of the judges that are put in the place to certify the results are taking the word of an electronic device. They can't actually see that, yes, we had a group of people, Democrat and Republican, that have checked this out.
It’s just like, you would always check your bank ledger, right? You just, you know, check, make sure everything is, you know, before you realize that it’s valid. That’s what we need. And if it take — right now, they’re taking how many weeks to finish an election anyway, right?
Additionally, Peters said on the podcast that she had urged Trump during their Oval Office meeting to fire members of the Election Assistance Commission — which Trump subsequently did.
Trump has taken actions to expand his control over election processes, and election deniers have been proposing policies for even more power ahead of the midterms
In recent months, Trump and his right-wing media allies have advocated for passage of the SAVE America Act and other policies to increase federal control of the midterms. As USA Today reported, “Trump is working to gain unprecedented control of the 2026 U.S. midterm elections” with “a series of new assertions of presidential power.”
These actions have included firing key leaders of the federal Election Assistance Commission, putting election deniers in administration positions that oversee elections, and issuing executive orders that would tighten rules for mail-in voting and create a federal list of U.S. citizens eligible to vote.
ProPublica also noted that Trump “eviscerat[ed] CISA” at the start of his second term, replaced career election specialists at the Department of Homeland Security with his allies, including some who have ties to the election denial movement, and “discarded or diminished other federal initiatives with roles in protecting election integrity or blocking foreign interference.”
Right-wing media and election deniers have called for the president to further expand his power by issuing a national emergency executive order that would supposedly give Trump “essentially king-like powers” over the midterms. Two of the signatories of the letter to CISA — Reynolds and Huff — have called for the declaration of such a “national emergency,” and Peters has said she believes “Trump could sign an executive order to get rid of the machines and say that they are — that a vendor cannot have that much influence over our elections.”
As part of those calls, election deniers reportedly circulated a draft of a proposed executive order within the administration, and right-wing media figures appear to be weaving together a narrative about foreign interference in American elections by countries like China and Venezuela that could be used as a “predicate” for a national emergency.
The new proposal to CISA from Peters and the others in the election denial community appears to be the latest attempt to control election processes for the midterms.
//
06/30/26 10:00 AM EDT
The plot to subvert the midterms is getting stranger and more dangerous
07/02/26 10:05 AM EDT
02/26/26
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OMFG
AN PP 3 26
Several high-ranking federal election officials attended a summit last week at which prominent figures who worked to overturn Donald Trump’s loss in the 2020 election pressed the president to declare a national emergency to take over this year’s midterms.
According to videos, photos and social media posts reviewed by ProPublica, the meeting’s participants included Kurt Olsen, a White House lawyer charged with reinvestigating the 2020 election, and Heather Honey, the Department of Homeland Security official in charge of election integrity. The event was convened by Michael Flynn, Trump’s former national security adviser, and attended by Cleta Mitchell, who directs the Election Integrity Network, a group that has spread false claims about election fraud and noncitizen voting.
Election experts say that the meeting reflects an intensifying push to persuade Trump to take unprecedented actions to affect the vote in November. Courts have largely blocked his efforts to reshape elections through an executive order, and legislation has stalled in Congress that would mandate strict voter ID requirements across the country.
The Washington Post reported Thursday that activists associated with those at the summit have been circulating a draft of an executive order that would ban mail-in ballots and get rid of voting machines as part of a federal takeover. Peter Ticktin, a lawyer who worked on the executive order and had a client at the summit, told ProPublica these actions were “all part of the same effort.”
The summit followed other meetings and discussions between administration officials and activists — many not previously reported — stretching back to at least last fall, according to emails and recordings obtained by ProPublica. The coordination between those inside and outside the government represents a breakdown of crucial guardrails, experts on U.S. elections said.
“The meeting shows that the same people who tried to overturn the 2020 election have only grown better organized and are now embedded in the machinery of government,” said Brendan Fischer, a director at the Campaign Legal Center, a nonpartisan pro-democracy organization. “This creates substantial risk that the administration is laying the groundwork to improperly reshape elections ahead of the midterms or even go against the will of the voters.”
Five of six federal officials who attended the summit didn’t answer questions about the event from ProPublica.
A White House official, speaking on the condition of anonymity, said federal officials’ attendance at the gathering shouldn’t be construed as support for a national emergency declaration and that it was “common practice” for staffers to communicate with outside advocates who want to share policy ideas. The official pointed to comments Trump made to PBS News denying he was considering a national emergency or had read the draft executive order. “Any speculation about policies the administration may or may not undertake is just that — speculation,” the official said.
In the past, Trump has expressed an openness to a federal takeover as a way to stem projected Republican losses in November. This month, he said in an interview with conservative podcaster Dan Bongino that Republicans need “to take over” elections and “to nationalize the voting.”
Mitchell did not respond to questions from ProPublica about the summit. A spokesperson for Flynn responded to detailed questions from ProPublica by disparaging experts who expressed concerns, texting, “LOL ‘EXPERTS.’”
The 30-person roundtable discussion on Feb. 19, at an office building in downtown Washington, D.C., was sponsored by the Gold Institute for International Strategy, a conservative think tank. Afterward, activists and government officials dined together, photos reviewed by ProPublica showed.
Flynn, the institute’s chair, told a social media personality why he’d arranged the event.
“I wanted to bring this group together physically, because most of us have met online” while “fighting battles” in swing states from Arizona to Georgia, Flynn said to Tommy Robinson on the gathering’s sidelines. Robinson
of these
. “The overall theme of this event was to make sure that all of us aren’t operating in our own little bubbles.”
Flynn has repeatedly advocated for Trump to declare a national emergency and posted on social media after the event addressing Trump, “We The People want fair elections and we know there is only one office in the land that can make that happen given the current political environment in the United States.”
In addition to Olsen and Honey, four other federal officials from agencies that will shape the upcoming elections attended the event. At least four of the six attended the dinner.
One is Clay Parikh, a special government employee at the Office of the Director of National Intelligence who’s helping Olsen with the 2020 inquiry. A spokesperson at ODNI said Parikh had attended the summit “in his personal capacity.”
Another, Mac Warner, handled election litigation at the Justice Department. A department spokesperson said that Warner had resigned the day after the event and had not received the required approval from agency ethics officials to participate.
The department “remains committed to upholding the integrity of our electoral system and will continue to prioritize efforts to ensure all elections remain free, fair, and transparent,” the spokesperson said in an email.
A third administration official who attended the summit, Marci McCarthy, directs communications for the nation’s cyber defense agency, which oversees the security of elections infrastructure like voting machines.
Kari Lake, whom Trump appointed as senior adviser to the U.S. Agency for Global Media, was a featured speaker. Lake worked with Olsen and Parikh in her unsuccessful bid to overturn her loss in the 2022 Arizona gubernatorial election.
Lake said in an email that she “showed up to the event, spoke for about 20 minutes about the overall importance of election integrity, a non-partisan issue that matters to all citizens — both in the United States and abroad. I left without listening to any other speeches.”
“Elections should be free from fraud or any other malfeasance that subverts the will of the people,” she added.
At the meeting, activists presented on ways to transform American elections that would help conservatives, according to social media posts and interviews they gave on conservative media, such as LindellTV, a streaming platform created by the pillow mogul Mike Lindell. They said the group broke down into two camps: those who wanted to pursue a more incremental legal and legislative strategy and those who wanted Trump to declare a national emergency.
Multiple activists left the meeting convinced Trump should do the latter, a step they believe would allow the president to get around the Constitution’s directive that elections should be run by states.
Former Overstock.com CEO Patrick Byrne, a prominent funder of efforts to overturn the 2020 election, told LindellTV that Trump has “played nice” so far in not seizing control of American elections. “But at some point,” Byrne said, “he’s got to do something, the muscular thing: declare a national emergency.”
Byrne responded to questions from ProPublica by sending a screenshot of a poll that he said suggested “2/3 of Americans correctly do not trust” voting machines, which the proposed national emergency declaration aims to do away with.
Will Huff, who has advocated for doing away with voting machines, told a conservative vlogger that Olsen, the White House lawyer, and other administration representatives would take the “consensus” from the gathering back to Trump. “It’s got to be a national emergency,” said Huff, the campaign manager for a Republican candidate for Arkansas secretary of state.
In response to questions from ProPublica, Huff said in an email that Olsen and Trump would use their judgment to decide whether to declare a national emergency.
“The President has been briefed on findings of shortcomings in election infrastructure,” Huff wrote. “I believe there are steady hands around the President wanting to ensure that any action taken is, first, constitutional and legal, but also backed by evidence.”
McCarthy, the cybersecurity official, expressed more general solidarity with fellow attendees in a post on social media about the summit. “Grateful for friendships forged through years of standing shoulder-to-shoulder, united by purpose and conviction,” she wrote. “The mission continues… and so does the fellowship.”
Last week’s gathering was the latest in a string of private interactions between conservative election activists and administration officials, according to emails, documents and recordings obtained by ProPublica. Many have involved Mitchell’s Election Integrity Network. Before taking her government post, Honey was a leader in the Election Integrity Network, ProPublica has reported, as was McCarthy.
Previously unreported emails obtained by ProPublica show that just weeks after Honey started at the Department of Homeland Security, she briefed election activists, a Republican secretary of state and another federal official on a conference call arranged by her former boss, Mitchell.
“We are excited to welcome her on our call this morning to hear about her work for election integrity inside DHS,” Mitchell wrote in an email introducing presenters on the call.
Honey didn’t respond to questions from ProPublica about the call. Experts said Honey’s briefing gave her former employer access that likely would have violated ethics rules in place under previous administrations, including the first Trump administration — though not this one.
The prior “ethics guardrails would have prevented some of the revolving door issues we’re seeing between the election denial movement and the government officials,” said Fischer, the Campaign Legal Center director. Those prior rules “were supposed to prevent former employers and clients from receiving privileged access.”
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