COMMENTARY: The Protect Our Polls Act — When American Democracy Must Defend Itself Against Itself

A Woman Who Understands Illegal Orders From the Inside

Elissa Slotkin is no ordinary senator. She serves on the Senate Armed Services Committee and the Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee. Before her political career, she worked for the CIA and as a national security analyst at the National Security Council under several administrations. She knows the inner workings of intelligence and national defense, and she knows exactly what it means when an order crosses constitutional boundaries. It is this expertise that makes her statements so powerful.

As early as December 2025, during a Senate Armed Services Committee hearing, Slotkin pressed Pentagon officials on the issue of illegal orders and military deployment at polling places. She then directly questioned the commander of NORTHCOM. In March 2026, she confronted Secretary of Homeland Security Markwayne Mullin during his confirmation hearing on the specific issue of an ICE deployment at polling places. And on June 12, 2026—six days before introducing the Protect Our Polls Act—she had already attempted to include similar safeguards in the 2027 National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) amendments. Republicans blocked both amendments in committee.

When the Secretary of Defense Can’t Say “It’s Illegal”

This moment deserves to be strongly emphasized. During a Senate Armed Services Committee hearing, Slotkin asked Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth a seemingly simple question: Is it illegal to deploy the military at the polls? Hegseth, in Slotkin’s own words, “could not bring himself to say the words: it is illegal to deploy the military at polling places.” ” This is a statement that should have sent shockwaves through the media. The U.S. Secretary of Defense refuses to acknowledge the century-old law prohibiting his military from entering polling places. If that doesn’t sound like a wake-up call, nothing will.

And this was not an isolated incident. According to data compiled by Slotkin and his team, eight high-ranking officials appointed by Trump refused to publicly rule out—during hearings or in front of the press—the deployment of troops or federal agents to polling places. Eight. This is not a gaffe. It is a strategy.

I remember the first warning signs in 2020, when Trump raised his suspicions of widespread election fraud. Many in the media downplayed it. Today, six years later, the Secretary of Defense cannot say “it’s illegal” before the Senate. At some point, we have to call a spade a spade: this is a campaign of institutionalized intimidation.

A Systemic Assault on Electoral Trust

To understand why the Protect Our Polls Act is necessary, we must face the full extent of what the Trump administration has done to undermine electoral integrity since the beginning of 2026. The numbers speak for themselves. In just six months, President Trump has repeated his rhetoric about “rigged” elections at least 107 times. One hundred and seven times. With daily regularity, like a hammer striking the same nail.

But beyond the words, there are the actions: Trump attempted to seize ballots in Georgia, Michigan, and Arizona. He sued thirty states to obtain their voter rolls. He signed an executive order in March 2026 to restrict mail-in voting. The U.S. Postal Service (USPS) published proposed rules to deny mail-in voting to any state that refused to hand over its voter rolls. The FBI sent agents to Milwaukee to question election officials and police officers about the 2020 election—six years after the fact. And Trump revealed in January 2026 that he regretted not having signed an executive order in December 2020 authorizing the deployment of the National Guard to seize ballots in Michigan.

The Bannon Affair—The Strategy Spoken Aloud

There was an unintended moment of truth, revealing in its brutality. Steve Bannon, a close adviser to Trump and a leading figure in the American alt-right, publicly stated that the deployment of ICE agents at airports was “perfect training for the fall of 2026.” ” The word is key: training. Bannon wasn’t talking about theory. He was describing an operational doctrine. Using ICE as a psychological occupation force in public spaces—airports first, polling stations next—to accustom the public to the intimidating presence of armed federal agents. This is systematic preparation.

What strikes me about Bannon’s statement is his unabashed cynicism. He isn’t saying this in a hallway. He’s saying it on camera. And no one in the Republican camp has contradicted him. That’s the real news: not that Bannon said something frightening, but that no one in his political camp saw fit to disavow him.

The Mathematical Reality of a Republican-Controlled Senate

Let’s be honest about the Protect Our Polls Act’s real chances of passing. They’re virtually nil in the immediate term. The Senate is controlled by Republicans, and any ordinary bill needs sixty votes to overcome a filibuster. The Democrats have about fifty. To secure the ten Republican votes needed, it would take either a dramatic shift in Republican public opinion or a massive defection of senators who have so far marched in lockstep behind their president. The news site TiffinOhio.net, which covers U.S. politics, explicitly noted that the bill “has virtually no chance of passing in the Republican-controlled Congress.”

And yet, recent developments are instructive. During the week of June 12, 2026, Republicans on the Senate Armed Services Committee blocked the two amendments that Slotkin had introduced into the defense budget bill—the NDAA amendments—to prohibit military deployment near polling places and prevent the seizure of election materials. These amendments would, in theory, have been easy to pass: they simply codified what federal law already states. The fact that Republicans rejected them is telling. They don’t want to close that door. They want to keep it open.

The majority leader says no—but for how long?

Even within the Republican camp, there are mixed signals. Senate Majority Leader John Thune of South Dakota has publicly stated that he is “not in favor of federalizing elections” and has pointed out that the Constitution entrusts the states with the administration of elections. This is not a defense of democracy; it is a constitutionalist argument. But it is at least a partial resistance to Trump’s plan to nationalize voting in at least fifteen states—a plan Trump announced on February 1, 2026, before doubling down two days later.

The question is: How long will Thune and the few moderate Republicans hold out against pressure from a White House that continually tests the limits of our institutions? In this context, the Protect Our Polls Act also serves as a political test: it forces Republicans to vote against a bill whose purpose is to protect the right to vote. Slotkin put it bluntly—the senators from Arizona, Georgia, Minnesota, Wisconsin, and Michigan, states that Trump has targeted, “could very well decide who controls the House and the Senate.”

I sincerely believe that Slotkin and her colleagues know this bill won’t pass—not now. But they’re doing something essential: they’re documenting it. Every Republican vote against these amendments becomes a piece of the record, a future argument for the American people. It’s long-term politics in a world that thinks only of tomorrow. And it’s a form of courage that I respect.

From Immigration to Politics—The Militarization of a Tool

ICE—Immigration and Customs Enforcement—has, by definition, no legal role in administering elections. The Brennan Center for Justice has been unequivocal: ICE is part of the Department of Homeland Security, which has no role in enforcing election laws. Non-citizens cannot vote; it is already illegal. And voting by non-citizens is, according to all available data, extremely rare. States have put in place multiple mechanisms to ensure this.

Yet the Trump administration continues to claim that non-citizens are voting “en masse,” without a shred of evidence. It is on this fiction that the justification for sending ICE to the polls rests. But the reality is different: the mere presence of ICE agents or other federal law enforcement officers near a polling place can be enough to intimidate legally registered voters—particularly in immigrant, Black, and Latino communities. Intimidation does not need to be explicit to be effective. An armed, uniformed officer loitering outside a school or church serving as a polling place sends a message that everyone understands.

The Response from Attorneys General and Governors

Faced with this threat, other institutional actors have begun to take action alongside Slotkin’s legislative initiative. A coalition of Democratic district attorneys, calling itself the Project for the Fight Against Federal Overreach, has publicly warned the Trump administration that any federal agent sent into their jurisdictions for the purpose of voter intimidation will face criminal prosecution. Mary Moriarty, Hennepin County Attorney in Minnesota, was particularly blunt: “Federal law makes voter intimidation a crime. So does Minnesota law. If ICE agents are sent to polling places in Hennepin County to drive voters away from the polls, my office will investigate and prosecute.”

What strikes me about these prosecutors’ response is that it reveals just how much the safeguards shift to the local level when federal institutions falter. In theory, federal protections should be the most robust. In practice, it is the county prosecutors who are holding the line. This is both reassuring and deeply troubling.

Slotkin, Baldwin, Kelly, Gallego — voices that won’t be silenced

We must mention the senators sponsoring this bill, because their words deserve to be heard. Elissa Slotkin stated: “President Trump has spoken for the silent majority: he wants to undermine our elections by any means necessary, and he refuses to rule out sending uniformed military personnel to polling places, or tampering with ballots and voting machines.” ” She added: “From 2016 right up until last week, President Trump has worked to sow doubt about election results.” These words were spoken by a senator who swore an oath of allegiance to the Constitution, on camera, in a country where freedom of speech is a founding value.

Mark Kelly, a NASA veteran and senator from Arizona, recalled a fundamental historical fact: “Federal law has protected polling places from military interference since the Civil War, for good reason. President Trump has made it clear that he believes he can ignore these limits. We are making sure he cannot.” ” And Ruben Gallego, himself a Marine veteran, was the most direct: “As a Marine, I swore an oath to the Constitution, not to a president. So did all our troops. Using our soldiers to intimidate Americans at the polls is disgusting, illegal, and exactly the kind of abuse this law puts a stop to.”

When Reverend Warnock highlights the gravity of the moment

Senator Raphael Warnock, pastor of the Atlanta church where Martin Luther King Jr. once preached, added a moral dimension to this fight: “This administration has clearly shown that it will stop at nothing to prevent the American people from making their voices heard this November. The attacks we’re seeing on voting rights are a testament to the power of our voices when we stand up, speak out, and participate in our democracy.” This isn’t empty rhetoric. Warnock himself has survived attempts at voter suppression in Georgia. He knows what he’s talking about.

There is something in these quotes that transcends partisan politics. These senators are speaking to a reality they observe from their committees, in their states, and among their fellow citizens. Gallego recalls his oath to the Marines. Warnock, who recounts the history of his own church. Baldwin, who speaks of the “schools, churches, and fire stations” that serve as polling places. They are describing the real America, not an abstraction.

The Deafening Silence of the Republican Majority

It is telling to note what Republican senators did not say in response to the Protect Our Polls Act. The vast majority of them maintained a cautious silence. No formal statement of support or opposition has emerged from the Senate Republican leadership regarding this specific bill. That in itself is a response: failing to clearly oppose a law intended to prevent voter intimidation amounts to tacitly acknowledging the existence of a threat that one prefers not to name.

This silence stands in stark contrast to the clear rejection during the June 12 vote on the NDAA amendments. That vote took place behind closed doors, in committee, away from the cameras. Republicans voted against both of Slotkin’s amendments without offering any public explanation. Slotkin called the vote “deeply troubling,” adding: “This president is seeking to distort our laws in a way that has never been done before, and Senate Republicans are letting him do it, without any oversight.” Strong words, historically accurate.

The Few Dissenting Voices on the Right

There are a few notable exceptions. Senator John Thune, the majority leader, has publicly stated that he is not “in favor of federalizing elections”—which is not strictly speaking a defense of democracy, but at least a distancing from the president’s plan to nationalize voting. According to sources cited by USA Today, Thune pointed out that the Constitution grants this authority to the states. A few other Republicans have expressed reservations about Trump’s most radical proposals regarding elections, but none have gone so far as to formally support a Democratic bill on election protection.

I understand the political calculations driving Republicans to remain silent. But silence comes at a cost. By failing to call things by their name—by failing to say, “This is illegal, and we do not approve of it”—they are normalizing it. And normalization is the first step toward acceptance. History will judge harshly those who had the power to say no and chose to remain silent.

A Symbol for America, a Warning to the World

Regardless of its chances of passing, the Protect Our Polls Act holds considerable symbolic value, both for America and for Western democracies as a whole. The bill essentially says: we live in a country where the president has created enough ambiguity about his intentions regarding the elections that an explicit protective law is necessary. It is a signal sent not only to American citizens, but also to the United States’ international allies who are watching what is happening in this country with concern.

For European democracies, for nations that have looked to Washington as a model—imperfect, but real—of liberal governance, this moment is unsettling. When America has to pass a law to remind its own president that the military cannot be deployed to monitor elections, something important has been eroded. It is not irreparable. But it is not trivial.

The Lingering Specter of 2020

All of this fits into a broader context. The draft executive order from December 2020—never signed at the time, but which Trump said he regretted not signing in January 2026—called for deploying the National Guard to seize ballots in Michigan. FBI agents were sent to Milwaukee to question election officials and police officers six years after the fact. The Department of Justice demanded voter rolls from forty-eight states and sued thirty states that refused to provide them, including Michigan. These are the actions of an administration that considers past elections to be contestable and future elections to be in need of control.

I sometimes think that history will look back on us with astonishment. How did we let this situation take hold? There wasn’t a single major shift, but rather an accumulation of small setbacks, of small normalizations. And now, U.S. senators are introducing a bill to remind us that we cannot send soldiers to monitor the polls. That’s where we stand.

When States Take the Lead Over the Federal Congress

In the absence of federal action, several states have begun to enact their own laws. California has proposed a bill prohibiting armed or uniformed officers from stationing themselves within 100 meters of a polling place or daycare center, except in response to a specific security incident. Connecticut passed HB 5001 in April 2026, which includes an explicit ban on ICE’s presence at polling places. Similar bills have been announced or introduced in Pennsylvania, New Mexico, Rhode Island, Virginia, and Washington State.

Virginia Governor Abigail Spanberger signed an executive order in May 2026 directing state employees to require federal agents operating on state property to produce a valid warrant. This is a legally bold move that has sparked strong reactions, but it illustrates the degree of institutional resistance that states are willing to mount in the face of a federal administration perceived as a threat to the democratic process.

Democratic Attorneys General Step In

The institutional pushback is not limited to governors and state legislatures. Democratic attorneys general have publicly condemned any attempt by the Trump administration to interfere in elections through ICE. The February 2026 Marist Poll revealed that even among Republican voters, 27 percent believed that ICE had gone too far in its actions—up from 20 percent the previous month. Public opinion is not uniform, even on the right.

I see a glimmer of hope in this mobilization by the states. American democracy is not a centralized system—and that is precisely why it endures. When Washington gives in, Sacramento, Hartford, and Richmond rise up. It’s not ideal. In fact, it’s evidence of a serious dysfunction. But it’s also proof that democracy has depth, roots, and local ramifications that no one can sever in a single stroke.

What Trump Represents in the Democratic Equation

Any honest analysis of this situation requires that we look Trump in the eye—without caricature, but without complacency. He is the President of the United States, legitimately elected by popular vote in 2024. He represents a real trend among the American electorate: distrust of elites, frustration with a system perceived as corrupt, and a desire to break with an establishment seen as out of touch. These sentiments are real and will not disappear with Trump.

But Trump is systematically and deliberately testing the limits of what the institutions can tolerate. This is not conjecture—it is what he himself says. When he repeats a hundred and seven times in six months that the elections are rigged, when he says he regrets not having signed an order to seize ballots, when his closest adviser describes the deployment of ICE at airports as a rehearsal for the elections—he is openly signaling his intentions. We must therefore take these signals seriously.

The West must take note

For the rest of the democratic West, Trump remains a paradox. His firm stance toward China, his pressure on NATO to increase defense spending, and his—albeit inconsistent—support for Ukraine against Russia: all these factors have positive effects on the collective security of the West. But a president who threatens the integrity of his own elections structurally undermines the democratic credibility of the Atlantic Alliance in the eyes of Putin and Xi Jinping, who use American chaos precisely as an argument to sell their authoritarian models to the rest of the world. The West cannot defend democracy abroad if it is being eroded from within.

I’m not naive about Trump. I know what he is: a man who uses institutions as tools until they resist, and who backs down when the resistance is strong enough. But that is the problem: institutions do not always have the strength or the courage to resist. And when they give in, the cost is immense—not only for Americans, but for all those who look to America as a beacon, imperfect but indispensable.

November 2026 — The Most Significant Election in Decades

The November 2026 midterm elections are shaping up to be one of the most high-stakes elections in recent American political history. All 435 seats in the House of Representatives are up for grabs, as are 35 of the 100 seats in the Senate. With Republicans holding majorities in both chambers, Democrats are mathematically well-positioned to retake at least the House—ruling parties are historically penalized in midterms, especially when facing unpopularity linked to the cost of living and the administration’s perceived excesses.

It is precisely in this context that Trump, according to the analysis of numerous observers cited notably by Politico and Reuters, would have incentives to complicate the electoral process. A Democratic takeover of the House would pave the way for congressional investigations into the Trump administration. Losing even a portion of the Senate would reduce his ability to confirm appointments and pass legislation. Trump’s remark in the State of the Union address is telling: “Their policies are so bad that the only way they can get elected is by cheating, and we’re going to put a stop to that.”

The Real Issue Behind the Bill

Slotkin makes it clear: the Protect Our Polls Act is not just a voter protection bill. It is a bill aimed at ensuring that the key states—Michigan, Wisconsin, Arizona, Georgia, and Minnesota—where the outcome of the midterms will be decided, will not be subject to systematic federal intimidation on Election Day. These are precisely the states that Trump has targeted most heavily in his election-challenge campaigns and his requests for voter rolls. The Protect Our Polls Act is therefore also a domestic geopolitical move: an attempt to preserve the conditions for democratic political transition in these swing states.

I spent some time looking at the list of targeted states: Michigan, Wisconsin, Arizona, Georgia, Minnesota. These are the same states that swung the 2020 election. These are the same states that could swing the 2026 election. Coincidence? I don’t believe in coincidences in politics. And I don’t think Slotkin does either.

A symbolic law is not a useless law

Some conservative commentators have dismissed the Protect Our Polls Act as political theater—a Democratic PR stunt designed to mobilize the base ahead of the midterms rather than a serious legislative initiative. The argument deserves to be taken seriously, even if one does not agree with it. It is true that passing this bill is virtually impossible in the current political climate. It is also true that Democrats have every electoral interest in bringing these issues to the table before November.

But to reduce this initiative to a campaign ploy is to ignore the actual institutional framework at stake. Slotkin’s NDAA amendments, which were blocked on June 12, were by no means a publicity stunt: they were introduced in committee during a technical process on the defense budget, far from the spotlight. Their rejection by Republicans took place without cameras, without grand speeches. This isn’t theater. It’s real legislative work that elected officials blocked behind closed doors.

The Law as a Bulwark

There is another dimension to consider: the preventive value of the law. Even if the Protect Our Polls Act does not pass in the Senate, its introduction establishes a political precedent, a public standard, a benchmark against which any future presidential action will be measured. If Trump attempts to deploy ICE at the polls in November 2026, this bill will be cited in every lawsuit and every emergency injunction filed by prosecutors, civil rights organizations, or states. The proposed legislation becomes potential case law. And judges—including conservative judges—have repeatedly demonstrated their ability to resist the excesses of the executive branch.

That’s what I try to explain to people who ask me what’s the point of passing laws that will never become law: it’s about defining the playing field. It’s about publicly stating what is acceptable and what is not. It’s about building the collective narrative that will, when the time comes, allow us to call what happened by its true name. The law is not just what we enforce. It’s also what we assert.

What History Will Remember

Regardless of the legislative outcome of the Protect Our Polls Act, this initiative has already accomplished something important: it has brought to light, in the precise language of the law, a threat that many preferred to deny or downplay. It has forced Republicans to vote against election protections—a vote that will remain on the record, available for historians, journalists, and voters to consult. It has mobilized a bipartisan coalition of state attorneys general, governors, and legislators around a shared conviction: polling places must remain civic spaces, protected from federal armed forces.

Slotkin, Baldwin, Gallego, Kelly, Klobuchar, Padilla, Rosen, Warnock—these eight senators understood something that all defenders of liberal democracy have always known: freedoms do not disappear all at once. They erode. An amendment rejected here, a complicit silence there, a lie repeated a hundred and seven times. Defending electoral integrity is not a partisan luxury. It is the foundation of everything else.

The West must remember this

For us, outside the United States, this moment is both a lesson and a warning. American democracy, with all its imperfections, remains the central pillar of the Western liberal order. When it wavers, the entire edifice trembles—from Europe to the Indo-Pacific. The world’s autocracies—Putin’s Russia, Xi’s China, Iran, North Korea—are watching this moment closely and with satisfaction. Every victory of intimidation over electoral transparency in the United States is a victory for them, without them having to fire a single shot.

The Protect Our Polls Act alone will not save American democracy. No law can. But it says, with the clarity that only legislative language can convey: we see what is happening, we call it out, and we will not give in. Under the current circumstances, this is an act of civic resistance of profound moral and political value. And that is all we can ask of elected officials who are doing their jobs honestly.

Signed, Maxime Marquette, columnist