Illinois officials say the state is mostly insulated from Trump’s election threats
SPRINGFIELD — Illinois election officials and community leaders say they are confident the state is mostly insulated from the Trump administration’s aggressive moves and heated rhetoric on election administration as Illinois’ March 17 primary approaches.
Republican county clerks cautioned, however, that while they weren’t fazed by President Donald Trump’s messaging or proposed changes to voting laws, they are concerned about how federal cuts to cybersecurity initiatives could affect future elections.
Last month, Trump suggested Republicans should “nationalize” elections and “take over the voting” in select unspecified places despite the Constitution’s express delegation of election administration to the states.
In January, the FBI seized hundreds of boxes of 2020 election ballots in Georgia’s Fulton County — and more recently, issued a subpoena to Arizona for its voting results — after Trump’s repeatedly debunked claims of widespread voter fraud in those swing states. The Trump administration also made major cuts last year to the cybersecurity agency responsible for bolstering state election security.
Critics warn these moves are a signal the administration may look to expand its use of tactics to counter potential Republican losses in the midterms, but many Illinois election officials pushed back on the notion of a looming federal intervention.
“There is a lot of talk,” said Sangamon County Clerk Don Gray, a Republican. “But until I see (the federal government) take concrete action, there’s no sense in stirring up people’s fears or cynicism.”
Feds at polling places?
Some in Trump’s orbit have even stoked fears of federal immigration authorities being deployed to polling locations, a worry DuPage County Clerk Jean Kaczmarek sought to address in a press conference last week.
“It is a federal crime for the military or federal agents to interfere in elections or intimidate voters,” she said. “Those crimes will not be tolerated in DuPage County.”
In an interview, Kaczmarek, a Democrat, said she was only addressing concerns that were already circulating.
“I did not do anything to start the fear,” she said. “The fear was already there.”
On Tuesday, the Democratic National Committee sued the Trump administration to compel a response to whether the government was planning to deploy agents or troops to the polls. The Department of Homeland Security has denied that its Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents would be dispatched to polling places in the midterms.
Late last month, the FBI led a call with state election officials from across the country, including Illinois, to discuss the upcoming election.
“Some participants (in the call) asked about potential federal presence and increased involvement in the 2026 elections,” Matt Dietrich, spokesman for the Illinois State Board of Elections, told Capitol News Illinois. “The response from the participating agencies indicated no such plans.”
Gray, the Sangamon County clerk, said election officials should be careful making public projections about election interference without evidence of “concrete action.”
Shuttered cyber programs
Another element of the shifting relationship between local elections officials and the federal government is the cuts to federal programs designed to bolster election cybersecurity.
Over the past year, the Trump administration has inflicted deep cuts to the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency, the federal entity charged with providing cybersecurity support to the states, among other missions. While states are responsible for running elections, the federal government has long lent its cyber capabilities to help secure them.
The cuts have targeted CISA’s workforce and led to a significant drawdown of its election security activities, according to the think tank Brennan Center for Justice at New York University. A survey carried out last year by the Brennan Center found that more than 60% of local election officials nationwide were concerned about cuts to the agency.
Because Illinois conducts elections on paper ballots, vote tabulations in the state remain immune from hacking, according to multiple county clerks interviewed by CNI. But the Trump administration’s gutting of programs focused on combating foreign disinformation could lead to real-world effects.
“We are under constant attack from foreign agitators,” said Tazewell County Clerk John Ackerman, a Republican. “We know from information we’ve already collected in previous years from the feds that China, Iran, Russia, our foreign adversaries, they’ve all attacked little bitty Tazewell.”
Dietrich said Illinois is uniquely insulated from federal cybersecurity cuts because of the state’s massive buildup of its cyber capabilities after the 2016 hacking of its voter database. The Justice Department accused Russian intelligence of the breach, which exposed information on millions of registered Illinois voters according to a department report.
In the wake of the hack, the state established the Cyber Navigator Program to better protect its election system. The program, which is now fully state funded, embeds one employee at Illinois’ Statewide Terrorism and Intelligence Center to monitor potential threats to elections, including misinformation and disinformation, Dietrich said.