Election experts have raised concerns that Donald Trump's administration might try to interfere with the results of the November midterm elections during the critical period after voting ends, known as the "counting window." This is especially concerning because the outcome of the elections could determine which party controls the US Congress. With less than six weeks until the polls close, former government officials have pointed out that this period is particularly vulnerable. Recent attempts by the Trump administration to restrict mail-in voting were rejected by the Supreme Court, but fears remain that Trump and his allies might spread false claims to challenge election results they do not like. Caitlin Durkovich, a former deputy homeland security adviser, warned that the administration might claim foreign interference as a reason to take actions such as seizing voting equipment or ballots, even if those actions are not legally justified. Some states take days or weeks to count all the votes, and the results in these states could determine which party controls the House of Representatives and the Senate. According to Durkovich, this waiting period is when doubts can start to spread, and when amplified by both foreign and domestic actors, it could undermine trust in the election process. To address these concerns, state election officials are trying to educate the public about the voting process now to prevent confusion later. Larry Norden, vice-president of the Brennan Center for Justice, said that the biggest threat currently is the belief that the election process has become harder to navigate, even though there have never been more voting options available in American history. Early voting is seen as a way to reduce these concerns, as Norden suggested that the earlier people vote, the more confident they can be that their votes will be counted correctly. The risk of doubt about the validity of votes and the possibility of Trump introducing "emergency" measures on ballots or voting machines around election day remain significant concerns. Ben Hovland, former chair of the Election Assistance Commission, noted that every state now has live ballots out, meaning the election is already underway and this should be considered in any court decisions. A recent Supreme Court decision upheld a lower court's ruling that blocked the Trump administration from using the US Postal Service and the Department of Homeland Security to check mail-in ballot deliveries. However, organizations like the NAACP and the National Urban League are still worried about the administration's claim, without any evidence, that the 2026 midterm elections will be illegitimate unless the federal government intervenes. Normally, the Department of Justice and the FBI avoid influencing election results by entering a "quiet period" before elections, but this has not been the case this year. The Department of Homeland Security is continuing to seek voter-roll lists from states that are not willing to share them voluntarily. The federal government has asked states to keep records from the 2024 elections for future investigations, and DHS is pursuing an independent initiative to identify non-citizen voters on state rolls. An anonymous whistleblower told Congress that this initiative uses "highly questionable data" and may be unlawful. The administration's claims about illegally registered voters, which do not hold up under scrutiny, and Trump's claims of fraud without evidence, "back up a narrative of fraud to undermine confidence in the elections," Hovland said. While the president often speaks about foreign interference, experts distinguish between foreign influence, which is essentially propaganda, and foreign interference, which involves directly manipulating vote counts. Beth Sanner, a former deputy director of national intelligence, said there are no examples of a country trying to interfere in the technical electoral process, stating that it "just didn't happen" in 2020. Election security has improved across the country, in part due to the false claims about Trump's 2020 defeat. Geoff Hales, former chief of joint cyber defense collaborative partnerships at the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA), said that every state audits its election results and that election officials have taken cybersecurity seriously. Despite the president's insistence that the country faces a foreign threat to elections, Hales said the federal government has sharply reduced staff and funding for election security at CISA, decreasing the technical support that once went to state election officers. He noted that cybersecurity services have been cut, funding for information sharing has been reduced, and threat briefings about nation-state adversaries that used to happen dozens of times a year are now occurring rarely or not at all.