Introduction
In recent months, the Trump administration has sent mixed signals about potentially declaring a national security emergency and asserting federal authority over American elections. With the United States engaged in military hostilities with Iran and President Donald Trump continuing to discuss foreign interference in elections, it is conceivable that the administration could try to claim the nation is under attack by an armed enemy. The administration could also attempt to argue that cyberattacks against election systems are the weapons of modern warfare and that repelling such attacks would justify sending troops or armed federal agents to election-related locations. The template for this type of attempt already exists in the form of a draft executive order considered during the first Trump administration that would have directed the secretary of defense to seize voting machines and federalize National Guard units, asserting foreign interference in crucial election infrastructure.
But since 1865, federal law, now codified at 18 U.S.C. Section 592, has prohibited troops or armed federal agents from being deployed to polling places unless force is “necessary to repel armed enemies of the United States.” No president has invoked this exception in its 161 years of existence, and any president who does must take care to faithfully execute the law as written. Given the statute’s plain language, precise purpose, and history, courts would almost certainly invalidate any attempt by the administration to argue that deploying federal forces is necessary to repel an enemy’s alleged cyberhacking into voting systems.
The Trump administration continues to spread false election-related claims
President Trump continues to claim, without evidence, that the 2020 election was stolen, rooted in demonstrably false arguments of rampant voter fraud and foreign interference. On July 16, 2026, he delivered a primetime address alleging that newly declassified documents prove that elections remain vulnerable to foreign manipulation, especially from China, but the documents failed to support his claims. A 2024 report from the National Intelligence Council stated that voting machines by standard practice are not connected to the internet and that since at least 2017, no evidence exists that election infrastructure had been breached in any way that affected results. As the Center for American Progress has discussed at length, President Trump and some senior officials continue to refuse to rule out the use of military force or federal personnel in the election process. Meanwhile, the president appears open to declaring a national emergency to federalize election rules and says he regrets not ordering the National Guard to seize voting machines in 2020.
Three prior draft executive orders were prepared to try to allow the administration to assert this type of control over elections. The first two were in December 2020, during the first Trump administration, and directed the departments of Defense and Homeland Security (DHS) to seize voting machines, election equipment, and election records. But these orders were never issued, as President Trump’s own White House counsel and senior officials concluded there was no legal authority to do so. In February 2026, a 17-page draft order written by far-right election deniers and given to the White House was leaked; as CAP has written, that order proposed that the president declare “a national emergency based on alleged foreign election interference to exert sweeping control over the 2026 midterm elections …,” a move that would be unconstitutional and illegal.
Federal law prohibits armed federal forces at polling locations except to repel armed enemies
The Constitution explicitly authorizes states to administer federal elections, with Congress as a backstop. The founders gave no role to presidents in election administration. A plethora of federal and state laws effectuate this foundational principle, making clear that states enjoy the primary responsibility over elections, including maintaining the security around polling locations, even during emergencies. This is especially true given general powers reserved to the states under the 10th Amendment. Moreover, the Posse Comitatus Act bars using the military for domestic law enforcement purposes. With only very narrow exceptions, federal law prohibits the deployment of the military or armed federal personnel to voting locations and vastly circumscribes their involvement in elections, which is considered a civilian, not military, activity. The mere threat of federal forces engaged in the election process risks voter suppression and endangering free and fair elections.
Since the Civil War, federal law has made it a crime for troops or armed federal personnel to be at polling places. In relevant part, 18 U.S.C. Section 592 states:
“Whoever, being an officer of the Army or Navy, or other person in the civil, military, or naval service of the United States, orders, brings, keeps, or has under his authority or control any troops or armed men at any place where a general or special election is held, unless such force be necessary to repel armed enemies of the United States, shall be fined under this title or imprisoned not more than five years, or both; and be disqualified from holding any office of honor, profit, or trust under the United States.”
The statute’s language reaches not only military leaders but also Cabinet secretaries who might dispatch armed forces to the polls. A companion statute, 18 U.S.C. Section 593, makes it a crime for any member or officer of the armed forces to interfere “in any manner” with an election officer’s duties, no matter where the election officer is working, be it a polling place, local election office, or other location.
As explained above, Section 592 contains only one narrow exception from the sweeping prohibition: if “such force be necessary to repel armed enemies of the United States.” Congress carefully drafted these words. First, the statute requires situations where the purported enemy is armed. Second, situations must involve a hostile enemy of the United States, which would not reasonably include criminals, antigovernment protesters, or political opponents. Third, federal forces must only use force that is necessary, not merely beneficial. Fourth, this force must be necessary to repel the enemy, meaning to turn them back, as in an invasion. In 161 years, no president has ever invoked the exception, not even during wartime, and there is no applicable court precedent.
The legislative history for Section 592 shows that since the enactment of its predecessor in 1865, members of Congress have always understood the “repel armed enemies” exception to narrowly mean enemies with physical weapons. The original bill was introduced in 1864 during wartime with the intention of banning Union troops at polls, which President Abraham Lincoln was deploying in four border slave states in an effort to keep control. This original bill, which would have banned troops within a 1-mile radius of any polls, did not pass due to Republican concerns that the ban would create a safe haven for Confederate soldiers, including an opportunity to intimidate recently freed slaves from voting. In opposing the bill, Sen. J.M. Howard (R-MI) referred to Confederate soldiers as “a rebel army in full battle array,” again clearly invoking physical weapons. However, in 1865, with members of Congress concerned about potential executive overreach in election administration, lawmakers passed an updated version of the bill, but this time allowed two exceptions: to “repel armed enemies” or to “keep the peace at the polls.”
During subsequent congressional debates over many decades about the statutory exceptions, the focus always unambiguously involved physical armed men. For example, in 1879, when lawmakers reconsidered Section 592’s language, Rep. Hiester Clymer (D-PA) pronounced that “we will use [the law] to repel armed enemies, to protect the States against invasion and domestic violence, to vindicate and uphold the honor of the Government on the battle-fields of the Republic.” In 1909, Congress removed the “keep the peace” exception and left the “repel armed enemies” exception unchanged. And in 1948, when Congress recodified the statutory language into Section 592, the previous language of “soldier, sailor, or marine” was updated to “member of the armed forces of the United States” to reflect modern military realities, but left “armed enemies” intact. If Congress had meant to broaden or modernize the exception, that would have been yet another opportunity.
In June 2026, Sen. Elissa Slotkin (D-MI), joined by seven other senators, introduced legislation to amend Section 592 to require congressional approval before a president deploys federal forces to the polls. The legislation, the Protect Our Polls Act, does not admit any latitude in the exception, but rather creates a procedural safeguard against presidential abuse. And Sen. Slotkin secured assurances from two key military commanders and a high-ranking Pentagon official that Section 592 and other federal statutes prevent service members’ presence at polling locations—and that “Election administration and security remain the fundamental responsibility of state and local officials.”
Presidents may not abuse Section 592’s narrow exception
The Trump administration may try to exploit the “repel armed enemies” exception of Section 592, perhaps through an illegal statutory interpretation bootstrapped to a fringe legal theory that the Constitution allows the president vast powers in the national security realm, including a so-called “protective power.” But as discussed below, attempts to misapply or reinterpret the strict language in Section 592, especially given its legislative history, would not pass legal scrutiny and would almost certainly be invalidated by federal courts.
Enemies armed with guns or traditional weapons of war
The administration may try to unreasonably stretch the application of the statutory exception by claiming that enemies with weapons are physically threatening polling places or other election infrastructure. The administration could try to claim that “armed enemies” include immigrants, gang members, so-called antifa members, or even other perceived political opponents. Indeed, in other contexts, the administration has recently made similar arguments—to invoke the use of the military or federal personnel or to deny constitutional rights—that courts have almost uniformly rejected.
In a January 2025 proclamation and executive order, as part of his deportation agenda, President Trump claimed a right to “defend our national sovereignty” and declared an “invasion” by immigrants and other hostile actors at the southern border. He signed an additional executive order to take all appropriate actions to “repel” persons engaged in this alleged invasion. Two months later, the president invoked the Alien Enemies Act of 1798, a statute intended for and previously used only during wartime, to designate the Venezuelan gang Tren de Aragua as an invading force undertaking hostile actions and ordered the government to remove alleged gang members from the country. Additionally, in the birthright citizenship case, the administration argued that children born to undocumented immigrants, including “alien enemies,” are not citizens under the 14th Amendment and included that unsupported notion in a subsequent executive order.
Yet nothing in the “repel armed enemies” exception would allow these types of arguments to succeed in the election administration context. Indeed, federal judges considering the administration’s use of the Alien Enemies Act to remove people from the United States almost uniformly found that Congress meant to use “‘invasion’ in a military sense of the term,” or as an organized “armed attack.” The only appellate court to reach the merits of that issue, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 5th Circuit—arguably the nation’s most conservative circuit—similarly found that the administration’s arguments failed to prove an invasion or predatory incursion; the appeal was later dismissed as moot on procedural grounds. Only one federal district court judge, in a decision where the appeal was stayed, found merit in the administration’s proclamation, holding that a “predatory incursion” under the Alien Enemies Act must, at the least, include “a hostile entry into the United States by a cohesive group of individuals, such as a military detachment or a designated Foreign Terrorist Organization …”
Even accepting a far-fetched premise that organized groups of perceived political opponents were armed at voting locations and were intending to create disturbances, Section 592 allows use of force only where “necessary to repel” armed enemies, which almost certainly would not be appropriate in this circumstance. State law enforcement remains capable of protecting polling places and other election-related sites from criminal activity, and no federal law or court decision allows the Insurrection Act—which permits a president to deploy the military within the United States as an exception to the Posse Comitatus Act—to overcome Section 592. Moreover, the statutory history of Section 592 makes clear that it was not designed for the federal government to quell disturbances or crimes at polling places, especially where committed by political opponents. Finally, 18 U.S.C. Section 593 provides yet another backstop, prohibiting members of the armed forces from interfering with election officials anywhere, without exception.
Enemies deploying cyber incursions into election systems
The Trump administration may try to chart an unsupportable pathway to invoking the “repel armed enemies” exception by arguing that foreign adversaries are attacking the United States with more modern “arms,” specifically cyberattacks against election infrastructure. These types of attacks go beyond more common foreign influence mechanisms such as undermining public trust in elections. These arguments would hold no legal validity under the framework of Section 592.
First, it is true that modern warfare looks different in some respects than it did in 1865, when Congress wrote the precursor statutory language to Section 592. Yet Congress has never taken the opportunity to update the language of the “repel armed enemies” exception to reflect this. For example, in 2018, Congress passed a law now codified as 10 U.S.C. Section 394 acknowledging that military cyberoperations include “conduct of military activities or operations in cyberspace short of hostilities” but did not make any changes to Section 592.
Second, Section 592’s explicit language requires a governmental response that is “necessary to repel” a purported armed enemy. There is no situation where armed federal forces at a polling location are necessary to repel a cyberattack from a foreign government or organization located nowhere near that polling place. For example, an ICE agent armed with a gun at a Kansas City, Missouri, voting center would have no conceivable way to repel an Iran-based hacker. If the administration claimed it was imperative to commandeer polling locations to protect national sovereignty and secure the election, Section 592 would not provide the legal foundation to do so, as the exception is designed to “repel armed enemies,” a much narrower purpose.
Third, the administration could try to revive a draft executive order from 2020. That order alleged foreign interference and fraud, including cyberhacking, in U.S. election systems and would have authorized the secretary of defense to direct the National Guard to “seize, collect, retain and analyze all machines, equipment, electronically stored information, and material records …” The draft cited various alleged authorities, including a 2018 executive order that declared a national emergency to penalize foreign interference in elections yet only authorized sanctions. Crucially, President Trump’s then-White House counsel and other officials blocked the 2020 draft order after concluding the president had no legal authority to impose such requirements in response to alleged cyberhacking. That legal reasoning remains equally potent now.
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Fourth, the administration may try to claim that because DHS designated election infrastructure as critical infrastructure in 2017, the president retains authority to take control of election systems to repel an enemy engaged in cyberhacking. This claim, too, would fail. The critical infrastructure designation bestows zero authority for the federal government to take control of election systems. Instead, it traditionally has helped states manage the cybersecurity of their election systems and defend against foreign interference, crucial resources that the Trump administration has severely undermined.
Despite contrary arguments from prominent election deniers, President Trump’s 2019 executive order, which declared a national emergency in part related to threats to critical infrastructure from foreign-controlled manufacturers, only authorizes the federal government to block or unwind transactions, not to seize election equipment. A parallel national emergency declaration extended in March 2026—related to malicious cyber-enabled activities by foreign adversaries—uses only sanctions-related penalties. And the Trump administration’s prior responses to actual foreign interference included U.S. Cyber Command operations abroad or working directly with stakeholders to counteract it, never sending federal forces to election-related locations.
Moreover, election-related equipment belongs to states and localities; no court has recognized any authority under the Constitution, the National Emergencies Act, or any other source to allow presidents to seize or block usage of such equipment. And the U.S. Supreme Court recognized in 1952 in Youngstown Sheet & Tube Co. v. Sawyer that presidents cannot seize private property, in that case steel mills during wartime, without congressional authorization. States have administered elections through prior foreign interference, the Civil War, world wars, and 9/11. Section 592 would not support the administration stripping state officials of the equipment, databases, or information necessary for states to immediately protect an election system under cyberattack.
Fifth, the administration could try to avoid the language in Section 592 that points to “troops or armed men” located at “any place where a general or special election is held.” For example, the administration could try to send unarmed civilian personnel to polling locations. That itself does not violate Section 592, but the conduct of the personnel would be strictly limited by other laws and provisions, listed below. Alternatively, the administration could claim the authority to send armed federal personnel to sites such as election offices or vote-counting locations instead of directly to polling locations, but this would probably also be barred by Section 592, as well as other laws and provisions. For example:
- 18 U.S.C. Section 593 prohibits military personnel from interfering with an election officer located anywhere, taking actions to change voter qualifications, or imposing requirements other than those prescribed by law.
- 18 U.S.C. Section 594 prohibits anyone, including federal personnel, from intimidating, threatening, coercing, or attempting to do such, for the purpose of interfering with another person’s right to vote.
- 18 U.S.C. Section 595 imposes criminal penalties on “a person employed in any administrative position by the United States, or by any department or agency thereof …” who uses their official authority in connection with federally financed grants or loans for the purpose of interfering with an election.
- 52 U.S.C. Section 10307(b), in the Voting Rights Act, makes it a violation of the law—with no intent requirement—for any person, including someone acting “under color of law,” to intimidate voters.
- DHS agents, including Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents, are required to be armed while on duty, so they cannot simply disarm themselves and enter polling locations to get around the prohibition. States have a plethora of laws that make it a crime to intimidate voters, station armed personnel at polling locations, or obtain unauthorized access to voting systems.
- As experts have concluded, the Department of Justice has traditionally viewed Section 592’s protections, “to apply in the vicinity of any voting locations, not just the interior,” consistent with the language covering “any place where a general or special election is held.”
- Invocation of the Insurrection Act cannot override the Constitution and statutes that protect free and fair elections. Restrictions on the military generally apply to the federalized and hybrid-status National Guard too, especially in light of an explicit Department of Defense directive. Moreover, the National Guard can play a constructive role in supporting states in election-related missions, including cybersecurity, but “not performing offensive or defensive cyber operations on state or local systems.”
- The Constitution itself provides a foundational bulwark. As the National Task Force on Election Crises concluded, “Some attempted interference would also likely … confront federal constitutional requirements, including those imposed by the Tenth Amendment, the Fourth Amendment, the due process and equal protection clauses, federal constitutional protections for the right to vote, and the constitutional separation of powers.”
Conclusion
Longstanding federal law, respected by prior presidents, prohibits troops or armed federal personnel from being deployed to polling places unless force is “necessary to repel armed enemies of the United States.” There is virtually no scenario where federal courts would allow a president to violate 18 U.S.C. Section 592 and the congressional intent behind this statute. Moreover, given the importance of free and fair elections, everyday Americans across the ideological spectrum and state officials who administer elections would reject such an overt attempt to subvert their right to chart the nation’s course.