President Trump’s comments came as his administration is filing legal challenges to Democratic-led U.S. states over the integrity of the election.
Published October 27, 2026
US President Donald Trump says he will respect the results of next week’s midterm elections if they are “honest” as his administration expands its legal battle to assert its authority over state officials managing the closely watched November 3 elections.
Asked on Tuesday whether he would respect the results even if Republicans lost control of the U.S. Congress, President Trump told reporters, “I would if the election was honest.”
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President Trump’s comments came a day after the Department of Justice (DOJ) threatened legal action against the northwestern state of Washington unless it removed from its voter registration rolls about 400 people it says are not U.S. citizens.
“The timing of this request, one week before the general election, is clearly intended to cast unfounded doubt on the election results,” Washington Secretary of State Steve Hobbs said in a statement Monday, referring to the request received in a letter giving the state until noon Wednesday local time to respond or receive what the Justice Department called “emergency relief.”
Hobbs’ office said it is reviewing a list of 400 people who are considered noncitizens and has already found that some of it is based on outdated information. For example, the Justice Department cites records from 1994 to claim that one person on the list was a noncitizen, Hobbs said.
“Washington elections are secure. Cases of voter fraud involving noncitizen votes are extremely rare, and all voters certify their eligibility by signing a declaration on their ballot return envelope at each election,” Hobbs said in a statement.
Last month, Washington state successfully argued in a lawsuit that it was not required to turn over its entire voter rolls to the Justice Department. It was one of dozens of Democratic-led states that faced the Trump administration’s demands, and the courts sided with them.
Despite court setbacks, President Trump’s Justice Department has continued to cast doubt on the results of the Nov. 3 election, particularly by trying to claim that large numbers of non-citizens were voting in Democratic-led states, claims that have been repeatedly rejected by bipartisan voting rights groups.
Last week, the Justice Department filed a lawsuit against the state of Alaska seeking to block the certification of the Senate election if Republican incumbent Dan Sullivan does not win. The Justice Department said local governments were shirking their responsibility to administer elections fairly because the state allowed another candidate, also named Dan Sullivan, to appear on the ballot. The ballot includes information indicating that Sen. Dan Sullivan is the incumbent.
The Senate election is one of the races in which the Democratic Party is moving forward across the country, and there is a possibility that the Republican Party, led by President Trump, may lose control of Congress. On Friday, President Trump said he had personally told the Justice Department to file a lawsuit against Alaska.
California announced earlier this month that it had received a letter from the Department of Justice requiring the state to review its list of approximately 20,000 noncitizen voters. California officials have said that most of the people on the list are actually people who appear to have been born in the United States and are automatically eligible to vote.
The Justice Department also said it plans to deploy a record number of election observers across the country on Nov. 3 to monitor for fraud, despite opposition from local officials in several Democratic-led states such as New Jersey and California. In the past, the Justice Department has dispatched observers to monitor issues where there have been civil rights violations or obstacles that prevent minorities and disenfranchised groups from voting on Election Day.
