Election administrators from major counties say mail ballots, citizenship checks, and redistricting remain flashpoints with one month left until the Nov. 3 midterms.
Officials from Pennsylvania, California, Florida, and Missouri used a Washington, D.C., roundtable last week to warn that how voters cast and return ballots, and how states confirm who is eligible, will shape the final stretch before Election Day.
The Partnership for Large Election Jurisdictions hosted the session as the Trump administration and members of Congress have spent the past year pushing tighter rules on mail-in voting, including citizenship verification and firmer return deadlines. The Center Square reported the administrators’ remarks as early voting and ballot requests already move forward.
Jessica Garofolo, director of administrative services in Allegheny County, Pennsylvania, said her office has recorded a drop in mail-in ballot requests. She estimated a 5% to 6% decrease and put active mail-in requests at about 126,000.
Garofolo tied part of the swing to the U.S. Supreme Court’s June decision in Watson v. RNC. In that case, the high court allowed states to keep accepting late mail-in ballots postmarked by Election Day. Fourteen states and the District of Columbia still do so. After that ruling, Allegheny County saw a spike of 10,000 voters requesting mail-in ballots, she said.
Dean Logan, the Los Angeles County clerk, said the biggest change he expects is not whether people vote by mail, but how they get those ballots back. Los Angeles County sends mail-in ballots to every registered voter.
Logan pointed to U.S. Postal Service postmarking policy updates as one reason voters may change habits.
“Using alternatives to return the ballot other than going through the U.S. Postal Service, I think is on the rise,” Logan said. “The drop boxes will become critically important. And I do think that we will see a higher rate of in-person voting in the election.”
That mix, heavy mail issuance paired with more drop-box and in-person returns, leaves local clerks managing several channels at once in the final month. Administrators urged eligible voters to make a plan, check their registration, and bring questions to local election offices before Nov. 3.
Citizenship checks sat at the center of the policy fight. The Supreme Court allowed the Trump administration to move forward with the Systematic Alien Verification for Entitlements program, known as SAVE, to help verify the citizenship of registered voters. States may use it. It is not required nationwide.
Pressure on that front fits a wider enforcement push, including cases where the DOJ warns election officials about noncitizen voting risks.
Aaron Blacksberg, federal policy counsel at the Institute for Responsive Government, described hard limits in the tool itself.
“The SAVE system has the ability to confirm someone is a citizen but does not really have the ability to confirm someone isn’t,” Blacksberg said. “A non-confirmation is not a confirmation of non-citizenship.”
Wendy Sartory Link, supervisor of elections in Palm Beach County, Florida, called SAVE an important tool that still needs careful use. Her county, she said, continues to receive names from the state government to verify on a daily basis.
“Oftentimes the information from that database is outdated and [registered voters] do in fact have a naturalization certificate, they do have a United States passport,” Link said. “We have to be very careful about how it is used.”
Those operational cautions do not erase the core demand voters have made for years: only citizens should be on the rolls. Federal cases have kept that issue live, from a legal immigrant charged with voting illegally in multiple elections to other probes aimed at unlawful ballots.
Redistricting added another layer of uncertainty. On Friday, the Supreme Court affirmed for the third time that Missouri cannot use a congressional map described in coverage as one that would likely favor Republicans. Eric Fey, director of elections in St. Louis County, said he welcomed clearer rules on which maps apply for Election Day.
“When it becomes problematic is when we don’t know what ballot or what set of congressional districts to use once voting begins,” Fey said.
St. Louis County had already sent ballots to 15,000 voters using the 2022 congressional map. Fey said ongoing ballot collection is a step that cannot be interrupted once it starts.
“We just want to know what the rules of the road are before the election actually starts,” Fey said.
Missouri voters will face two ballot referendums in November. One asks whether to adopt a 2025 congressional map tied to House Bill No. 1 from the 2025 Second Extraordinary Session, a map described as giving Republicans a one-seat advantage. A “yes” would replace the current plan with new boundaries that keep more counties intact; a “no” keeps the 2022 lines. The second measure would block the Missouri General Assembly from vetoing the referendum’s outcome.
The quoted question on the map reads: “Do the people of the state of Missouri approve the act of the General Assembly entitled ‘House Bill No. 1 (2025 Second Extraordinary Session),’ which repeals Missouri’s existing congressional plan, and replaces it with new congressional boundaries that keep more counties intact?"
Fey told The Center Square he expects funding from both sides to educate voters on the two questions. He also said the wording of those referendum questions has not been challenged in court, and he called the eventual outcome “interesting.”
Map fights and ballot rules land alongside separate federal enforcement work, including when ICE arrests an illegal immigrant accused of casting a ballot in a federal election.
Across the roundtable, the through-line was practical. Large jurisdictions are already printing and mailing ballots. They are running drop boxes, tracking Postal Service returns, and fielding daily lists for citizenship checks in states that use them.
Garofolo’s request numbers, Logan’s shift toward drop boxes and in-person returns, Link’s daily SAVE-related workload, and Fey’s 15,000 ballots already in the mail all point to the same problem: late legal changes land on offices that cannot rewind a live election.
The Trump administration’s push for citizenship verification and stricter mail deadlines sits against that operational clock. SAVE is available where states choose it. Late postmarked ballots remain accepted in 14 states and D.C. under the Watson framework. Missouri’s voters, not only its courts, will now weigh in on which congressional lines count.
Broader charging actions have kept illegal voting in the news as well, including when the DOJ charged 16 people across seven states over alleged election crimes.
Election officials closed the session with a basic appeal: eligible voters should lock in a plan, confirm they are registered, and bring problems to local clerks before Nov. 3, not after ballots are already out the door.
Secure elections need clear rules on who votes, how ballots move, and which maps count before the first envelope is opened, not a scramble after the fact.
