Donald Trump says he will accept midterm election outcome only if voting is fair

United States President Donald Trump said he will accept the results of the upcoming midterm elections only if the voting process is fair, as his administration escalates legal challenges targeting election officials across several states.

Speaking to journalists on Tuesday before departing Joint Base Andrews for Texas, Trump was asked whether he would honor the results if the Republican Party loses its majority in Congress on November 3. He stated that he would accept the outcome provided the elections are honest.

The remarks follow a pattern of recent federal interventions into state-run voting procedures. On Monday, the Department of Justice warned officials in Washington state of potential emergency legal action if they failed to purge roughly 400 individuals from voter registration lists over claims that they lack US citizenship. The Justice Department established a deadline of Wednesday noon for the state to act.

Washington Secretary of State Steve Hobbs criticized the federal demand, arguing the eleventh-hour notice was designed to generate doubts about the election's legitimacy. Hobbs noted that initial reviews showed the federal list included obsolete records, pointing to one instance where the Justice Department relied on data from 1994. He emphasized that noncitizen voting remains extremely uncommon and that voters must sign legal declarations confirming their eligibility on ballot envelopes.

The confrontation follows a court decision last month in which Washington state successfully resisted federal attempts to force the handover of its full voter registry, a request the administration had presented to dozens of states led by Democrats.

The Justice Department has also intervened elsewhere. In Alaska, federal officials submitted a legal challenge seeking to stop the certification of the US Senate race if the sitting Republican senator, Dan Sullivan, is defeated. The administration objected to another candidate with the identical name appearing on the ballot, even though the incumbent is identified as such to voters. Trump stated on Friday that he had directly instructed federal authorities to pursue the case.

Other states have faced similar scrutiny. California officials recently reported receiving a federal directive to inspect a list containing approximately 20,000 alleged noncitizen voters, though state authorities found many on the registry appeared to be native-born citizens. Meanwhile, the administration plans to dispatch an unprecedented number of federal monitors to polling locations in places such as California and New Jersey, despite protests from local leadership.