Military Intervention in Illiberal Election Environments

Experts and political leaders alike have recently raised concerns that the current US administration may try to use the military to intervene in the upcoming 2026 midterm elections. Administration officials have refused to rule out the possibility that they would deploy military forces to polling sites, and a recently leaked internal memo explores the prospect of deputizing National Guard soldiers as immigration officers to perform enforcement around the election. Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth announced on September 29 that the Department of Defense would begin employing cyber capabilities to ensure the security of digital election infrastructure—a job that was previously the responsibility of the now-disbanded civilian Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA).

The threat of military intervention during an election as a potentially repressive force presents novel challenges for military and political leaders as well as civil society. In particular, there are significant concerns about how military leaders may respond to orders that could jeopardize the integrity of elections. What are the red lines for military leaders should they be ordered to intervene in election administration? How should civil society leaders communicate with the public in the event that military forces are deployed? What strategies are (more or less) likely to be effective in preventing military involvement?

To investigate these questions, the Democracy and Security Network (DSN) at GMF researched a series of cases that exemplify the challenges leaders face when national security forces are involved in domestic repression. DSN subsequently held a tabletop exercise (TTX) in February 2026 that asked participants to run through three scenarios based on the periods before, during, and after the 2026 US midterm elections. Each scenario was developed based on the findings of a previous workshop held with civil-military relations experts, and discussed in our original report, “Military Meddling”. Participants were selected to represent military, legal, and political fields, and were specifically asked to act in keeping with how their organization, principal, or profession might respond to the three prompts provided. All sessions were held under the Chatham House Rule (meaning, the information coming from the meetings could not be attributed to any individual) so as to preserve participants’ ability to speak freely.

DSN identified three central challenges that military, political, and civil society leaders in the United States are likely to face: (1) Leaders exercise excessive power through legal yet ethically questionable means; (2) Military leaders are biased toward compliance; and (3) Collective action is difficult because dissent is costly. In this policy brief, each challenge is explained, illustrated with a case study, and then applied to the United States based on our findings from the tabletop exercise. Overall, it is clear that while the challenges prodemocracy movements face are substantial, they can be overcome with the right strategy and approach.

Download the full report here