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A series of moves by Donald Trump’s administration to sow doubt in the integrity of US elections have intensified concern among voting experts – and sparked hope among election deniers – that it could declare a national emergency.

The White House and US federal agencies have released a string of documents this summer – including disputed analyses of alleged voting by noncitzens and historical intelligence memos – stoking expectations that the US president could move to exert greater control over November’s US midterm elections.

Trump used a primetime television address in July to claim – again – that US elections were vulnerable to foreign manipulation, and repeat the lie that the 2020 presidential election, which he lost to Joe Biden, was stolen.

Trump’s speech prompted Steve Bannon, his former political strategist, to predict the US president will declare a state of emergency on national security grounds to “protect” elections.

“Take your No 2 pencil out,” Bannon, a rightwing commentator, said on his War Room video podcast on 29 July. “It’s coming. It’s coming. Just block the last week of August out. It’s coming.”

While Trump and his allies could try to use a national emergency declaration to delegitimize results of November’s results, experts say such a declaration would not supersede the constitutional restrictions on executive power on election administration. No president has ever attempted to invoke an emergency to assert control over voting.

Asked earlier this month by Wayne Allyn Root, a rightwing broadcaster, if he would “declare a national security emergency for elections”, Trump notably did not shoot down the idea.

“Let me just say, stranger things have happened, OK?” the president told Real America’s Voice, a rightwing cable channel. “I’ll leave it at that.”

The administration is “trying to lay the groundwork to declare some sort of emergency to nationalize elections”, said Aria Branch, a partner at the Elias Law Group, who led a lawsuit blocking Trump’s previous executive orders on election administration. “I think the president is looking for any opportunity to do that.”

‘We need to be prepared for everything’

“I mean, listen, I think it is quite obvious that the man is losing his grip in reality, so I think we need to be prepared for everything,” said Santiago Mayer, president of Voters of Tomorrow, a gen Z-led voter advocacy organization. “We have spent a long time thinking and preparing for any eventuality and anything that he might attempt. I think our focus at the end of the day is to turn out enough voters where, no matter what he pulls, it won’t succeed.”

Democratic members of US congress have been wargaming strategies to respond to executive provocations in recent months, considering scenarios such as AI-generated disinformation videos and Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents being dispatched to polls. Progressive organizations in the democracy space have also been preparing for something to happen before the election.

The presence of Tulsi Gabbard, Trump’s former director of national intelligence, at an FBI raid in Fulton county, Georgia, raised questions earlier this year. Gabbard later testified before Congress that she had been leading an investigation into claims of foreign interference in US elections. Gabbard’s team was involved in the seizure and examination of voting equipment in Puerto Rico, and spent months scrutinizing potential vulnerabilities in voting machines and the possibility of foreign interference.

When Gabbard resigned on 30 June, Trump named his longstanding ally Bill Pulte as her acting replacement, a widely criticized move by members of both parties, who pointed to Pulte’s lack of intelligence experience. While Jay Clayton later took up the post permanently, Pulte is said to have pushed the election interference narrative in a less-visible role.

“This is why Pulte is so important,” Bannon said in July. “So, ah, Jay has got to – Clayton – has big shoes to fill. Every day we’re going to be dogging him on, like, where’s the next release on this.”

On the night of Trump’s July address, Bannon texted CNN: “We need a National Security Emergency about the midterm elections immediately – this is a powerful predicate for that.”

Ty Cobb, a former White House attorney, now a sharp Trump critic, warned of the same while speaking to PBS following the president’s July TV address. “Well, I think tonight’s speech is intended to add the predicate that he needs to declare an emergency at or about the time of the elections,” he said.

ICE agents at polls is “a virtual certainty”, said Cobb, who questioned whether National Guard officers would also be presented. “Anything to intimidate minority voters, particularly immigrant voters, and also I think anything that allows them to try to seize voting machines, as Trump wanted to do in 2020, but [then-attorney general] Bill Barr explained to him there was just no basis for it.”

‘Noncitizen voting … is just not a widespread problem’

After Trump’s TV address, a White House “Government Transparency Task Force” – composed of members of the office of the director of national intelligence, the National Security Agency, the Central Intelligence Agency and the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) – began releasing declassified “election integrity” documents on the White House website.

The first tranche included declassified intelligence memos which described electronic voting machine vulnerabilities, foreign access to state voter registration data and foreign digital manipulation strategies. Much of the material was already known to the public and amounted to a US intelligence assessment that found no evidence Beijing altered the 2020 vote, which Trump lost.

A week later, Trump and his allies quickly seized on an announcement from Mikie Sherrill, the New Jersey governor, that 6,600 non-citizens had registered to vote because of a software error. While fewer than 400 of them voted, the disclosure was used to escalate false claims that there are scores of noncitizens on the voter rolls.

On 31 July, DHS released a public notice arguing that New Jersey’s administrative errors demonstrated a need for standardized federal oversight.

The taskforce also declassified documents in a Michigan case where the FBI investigated suspected fraudulent voter registrations by a get-out-the-vote organization, in which no criminal charges were filed, and investigative material related to a data scrape of voter information in Maricopa county, Arizona.

The pace of releases has been accelerating.

On Monday, the taskforce declassified and released investigative files related to an investigation into Chinese intelligence, which disclosed how disgraced former Democratic US representative Eric Swalwell had told FBI agents how he had “occasionally hooked up” with Christine Fang, a Chinese national allegedly engaged in a political influence campaign.

On Tuesday, the US Census Bureau released a brief claiming it had identified 24,000 noncitizens voting in the 2020 election in a preliminary match of 128m records. It did not reveal its methodology and was sharply criticized by democracy advocates.

“This alleged analysis based on census data fails the laugh test,” said David Becker, executive director of the Center for Election Innovation and Research. “The administration does not provide a sufficient explanation of how it arrived at these numbers – and for good reason.”

Branch, of Elias Law Group, suggested the Trump administration is “searching for” the legal basis for an executive order. “I think they believe there may be one. I think such a document just doesn’t exist, because the fact is our elections are secure,” she said. “Noncitizen voting in our elections is just not a widespread problem … All of the fear and narrative around that issue is just completely unfounded, and it’s really just to stoke fear and lay the groundwork for future action.”

In July, DHS also released an analysis arguing that 278,000 noncitizens are registered to vote in federal elections. It did not reveal its methodology for identifying the noncitizens, either, or disclose how confident its officials were in their assessment. The tool it used to flag noncitizens on voter rolls is known to be inaccurate.

‘The founders recognized the risk of centralizing power’

Asked about the possibility of an executive order declaring a national emergency on elections, the White House did not rule it out, refusing to comment on hypotheticals.

“Extreme liberal Democrats are keeping Americans from having full confidence in their elections by refusing to vote for the Save America Act,” said Lauren Bis, a White House spokesperson, referring to legislation that would enforce a crackdown on voting. “The American people overwhelmingly support this commonsense legislation that ensures Americans, and Americans only, decide our elections. President Trump is absolutely right: we fix this now, or we lose our country.”

The Save America Act would require states to submit their voter rolls to federal inspection, effectively give DHS the power to de-register anyone it deemed ineligible to vote. The act would also sharply curtail mail-in voting – a practice Trump repeatedly criticized, but has reportedly done himself as recently as in this week’s Florida Republican primary – and require documentary proof of citizenship to register to vote and a narrow set of photo IDs to cast a ballot.

“I mean, we’ve been closely monitoring what the administration is saying,” said Branch, who sees the rhetoric itself as an act of intimidation.

“The constitution is extremely clear on this, and the founders recognized the risk of centralizing power over elections in the executive branch,” she added. “Very helpful, in terms of litigation to push back on these types of efforts.”