On 60 Minutes, Election Officials Describe Federal Pressure. The Justice Department Says It Is Enforcing the Law
Two weeks before the midterms, a Georgia county commissioner and Utah's Republican lieutenant governor told Lesley Stahl that federal investigations are shaking confidence in elections. The Justice Department's civil rights chief says the distrust was already there, and that noncitizen voting is being prosecuted.
By Evelyn Shaw, Constitution Explained
Published · 6 min read
The Overview
The facts, straight
Aired Sunday, Oct. 18, 2026, on CBS's 60 Minutes. CBS posted the transcript at 7:38 p.m. ET. All times ET.
Two weeks before the midterms, CBS's 60 Minutes reported Sunday night on state and local election officials who say they are under pressure from Washington. Lesley Stahl's report featured a Democratic county commissioner in Georgia, Utah's Republican lieutenant governor, and the Justice Department official leading the administration's voter-roll effort.
Post: 60 Minutes (@60Minutes) on X, Oct. 18, 2026, 7:46 p.m. ET.
Fulton County, Georgia. The report opened with the FBI's seizure of 2020 election records in January. On Jan. 28, FBI agents executed a search warrant at Fulton County's election hub in Union City, south of Atlanta. An FBI spokesperson said agents were "executing a court authorized law enforcement action," the Associated Press reported. 60 Minutes said the agents had "a criminal search warrant that allowed them to seize ballots and other election materials from the 2020 election" and packed up more than 600 boxes of election records.
"In my wildest dreams, I never imagined that we would be raided by the FBI," Fulton County Commissioner Dana Barrett, a Democrat, told Stahl. Asked whether the county could have said no, she said: "No. They had a valid warrant signed by a judge. We did not have a choice." Asked where the ballots are now, she said: "We have no idea."
The Justice Department has defended the search in court. In a February filing urging a federal judge to reject the county's demand to return the records, DOJ attorneys wrote: "If the United States loses the records now, it might never regain them," the Atlanta Journal-Constitution reported. They said the records were needed for an ongoing criminal investigation into "irregularities" in the 2020 election.
Utah. Lt. Gov. Deidre Henderson, a Republican who runs Utah's elections, told 60 Minutes she refused the Justice Department's request last year for the state's voter registration list. "They wanted things that we typically are required by law to keep private: social security numbers, full dates of birth, driver's license numbers," she said. 60 Minutes reported that officials in 29 other states also refused, and that the department has sued all of them, "saying it needs access to voter rolls to help ensure that immigrants who are not entitled to vote don't." The program also reported that the department told Henderson last month, in writing, that she is "under investigation."
California. The program also covered the Justice Department's Friday warning to California election officials over mail ballots from people federal agencies identified as likely noncitizens. That case is covered in our earlier story.
Post: 60 Minutes (@60Minutes) on X, Oct. 18, 2026, 1:21 p.m. ET.
What the Left Says
The progressive and Democratic case
Officials interviewed by 60 Minutes say the investigations themselves wear down public trust. "I think it was all part of this concerted effort that's happening nationwide to undermine faith in elections," Barrett said. "People just see all of these investigations and FBI raids and subpoenas and they say, 'Something must be wrong there. Why should I believe the results?'"
The concern isn't only from Democrats. "In the past two elections that I oversaw as lieutenant governor the threats were all external. Non-state actors, cyber security threats and other things. But now we also have threats coming from within our own government," Henderson said. On the possibility of prosecution, she said: "We're not going to prison. No. It's silly." She added: "I think this is an important thing for me to do, holding these guard rails, holding the line. Someone has to."
Wyoming Gov. Mark Gordon, also a Republican, pushed back in August when Justice Department election monitors demanded access to the state's voting machines, 60 Minutes reported. "I don't like the federal government coming in and taking our votes, either," he said.
Where Reality Likely Sits
Radio Purple's analysis
On the core principle, the two sides in this report said nearly the same thing. "Across the board, nobody I know wants anyone who isn't eligible to be able to vote," Henderson said. Dhillon said noncitizens cannot vote in federal elections. The fight is over how to find ineligible voters, how much voter data Washington should hold, and how much federal oversight of the officials who run elections is the right amount.
Both sides also put numbers on the table. Henderson said she found 52 questionable voters on the rolls out of more than 2 million registered voters in Utah. Dhillon said the department is looking at "literally thousands" of cases nationwide. Neither figure settles the question for the whole country, and the Justice Department's cases will be tested in court.
There is common ground on what voters need. Officials who count ballots shouldn't have to fear doing their jobs, and every vote cast should come from an eligible citizen. With early voting underway, what would make you trust the count: tighter checks on who is registered, or less federal pressure on the people doing the counting?
What the Right Says
The conservative and Republican case
The administration says this is about enforcing a law everyone agrees on. "Noncitizens cannot vote in federal elections, so the question is simply how many of them there are," Harmeet Dhillon, head of the Justice Department's Civil Rights Division, told 60 Minutes.
Pressed on whether the effort sows distrust, she said: "The point is actually the opposite of what you were saying. It's not to sow distrust. The distrust is there. And so all of these kinds of crimes are being prosecuted now for the first time really in volume." When Stahl noted that the Biden administration had prosecuted 13 people for noncitizen voting, Dhillon said: "We've been in office for less than two years. We've had investigations ongoing for over a year, and it takes time. There are literally thousands of them out there that we are looking at." CBS reported that the department has charged more than 100 noncitizens with voting illegally since the start of the President's second term.
Dhillon also sought to reassure voters about the midterms. Asked whether the administration plans to send ICE agents to polling places, she said: "There is no plan to do that." On counting, she said that "absent some shocking contingency that is unexpected, there should be no interruption in the usual course of counting and certifying the results in the states." She said a noncitizen's vote would lead to that person's vote being challenged, "but not the entire election."
Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin said in July that election officials who knowingly allow noncitizens to vote "can also be held accountable by fines, by penalties and even depending on how far it goes, prison time," as 60 Minutes aired it.
The White House wants Congress to settle the question with the SAVE America Act, which would require proof of citizenship to register and identification to vote. "While Federal law explicitly prohibits foreign nationals from registering to vote or voting in Federal elections, loopholes and deficiencies in the National Voter Registration Act (NVRA) have allowed noncitizens to illegally register to vote and hindered States' ability to stop it," the administration said in its statement of policy on the bill. "American citizens — and only American citizens — should decide American elections," the White House says.
Sources & Citations
- CBS News, “60 Minutes Transcript: Election officials describe impacts of ongoing voting investigations”, October 18, 2026.
- CBS News, “Investigations into voting system expand weeks ahead of midterms”, October 18, 2026.
- X (@60Minutes), “60 Minutes post on X (California preview)”, October 18, 2026.
- X (@60Minutes), “60 Minutes post on X (Fulton County)”, October 18, 2026.
- Executive Office of the President, Office of Management and Budget, “Statement of Administration Policy: House Amendment to S. 1383, SAVE America Act”, February 11, 2026.
- The White House, “The SAVE America Act”, January 1, 2026.
- Associated Press, “FBI executes search warrant at Fulton County elections office seeking 2020 election records”, January 28, 2026.
- The Atlanta Journal-Constitution (David Wickert), “Justice Department: Fulton has no grounds for return of ballots”, February 20, 2026.
Positions above are attributed to the public statements and published reporting cited here. Quotations are taken from these sources; Radio Purple does not publish unattributed or invented quotes. See an error? Request a correction.