State officials preparing if fed government tries interfering with running elections

"Election officials are constantly preparing for the unknown," an official said.

RAPID CITY, South Dakota -- On the sidelines of a gathering of election officials, state leaders from both parties told ABC News they are making preparations in case the federal government tries to interfere with how they run elections in November.

"Just as we always plan for things like a weather event or a bomb threat or a gas leak or a power outage -- this time, we're adding to that list of hazards: we're adding the possibility that the federal government might do something that directly or indirectly affects the election in a negative way," Minnesota Secretary of State Steve Simon, a member of the state's Democratic–Farmer–Labor Party, told ABC News at the National Association of Secretaries of State summer conference last week.

State officials like Simon have raised the possibility that the federal government will try to interfere with them conducting the midterm elections, pointing to the government's pursuit of personal voter data and rhetoric on mail-in voting as examples of how it is trying to have more sway, while the White House has said it wants to partner with states to fix any vulnerabilities or remove ineligible voters. States are constitutionally responsible for the conducting of elections.

The meeting, which convened election officials from around the country, coincided by chance with President Donald Trump's speech on Thursday in which he announced he had declassified a slew of documents that he claimed reveal vulnerabilities in America's elections systems, though state elections have generally been considered secure.

But the heavily redacted documents released by the White House don't appear to back up those claims, many of which Trump has been baselessly pushing since he lost the 2020 presidential election by 7 million votes. Trump has never provided evidence that the results of the election he lost were altered by fraud.

His speech also came the week after the White House forced out the three remaining members of the bipartisan Election Assistance Commission, which helps election officials improve the administration of elections. Some state officials criticized the move as adding unneeded instability and uncertainty to running elections.

Election officials spoke with ABC News before Trump's remarks, which came after the conference had mostly concluded.

Simon told ABC News that Minnesota has been taking actions such as backfilling some of the services and partnerships they usually get from the federal government, and "actively gaming out" potentia