All eyes on secretary of state races – with 2028 White House at stake

When Americans go to cast ballots in the midterm elections in 2026, much of the attention is likely to be on races for the US House, Senate and governorships – contests that will serve as a referendum on Donald Trump’s first two years in office and determine the trajectories of the final ones.

But further down the ballot, voters will choose secretaries of state in key races that could have a major effect on how elections are run in many US states, including several battleground states that are key to the 2028 presidential race. Twenty-six states are set to choose secretaries of state next year, including the presidential battlegrounds of Nevada, Arizona and Michigan.

In many US states, the secretary of state serves as the chief election officer and is responsible for overseeing how elections are run across their state. Many also play an important role in certifying election results in their states.

Long overlooked as sleepy down-ballot races, there has been more attention paid to secretary of state races in recent years, a recognition of the power these officials hold in enforcing election rules. When Trump tried to overturn the election results in 2020, secretaries of state played a major role in rebuffing those efforts. Georgia’s Republican secretary of state, Brad Raffensperger, famously resisted Trump’s demands to “find” enough votes to flip the state into Trump’s column during a 2020 post-election phone call.

In 2022, election deniers who supported efforts to overturn the 2020 race won the Republican nominations for secretary of state in Nevada, Arizona and Michigan – a development that alarmed many who said those candidates would use the power of a secretary of state’s office to undermine elections. Democrats won the general election for secretary of state seats in every swing state in 2022, but four years later, concerns about undermining the 2028 election still linger.

“One of the things we learned from 2022 is how important these offices are to the basic function of democracy, the rule of law and the peaceful transfer of power,” said Adrian Fontes, a Democrat elected as Arizona’s secretary of state in 2022 who is running for re-election. “I think that the importance cannot be overstated.”

The Trump administration has already begun attacking states, demanding they turn over their complete voter lists, including sensitive personal information. The US justice department is suing 22 states that have refused to do so – many of them with Democratic secretaries of state – and is said to be trying to build a national voter file and to push states to more aggressively remove people from the rolls.

“The conspiracy theorists, the election deniers are absolutely a concern. The difference in the ’26 election is the fact of the individual who’s in the White House,” said Cisco Aguilar, a Democrat who was elected Nevada’s secretary of state in 2022 and is also seeking re-election. “You put the election deniers, the conspiracy theorists at the local level running for secretaries of state, and then you add on the additional layer of the individual who’s in the White House, and then it compounds the problem even more.”

Fontes put it more simply.

“The bad guys are inside the castle,” he said. “They’re not just banging from the outside. They’re inside the castle in 2026.”

Aguilar chairs the Democratic Association of secretaries of State, which is focused on getting Democrats elected as secretaries of state and has said it will spend at least $40m on competitive secretary of state races next year. In addition to defending offices in which Democrats are the incumbents, Aguilar said Democrats were also hoping to flip secretary of state seats in Iowa, Kansas and Indiana.

The Republican State Leadership Committee, which focuses on secretary of state races on the GOP side, did not respond to a request for comment.

Alex Gulotta, the state director of the Arizona chapter of All Voting Is Local, a nonpartisan voting advocacy group, also said the importance of secretary of state offices had increased with the Trump administration’s attacks on elections.

“With essentially a federal government full court press trying to influence election policies and procedures that have historically belonged to the states, I think secretaries of state will continue and increase in importance,” he said. “I would just say it is much more complicated than it used to be.”