60 Minutes Transcript: Election officials describe impacts of federal actions on voting

October 18, 2026 / 7:38 PM EDT / CBS News

The midterms are just two weeks away and President Trump is using his power to intimidate the people who run our elections, putting the voting system under remarkable stress.

The latest move came on Friday when the Justice Department threatened to prosecute California election officials if they knowingly count mail-in ballots from 20,000 people the Trump administration says are "likely noncitizens."

It's the latest in a sequence of actions that has bred an erosion of faith in the integrity of our elections.

Our story focuses on how state and local election officials are being pressured – in a way that is stoking that distrust. We start with what happened in Georgia this past January.

What you're seeing is extraordinary: armed federal agents seizing ballots from a local election facility.

Dana Barrett: In my wildest dreams, I never imagined that we would be raided by the FBI.

Fulton County Commissioner Democrat Dana Barrett got a text message that sent her racing to this warehouse near Atlanta.

Lesley Stahl: Were the FBI agents inside by the time you got here?

Dana Barrett: They were. They had vests. They had guns. They had…

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