The Trump administration has spent months floating the idea of sending armed federal agents to polling places in November. On Sunday, September 27, a reporter asked Mike Collins, Georgia's Republican nominee for U.S. Senate, what he thought of it.

The question, as posted with video by Aaron Rupar: "Some folks in the administration have floated the idea of having federal troops at polling places. Do you have thoughts on that?"

Collins didn't say no. He didn't say it was against the law. He left it up to the administration:

"The last thing we want is for people to not have confidence in the elections," he said. If that's something they decide they need to look at, he went on, "then that's fine with me."

He was at a campaign stop with Senate Majority Leader John Thune. Collins is running against Sen. Jon Ossoff with Donald Trump's endorsement.

It isn't "fine." It's a federal crime.

There is a law written for exactly this. Section 592 of the federal criminal code says anyone in federal service who "orders, brings, keeps, or has under his authority or control any troops or armed men at any place where a general or special election is held" can be fined, sent to prison for up to five years, and barred from ever holding federal office again.

It allows one exception: when "such force be necessary to repel armed enemies of the United States."

Nobody in the Trump administration has claimed an armed enemy is going to invade a Georgia polling place. The reason they give is people who aren't citizens voting. As we reported earlier this month, that barely happens — a Reuters analysis found 73 convictions for it in three decades, and the conservative Heritage Foundation counts about 100 proven cases since 2000.

Collins is a member of Congress. He writes federal law. When he was asked whether armed federal forces should be at the polls, the honest answer was right there in the U.S. Code. He gave a different one.

This isn't just talk

The question Collins was answering wasn't hypothetical. According to Democracy Docket, Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin, FBI Director Kash Patel and Attorney General Todd Blanche have all suggested that federal law enforcement at the polls is not off the table.

• Mullin said ICE officers could be at polling locations "to enforce specific threats." Civil rights groups, Common Cause and the city of Denver sued on September 10 to stop it.
• Asked at a Senate hearing about FBI agents in Michigan, Patel said the bureau's election-crimes coordinators would be manning their posts — "you bet we're going to have them there" — after Michigan's Republican nominee for governor bragged that his "friend Kash Patel" had promised an FBI "presence."
• The administration has also tried to hold anti-terrorism money hostage to force states to change how they run their elections.

Democrats and civil rights groups have sued the Department of Homeland Security to keep armed agents away from voting sites in the midterms.

When a Senate candidate says it's "fine" with him, he's telling the people who'd give that order that one more Republican in Washington won't stand in their way.

"Confidence in the elections"

Collins framed it as a way to give voters "confidence in the elections." Look at who's talking.

Mike Collins built his political career on Trump's lie that the 2020 election was stolen. In a 2022 campaign video, he held an AR-15 while repeating debunked Georgia voter-fraud claims: "Georgians are sick and tired of weak-kneed, spineless politicians who won't fight for Trump, get to the bottom of 2020 and fix our elections." Then he fired at what appears to be a ballot drop box and blew it apart.

On the fourth anniversary of January 6, he called the rioters "thousands of peaceful grandmothers" who took "a self-guided, albeit unauthorized, tour of the U.S. Capitol building." And when a convicted January 6 rioter asked him whether he'd support compensating victims of a "weaponized political system" — "not just to Jan. 6-ers like myself but all Americans" — Collins answered "That's easy. Yes."

In 2020, Georgia counted every paper ballot in the presidential race by hand, and the hand count upheld the result. The problem with voter confidence in Georgia was never the count. It was politicians like Collins telling people the count was fake.

Now the fix he's "fine" with is armed federal forces at the polls.

Who that scares

Armed federal agents at a polling place don't have to arrest anyone to do damage. They just have to be there — or be rumored to be there.

Stephen Richer, the Republican who used to run voter registration and early voting in Maricopa County, Arizona, warned with co-author Gina Goldenberg about a newly naturalized citizen who "hears that ICE might be at the polls" and wonders, "Why risk it?"

That's the voter who stays home. Not a criminal. A citizen with every right to vote, scared off by the thing Collins just said was fine.

It isn't only Georgia's Senate race where Republicans are saying it out loud. Maine's Republican nominee for governor, Bobby Charles, said he would call Tom Homan and ask for ICE agents at Maine polling places. And in Georgia, the Republican running for governor, Rick Jackson, told a supporter who wanted federal troops that the governor would "get the National Guard" instead.

What the record shows

Asked on September 27 about the Trump administration's talk of federal troops at polling places, Mike Collins said "that's fine with me." Federal law makes it a crime, punishable by up to five years in prison, to bring troops or armed men to a place where an election is being held unless they're needed to fight off armed enemies of the United States. Collins is running for the U.S. Senate after a career spent spreading the lie that Georgia's 2020 election was stolen.

Source

'Fine with me': GOP Senate candidate Mike Collins backs federal troops at polls — Brentin Mock, Democracy Docket, September 27, 2026.