State Officials Prepare Contingency Plans for Possible Federal Actions in November Elections

State officials from both parties said they are preparing contingency plans in case the federal government interferes with how states conduct November elections. The comments came during the National Association of Secretaries of State summer conference in Rapid City, South Dakota.

Minnesota Secretary of State Steve Simon said his office is backfilling services normally provided by the federal government and gaming out scenarios of interference.

"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," Simon told ABC News.

He added that the steps represent precaution rather than prediction. West Virginia Secretary of State Kris Warner said the state is ready to switch to paper ballots read by scanners if ballot marking devices are decertified and to count ballots by hand if tabulators cannot be used.

"I don't think there's anything that can be thrown our way that we're not ready to handle, that we don't have a plan B or a plan C to carry out," Warner said. Connecticut Secretary of State Stephanie Thomas said her office is scenario-planning for possible actions by the Trump administration. "Election officials are constantly preparing for the unknown," Thomas told ABC News.

New Hampshire Secretary of State David Scanlan said the state has been told that election monitors will be deployed at some polling places during upcoming primaries. "We welcome observers. It's a public process.