democracy

I realize that not everyone will read this entire post; some will just skim it. If you’re not inclined to read (or even skim) the whole thing and you’re looking for a shortcut, I’d suggest that you follow and share posts from (and ideally support) at least a couple of the following groups, to try to protect and restore our democracy, protect voters and their votes, and protect the integrity of our elections: VoteRiders, Democracy Docket, DASS, DAGA, Protect Democracy, Democracy Defenders, Power the Polls, Common Cause, Election Protection (866-OUR-VOTE hotline: 866-687-8683), League of Women Voters, All Voting is Local, Fair Elections Center, NDRC, ACLU, Brennan Center for Justice, Verified Voting, and Democracy Forward. (Note: Some of those organizations are non-partisan, while others are partisan.) You also might want to scroll down to the last, brief section (“General Recommendations for Everyone”) and the links lists at the bottom of the post.

Many different types of voter suppression and voter disenfranchisement efforts are being pushed by the federal government and some states, and these efforts are eroding the ability to have truly “free and fair” elections. It’s entirely possible that the ramped-up voter suppression that occurred in the 2024 election prevented a substantial enough number of people from voting that it changed the outcome of some races. The following are many of the tactics that some states and the federal government have been using in recent years, or are still attempting to implement, in order to: dilute people’s votes (in certain areas); or to make it much harder for people to register to vote or to vote; or to challenge or reject people’s votes (to prevent some people’s ballots from being counted). They have quite an arsenal of dirty tricks. But each of the tactics described below is followed by one or more Remedies: ways to counteract that type of voter suppression effort to minimize its impact, and to try to make sure that you and all other eligible citizens can vote and that all legitimate votes are counted. Forewarned is forearmed, as the saying goes:

1. Gerrymandering (or skewed/partisan redistricting) of voting districts, made worse in recent years by the Supreme Court’s continued evisceration of the Voting Rights Act protections. Gerrymandering has most commonly been done to dilute the vote of urban communities with a large proportion of Black voters or Democratic voters. Republicans currently have an advantage due to extreme gerrymanders in many Republican-led states; a few Democratic-majority states have recently instituted counter-gerrymanders to try to level the playing field, but the Republican gerrymanders still outweigh them.
   REMEDIES: For information on the fight to counteract gerrymandering and level the playing field, see the NDRC’s summary and Democracy Docket’s assessment. If your state has a fair maps/redistricting initiative, find and follow it. For more information about gerrymandering and efforts to create fair, independent redistricting commissions and fair maps, see Redistricting Action and Campaign Legal Center.
2. Making it difficult to register to vote: e.g., states requiring that people register in person (rather than online or by mail), and/or states making very strict/prohibitive ID requirements (see the next item, below), or states requiring that people register to vote a month or more before an election, and not allowing registration up through Election Day even if someone only recently moved to the state or to a new voting district. They are also going after various voter registration organizations to try to prevent them from registering voters.
   REMEDY: If you’re registering to vote for the first time or you’ve moved to a new address, look up your state’s registration deadlines and voter ID requirements (via your state’s Secretary of State elections site or your County elections site/office) right away, and be sure to get the required ID (if any) and register/re-register in your new state or county before the state deadline.
3. Prohibitive voter ID requirements: The majority of states (38) now have voter ID requirements, and some states’ requirements have gotten more strict in recent years. Some states now require or are attempting to require proof-of-citizenship documentation, and/or other difficult-or-expensive-to-obtain IDs or documentation—either to register to vote or to vote. These types of ID requirements serve as a “poll tax,” since almost all types of accepted ID and citizenship documentation, including passports and birth certificates, cost money to get. Such documents can also easily be lost due to a variety of circumstances, and getting a new ID when one moves takes time, as well as money and transportation. (Many people do not have a Department of Motor Vehicles in their county and have to travel a long distance to get to one.) VoteRiders’ research found that, in 2023, over 34.5 million Americans either didn’t have a driver’s license or state ID (so they wouldn’t be able to register and/or vote in the many states that have voter ID requirements), OR they had an ID that didn’t have their current name and/or address on it (which could cause difficulties voting in states with the strictest voter ID laws, such as Arizona). Furthermore, they found that “over half of Americans living in states that require photo ID to vote in person don’t even know their state’s laws and don’t realize they’ll need this type of identification to cast a ballot successfully. And 35% of citizens who live in states that don’t have a photo ID law either mistakenly think it’s required to vote in person or are unsure what their state’s voter law is.” If the proposed federal SAVE Act is passed, “millions of eligible US citizens would be unable to vote because 21 million Americans — 1 in 10 adult citizens — don’t have easy access to proof-of-citizenship documents. And some people who were not born in a hospital may not have a birth certificate at all. [Source: Is It Hard to Get an ID? Yes, It Can Be, by VoteRiders] Furthermore, if the SAVE Act is passed, people who have changed their names, including the many women who took their husband’s last name when they got married, could face added difficulties or might not be able to register or vote if the name on their birth certificate doesn’t match the name on their current ID; the bill doesn’t even make clear which particular documents would be accepted as proof of name change. If it’s passed, implementing the SAVE Act would cause massive, unnecessary confusion and voter disenfranchisement.
   REMEDIES: Look up the voter ID requirements for your state (for registering and for voting); the requirements may have changed within the last year or two. (At least 38 states have some type of ID requirements now.) You can also find current ID requirements on your state’s Secretary of State elections site (or from your County’s elections office). If you don’t have the ID that’s required by your state to register to vote or vote, and you need free assistance with getting ID, your birth certificate, or social security card so that you can get an ID, VoteRiders can assist with that, and they can even pay for those documents if you aren’t able to and they can arrange for transportation to the DMV if you need that. Please let others know about this valuable resource, and help others get the ID they need to vote. Secondly, please demand that your Senators and federal Representatives vote against the so-called SAVE Act, which would make it prohibitively difficult and expensive for many people to vote, as many people lack the documentation it would require—and it could disenfranchise many women voters and others who have changed their first or last name since birth.
4. Attempting to curtail or eliminate mail-in or absentee voting: Some states make it difficult or almost impossible to vote via mail-in or absentee ballot. This risks disenfranchising many disabled and elderly voters (and others who may not have any transportation to their polling place), as well as overseas and military voters, and people who are traveling on Election Day or who cannot get enough time off from work to get to their polling place on Election Day. And in a couple of states, all voters have been voting by mail for many years (so there are no in-person polling places and there’s no way to set that system up quickly). Some states might require that they receive voters’ mail-in ballots by Election Day (not just receive ballots that were post-marked by Election Day), even though mail can be slow and the postal service is being underfunded due to a desire to privatize it. The federal government has been attempting to disallow mail-in voting, via the SAVE Act and other means; so far, most of these attempts have been successfully challenged in court, but some are still being litigated.
   REMEDIES: a) Check your state’s Secretary of State elections site before the upcoming election to find out whether mail-in or absentee ballots are currently allowed in your state, and if so, whether your state has certain requirements to be eligible to request and use such ballots. If you plan to use one, request your mail-in ballot well before your state’s deadline. Drop it off at an official drop-off location (secure indoor drop-offs are better than using outdoor drop boxes), if you can, or else have it postmarked at a local Post Office counter more than a week before the specified deadline. b) Follow and support the voter protection organizations mentioned at the top of this post, some of whom have been working to ensure that mail-in ballots are still allowed despite efforts to ban them, and in some states they’re trying to ensure that those states must count all ballots that are post-marked by Election Day even if they don’t arrive by Election Day (different states have different rules on that).
5. Voter roll purges, including last-minute purges where people won’t realize they’ve been purged until they go to vote, at which time it is often too late (in many states) to re-register for that election. The federal government has been trying to compile a federal “master” list of all eligible voters by demanding to receive and review each state’s voter rolls (which is also a stipulation in the SAVE Act that the president has been trying to pass), and they could potentially decide to (or mistakenly) mark some eligible, citizen voters (who haven’t previously voted the way they wanted them to, perhaps) as “non-citizens” or “deceased” on their master list, to keep them from being able to vote on Election Day or to prevent their votes from being counted.
   REMEDIES: Please double-check to make sure you’re still registered to vote and all of your registration information is accurate and up to date. Ideally do that multiple times before each election, but do it at least once before your state’s voter registration deadline for the election (which is more than a month before the election in some states), so that you’d have time to re-register if needed. Tell everyone you know to do the same. If you find out on Election Day that you have been wrongly purged from the voting rolls (i.e., the system no longer indicates that you are Registered where you currently live), find out if registration is allowed through Election Day (and re-register if you can); if you can’t register for this election on Election Day, insist on getting a provisional ballot (and follow the instructions to make sure it can be counted), and then re-register to vote. Also notify your Secretary of State’s office and your County’s elections office of what happened, and report the problem to Election Protection or the ACLU or your state Democratic party (and potentially also to local news media, as well as posting about it on social media).
6. “Mass voter challenges” (by groups or individuals) to a group of ballots (perhaps from certain areas or with certain types of names), potentially making false accusations that they are fraudulent votes. Mass challenges can throw the system into chaos and not give eligible voters adequate time to respond to any challenges and prove their eligibility.
   REMEDIES: Always track your ballot after submitting it, to verify that it was received and accepted/counted. You can find out here whether you can do so via your state or county’s elections website and/or via BallotTrax. (Other options are provided here.) Mass ballot challenges should be made illegal everywhere. Ask your state and federal representatives to put safeguards in place to prevent mass voter challenges that are done in bad faith. And support some of the voter protection groups listed in the first paragraph.
7. Refusing to accept/approve ballots due to minor/subjective differences in a voter’s signature across documents, or minor omissions on the ballot or mail-in envelope, and not notifying voters that their ballot has been challenged or thrown out in time for them to “cure” it, or making it difficult for voters to “cure” their ballots (requiring they drive to a particular place to do so in person). This can be particularly tricky when someone votes via a “provisional” ballot.
   REMEDIES: If you are allowed to vote by mail in your state and you plan to do that, read all instructions on the ballot very carefully, sign where indicated and try to make sure that your signature is representative of your official/typical signature so it should closely match the signature they have on file and is not likely to be rejected. Drop it off at an official drop-off location (secure indoor drop-offs are better than using outdoor drop boxes), if you can, or else have it postmarked at a local Post Office counter more than a week before the deadline so it should arrive by Election Day. (If you’re mailing it in from another state or country, you’ll need to mail it even earlier.) Make sure that you use adequate postage, if postage is required (some states’ mail-in ballots require one or two stamps). Secondly, always track your ballot after submitting it, to verify that it was received and accepted/counted. Most states provide some way for voters to track their ballot and confirm that it was received and accepted. You can find out here whether you can do so via your state or county’s elections website and/or via BallotTrax. (Other options are provided here.) And if you voted by provisional ballot, be sure to follow all instructions you’re given for “curing” or finalizing your ballot so that it will count; this might require taking an accepted ID or other documentation to your county’s elections office.
8. Misinformation and disinformation/fraud: Almost every election, some people receive mailers or see social media posts that purposely provide false polling place information or other election information. Ads or posts (sometimes including AI “deep fake” videos) can pop up that lie about (smear) candidates, often at the last minute when there’s no time for the lies to be rebutted or widely debunked.
   REMEDIES: a) Be wary of what you see (especially when the claims are right before an election or truly outrageous), and check with reliable, unbiased sources to get accurate information. If it’s a nation-wide disinformation or smear campaign, sites like Factcheck.org, Politifact.com, and Snopes.com might have already debunked it. b) If you know you’ve received or seen fraudulent information, please report it to those fact-checking sites (or other local or national media) as well as to your state Democratic party. And tell people you know (or post on social media) about the misinformation.
9. Closing polling places (or changing polling locations): In some states, urban areas that have a lot of Black voters (and college campus areas) are often given the fewest polling places (and/or not enough voting machines or ballots or poll workers), leading to longer lines in those locations, which not everyone can wait in for hours (due to time/work or physical constraints). Sometimes polling locations are closed or changed at the last minute, causing confusion and disenfranchisement.
   REMEDIES: Always check and confirm the location of your polling place before each election, to make sure it hasn’t changed. You should receive that information in the mail from your County, but you can also contact your county’s elections office to find your polling place. If you discover a long, slow line at your polling location—or learn that the location has run out of ballots or the voting machines aren’t working)—please report that to your county’s elections office, as well your state Democratic party and/or Election Protection, right away. If the issues aren’t resolved quickly, you might also want to notify local news media.
10. Bomb threats called into polling stations on Election Day, which so far have always been false alarms, but they often cause polling places to close at least temporarily (for a bomb sweep) or in some cases people might be told to go to another polling location, making it difficult for them to vote (some people can’t get more time off work to wait or come back to their polling place or go to a different one, or they might not have the transportation to go elsewhere). A rash of fake bomb threats happened in the last election (2024), particularly in Georgia in majority-Black districts, and the bomb scares almost certainly managed to disenfranchise some people from voting.
    REMEDIES: a) Vote early, if early voting is an option in your County—either in person or by mail. b) Election officials everywhere need to be ready for bomb threats (as well as electrical outages, severe storms, and other types of disruptions) to happen, and have plans in place to not allow them to disrupt voting for long or to scare voters away from the polls (e.g., perhaps temporary/back-up voting tents can readily be set up a safe distance outside of each polling location, in the event of a bomb scare?). Local law enforcement should also be on alert and have staff and/or bomb-sniffing dogs on hand to perform efficient bomb sweeps if needed. Contact your state representatives and/or county elections official(s) and Secretary of State’s office to make sure they have plans in place. c) If there’s a bomb threat (or other major disruption) at your polling place, contact local news media, your state Democratic party, your Secretary of State’s office, and/or Election Protection, the ACLU or other civil liberties law group. It’s possible that one of those groups might need to contact your local/regional FBI office or state police or elections judges.
11. Other forms of voter intimidation (and election worker intimidation): e.g., campaigns or mailings meant to scare away brown-skinned citizens (or others) who might fear being mis-identified as “undocumented” and detained/disappeared/deported if they go to their polling place. Or trying to intimidate voters or election workers at their polling places by stationing “immigration enforcement agents” or “militia” members or other para-military groups, or large groups of armed law enforcement, particularly in areas with a lot of people of color or in urban areas that are Democratic strongholds. (Or sending gangs of partisan poll observers who are instructed to intimidate or harass election workers or disrupt voting.) That said, “federal law has barred armed agents from polling places for well over a century — except in the event of an armed enemy attack on the country — and that prohibition remains in effect to this day. A separate statute prohibits intimidating voters or election workers.” Local law enforcement should know this; they can and should prevent armed agents or troops from standing in or near polling places, and there are examples of them preventing it in the past. (Source: “Americans Can Vote Without Fear,” Brennan Center for Justice)
    REMEDIES: a) Vote early, if early voting is an option in your County—either in person or by mail. b) Know your rights (see the previous link). c) You could volunteer to be a poll worker, or to be a nonpartisan poll observer/monitor (see Election Protection) or a partisan one with your local or state Democratic party. d) If armed people are stationed at/in your polling place or anyone is harassing or intimidating voters or election workers, report this to local law enforcement (city police or county sheriff’s office or state police) or local media immediately, as well as your state Democratic party, your County elections official, your Secretary of State’s office, or Election Protection.
12. Worst-case election subversion scenarios: The Executive branch of the federal government could try to seize voting machines or ballots under the pretense of “identifying voter fraud.” They might try to declare a “state of emergency” or “martial law” in order to do that; or even try to cancel elections, though that has never happened before (even during the Civil War) and it would not be legal so it would certainly be challenged. A foreign government, or foreign or domestic actors, could attempt to alter the election results by attempting to hack some of the voting machines or tallies. (Note: In 2025, Dominion Voting Systems was bought by a former GOP election official, and is now called Liberty Vote. And another major voting systems company, ES&S, is also financed by companies with GOP ties. Also, a few years back, Ivanka Trump got trademarks on voting machines made in China. None of this is proof of anything, but it is important to be aware of the facts.) And, if all else fails, certain county or state elections officials might try to refuse to certify election results or the U.S. House or Senate might try to refuse to seat the rightful winners of the election.
    REMEDIES: State Attorneys General, Secretaries of State, County elections officials, and all legal groups that defend voting rights and civil liberties need to be ready for all hypothetical but possible scenarios that could upend elections or try to disenfranchise voters, and they need to have plans in place to address any and all of the potential scenarios. Fortunately, some state AGs and Secretaries of State are discussing potential scenarios and getting prepared. And there are groups like the National Task Force on Election Crises. a) Find out whether your state Attorney General and Secretary of State are preparing for possible election subversion by election deniers or federal actors. Contact your state AG and SOS and county elections officials (as well as state and local representatives) to ask them to be prepared for worst-case scenarios and to proactively do everything they can to protect elections from partisan interference or subversion. Also contact your federal and state representatives to make sure they are doing everything they can to protect people’s votes. b) Sign up for Indivisible’s “Hands Off Our Vote” Midterm Election Protection Program. c) Find out what types of voting machines and equipment are used in your precinct, via Verified Voting. And learn about the various ways to make elections the most secure and verifiable (some of which are already in place in some jurisdictions), and advocate for those methods in your state and county. d) If any of the worst-case scenarios come to pass (or look like they might), be sure to follow various pro-democracy and voter protection groups (including those listed in the first paragraph, as well as Indivisible and MoveOne) to support legal efforts and figure out what role citizens might be able to play in protecting their votes and the election.

For additional information on voter suppression, redistricting, voting rights, and election integrity, see the Brennan Center’s helpful information.

General Recommendations for Everyone

1. Please encourage and help others you know to register and to vote—and to make sure ahead of time that they have the required type of ID (requirements may have become more strict in the past year or two)—especially young or first-time voters, college students, or people who have moved to a new state which might have different requirements than where they lived before. (See the links under Remedies in items #2 and #3 above, or find your state’s Secretary of State elections site to get information on registering and voting in your state.) In a few states, people must register more than a month before an election to be able to vote in it; in many states, the deadline is a few weeks before the election, while in a few states you can still register up through Election Day. If you know someone who hasn’t voted before or who might be nervous about it, offer to go with them to the polling place or to help them fill out and send in their mail-in ballot according to the instructions. Also encourage people to Vote Early (ideally in person, or secondarily by mail), if that’s an option where they live.
   
2. Check your registration status with your state or county elections office (approximately a month before each election, but ideally more often, including both before and after your state’s voter registration deadline), and remind others to do so as well. Also put the Election Protection hotline (866-OUR-VOTE, which is 866-687-8683) in your phone’s Contacts list, and spread the word about that hotline to others (some state Democratic parties also have their own voter protection hotlines). You could also share this post or copy some of the information within it to share with your friends and family or your online communities.
   
3. Volunteer for: voter registration drives (with your local or state Democratic party, or the Voter Participation Center or other groups), or volunteer to be a poll worker, a nonpartisan or partisan (party-representing) poll observer/monitor (with Election Protection, or with your state or local Democratic Party), or volunteer to provide voter ID assistance through VoteRiders, or provide ballot curing assistance to help people fix their rejected ballots with VoPro Pros. You can find lots of other great volunteer opportunities or events here: Mobilize.
   
4. All races on your ballot are important, but some of the most important for protecting elections and democracy (though they are sometimes overlooked or overshadowed by national races) are: each state’s Secretary of State and Attorney General, judges/judicial races, Governor, and various other state and local-level races and ballot measures. Make sure you research all candidates and measures (Ballotpedia.org can help you see what’s on your ballot, as well as the official voting guide(s) you should get from your County and/or State); and consider donating to or volunteering for some of your state- or local-level candidates.
   
5. After you’ve voted, track your ballot, and tell friends how they can track their ballot in your/their state (see #7 above, Remedies).

Key voting/election information websites:

• Vote411
• Vote.org (Note: Vote.gov may no longer be trustworthy or reliable.)
• U.S. Vote Foundation: Look up your local elections office/site here
• I Will Vote
• Election Protection
• Rock the Vote
• VoteRiders.org (for your state’s voter ID rules and free ID assistance)
• Ballotpedia.org (for info. on what is on your ballot)

In addition to those groups and the groups I mentioned in the first paragraph of this post, I also recommend checking out, following, and supporting some of these organizations: Oath, and State + Local Election Alliance; Environmental Voter Project, Lead Locally, Climate Cabinet, Climate Hawks Vote, GiveGreen, League of Conservation Voters, NRDC Action Fund, Chispa; Voter Participation Center, Voters of Tomorrow, Campus Vote Project, YDA, CDA, Headcount; VoteVets, Common Defense, Voto Latino, Black Voters Matter, Native Vote; DLCC, States Win, States Project, Swing Left; YALLvote, Groundwork Project, VoteFwd, Rural Freedom Network; Indivisible, DemCast, and MoveOn.

I also recommend donating to (or volunteering for) at least one of the following state Democratic Parties (in addition to your own state’s), which are currently considered swing states or “purple” states: Nevada, Iowa, Ohio, Maine, North Carolina, Arizona, Pennsylvania, Alaska, Texas, Georgia, Michigan, Wisconsin, Colorado, Minnesota, New Hampshire, Nebraska, Kansas, Montana, South Carolina, Virginia, and even Florida and Missouri.

Here is a listing of our past posts related to voting, elections, and democracy (in the United States):

• Voting and Election Resources: An Index of Posts
• Election 2024: Ways to Support Voters and Protect Democracy
• Voting and Elections: Links, Groups, and a Personal Plea
• State-by-State Voting Information
• More: Posts related to Democracy, Elections, Voting, Social Change

July 31, 2026
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