Free and Fair Elections Are Under Attack Under the Guise of “Voter Fraud”

What gives us reason to believe in these difficult times for our democracy? In Hope in the Dark, Democracy Fund President Joe Goldman lifts up hope and bright spots—drawing attention to forward movement and the tangible signs of progress being made toward a democracy that enables all people to thrive.

Claims of voter fraud are not the reason for these tactics, as actual examples of fraud are exceedingly rare. They are the cover to undermine faith in our elections and to make it harder to participate in democracy.

Last month, FBI agents followed an Ohio voter-registration worker’s children to school as part of an investigation whose real aim is fear and intimidation. This is what the attack on our elections looks like in 2026. It’s not stuffed ballot boxes, but the slow raising of the cost of doing ordinary democratic work that endangers our system of free and fair elections.

The raid that produced that scene targeted the Ohio Organizing Collaborative, a nonpartisan organization that for nearly two decades has done the important work of helping Ohioans register to vote. These types of organizations are vital to a healthy democracy because they provide civic resources and services to underserved groups. But the FBI has searched the homes of staff and followed people to their cars—all under the guise of fighting voter fraud. Claims of voter fraud are not the reason for these tactics, as actual examples of fraud are exceedingly rare. They are the cover to undermine faith in our elections and to make it harder to participate in democracy. If this can happen in Ohio, it can happen to every organization working to protect the right to vote.

The raid in Ohio operated under the same logic as the recent politicized indictment of the Southern Poverty Law Center, only moved from the courtroom into people’s homes. The SPLC indictment signaled to other civil rights groups that their work was being watched. The Ohio raid tells voter registration and education groups, and the volunteers who knock on doors for them, the same thing. The Legal Defense Fund named the lineage plainly, calling the raid “an effort to spread fear and chaos ahead of the midterms,” and tied it to a long history of using law enforcement to intimidate and suppress Black voters.

When I introduced this column in March, I outlined four tests for our democracy. The attack on civil society’s independence (test three) and the attack on election integrity (test four) have turned out to be the same attack, because in this country the organizations that register voters, train poll workers, and staff voter information hotlines are civil society. You cannot threaten one without threatening the other.

The Wider Threat to the Vote

The Ohio raid is the starkest recent example, but it sits inside a broader effort to shape who feels safe enough to participate this November. With the potential of law enforcement and military at voting places and in communities during election periods, that safety is under threat. Armed federal forces at polling places are illegal under statutes that reach back to the years after the Civil War, and the Voting Rights Act lets an intimidated voter seek immediate relief in court. But this past year has taught us that the strength of a law depends on who is willing to enforce it, and that the chilling effect does not require a single agent or officer to physically approach a polling place.

When thousands of federal officers surged into Minnesota earlier this year, voter contact programs stalled and door-knocking dried up without one agent setting foot near a ballot box. The fear did the work the law was written to prevent. As election lawyers have pointed out, even the repeated public suggestion that agents might “surround the polls” suppresses turnout in immigrant communities whether or not anyone follows through.

This is the part of the picture that gets missed when each episode is treated as its own news cycle. The indictment, the raid, the deployment threats, and the demands for unredacted voter rolls from dozens of states are not a series of unrelated events. They are a coordinated effort to raise the felt cost of every part of the democratic process, from running a nonprofit to registering a neighbor to showing up on Election Day. President Trump’s speech last week raised the specter of widespread election fraud and manipulation, while his administration dismantles the institutions responsible for identifying and preventing threats. The only reasonable conclusion is that manufactured fears of fraud are being used to expand political control over elections.

Why I Still Have Hope and Where It Comes From

We are more prepared for these threats than we have ever been. I do not say that to wave away anything above. The danger is real and so is the harm. I say it because the same period that built the pressure also built the response. Nonpartisan champions of democracy have done essential work over the past several years to bolster the integrity of our election system. Two groups that exemplify this vital progress are All Voting Is Local and Center for Tech and Civic Life.

All Voting Is Local has spent years building election protection capacity in states across the country. Months before the Ohio raid, its Florida director was sitting on a panel with county election supervisors working through a question that would have sounded unthinkable not long ago: what do you actually do if immigration agents show up at a polling place? Planning around questions like that is what keeps our elections free, fair, and representative when the unthinkable arrives. AVIL and its many partners have built out a remarkable infrastructure to make sure we are prepared.

The Center for Tech and Civic Life has become a backbone for the local election officials who will be on the front lines if deployments or disruptions occur this fall. Primary elections across the country have been administered smoothly and successfully, but these officials are strained. A Brennan Center survey found that roughly a third have been threatened or harassed, and a majority worry about cuts to election security support. Groups like CTCL exist to give them training, tools, and a network to lean on, so that the people who run our elections are not facing this alone.

These groups represent what readiness looks like. It is unglamorous, it happens long before the cameras arrive, and it means that when intimidation comes, communities meet it with a plan rather than with panic.

We can also take lessons from the institutions that have already been tested. The law firms that cut deals with the administration lost partners, clients, and standing. The four firms that fought back in court won, again and again. The lesson is consistent enough that I think we can finally state it as a finding rather than a hope: capitulation does not buy safety. It buys the next demand. Resistance, organized and legally defended, has been working.

The Ohio Organizing Collaborative seems to understand this in its bones. It has not gone quiet. Its allies have rallied around it, members of Congress have demanded the FBI produce its warrants and its legal basis, and the message coming out of Cleveland is one of bold action. Congresswoman Shontel Brown put it about as plainly as it can be put: it is safe to register, safe to vote, and safe to help your neighbor do the same.

The Choice Facing Philanthropy 

For our election infrastructure to work, it must be fully funded. I’m proud of the many donors who joined our All by April campaign earlier this year and committed to get resources to donors when they are needed. Although we tracked more than $200 million in early funds, many groups on the ground still have important gaps.

So, the challenge in front of our sector is concrete. We must fund the organizations that protect voters and the officials who run elections. We must support the legal and rapid-response infrastructure that stands between a targeted nonprofit and the chilling silence that intimidation is designed to produce. We must refuse, visibly and collectively, to treat a raid or an indictment as a reason to back away from the groups under fire because the entire strategy depends on each of us deciding, individually, that the safe move is to keep our heads down until the attention passes.

The people of the Ohio Organizing Collaborative did not get to choose whether they would be tested. The rest of us do get to choose whether they face the next chapter with a movement behind them, or on their own. I know which choice keeps faith with the work, and I know which one the moment is asking of us.

I will keep watching the four tests as the year unfolds, and I will keep writing about what I see. As always, I welcome your responses, your critiques, and your own hopes in the dark.