This Election is Different
Why a Voting Rights Lawyer Says This Election Is Different
Election Day is less than 100 days away. Donald Trump is unpopular, prices are up, and the economy is stagnant. Normally, a party in that position spends its energy trying to convince voters to give it another chance.
According to voting rights attorney Marc Elias, that is not what is happening. Elias argues the Republican Party's real strategy has three parts: make it harder for Democratic-leaning voters to cast a ballot, gain control of voter registration databases to disqualify voters, and if that fails, claim fraud to challenge results after the fact.
That might sound like inside-baseball legal strategy. It's not. It's about whether the ballot you cast this fall gets counted, and whether the person who wins is actually seated in office.
First: What Is a Voter Roll, and Why Does It Matter Who Controls It?
What Happened
Elias's July 27 opinion piece for Democracy Docket lays out a year of legal fights over election rules. The U.S. Supreme Court ruled in Watson v. RNC, preserving hundreds of thousands of mail-in ballots that the RNC had sought to have thrown out. Separately, the Department of Justice has sued 30 states seeking access to detailed voter data, and as of this writing has lost in 17 of those cases, including 8 rulings from judges appointed by Trump. The administration is appealing those losses. Elias also points to the Department of Homeland Security's SAVE database being used to pressure states to purge voters, funding being withheld from states, and threats of criminal prosecution against election officials.
New requirements that voters prove citizenship are also spreading. For most U.S.-born citizens, that means producing a passport or an original birth certificate. A standard driver's license, even a REAL ID, does not count in most states. Elias notes this can be a particular burden for women who changed their last name after marriage, since it may not match their birth certificate.
What Supporters of These Policies Say
Proponents of stricter voter data access and proof-of-citizenship rules, including officials in the Trump administration and the Department of Justice, argue these measures protect election integrity. Their stated goal is confirming that only eligible, verified voters remain on the rolls, and that federal agencies should have the data needed to check registration records against citizenship and residency status.
What Critics Say
Elias and the voting rights organizations he represents argue these same measures function as barriers, not safeguards. They point to the pattern of court losses (17 for the DOJ so far, including before Trump-appointed judges) as evidence that the legal theories behind the data requests do not hold up. They also argue that combining data collection with threats to withhold funding, prosecute officials, and involve the Postal Service in ballot handling goes well beyond routine list maintenance.
What We Don't Know Yet
The DOJ's appeals of its 17 court losses are still pending, and a related case has reached the U.S. Supreme Court on an emergency basis. It is not yet settled how much voter data the federal government will ultimately be allowed to collect from states, or how it could be used before or after the election. Whether Congress, courts, or state officials intervene further before November remains an open question.
What You Can Do
- Check your voter registration status now, before Election Day, so you have time to fix any problems.
- If you can vote early, make a plan for exactly how, when, and where you will cast your ballot.
- Consider volunteering as a poll worker or poll watcher, and report anything that looks like intimidation or an improper purge to your state election officials or a voter protection hotline.
