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From the Desk of Trevor Potter
The congressional midterms are more than a year away, and the next presidential race is barely on anybody’s radar. Why then, you may ask, am I writing about threats to our elections at this moment?

The answer is that the Trump administration, congressional leaders and state lawmakers across the country are at work now to put policies in place that will make it harder to register to vote and more difficult for millions to cast a ballot. And the president is attempting to assert powers to intervene in the midterm elections that he does not have under the Constitution.
If the pro-democracy movement is unsuccessful in beating back these anti-voter measures, the midterms, the 2028 general election and beyond will be less free and fair. This would be yet another significant development in the accelerated trend toward authoritarianism that began at the start of the second Trump administration.

Elections give voters the opportunity to hold elected officials accountable for their actions. But there must be a level playing field for all to ensure electoral outcomes reflect the true will of the voters. Laws and policies that advantage one set of voters over another are in opposition to our core democratic values.

Campaign Legal Center (CLC) is constantly working to ensure all voters can make their voices heard on Election Day. That means acting now to stop threats before they can disrupt our democracy. Here are four looming threats we’re actively addressing:

Executive order on birthright citizenship: Citizenship opens the door to participation ([link removed]) in our democracy, including the freedom to vote. A somewhat overlooked aspect of President Trump’s anti-constitutional order on birthright citizenship is that it essentially purports to give the president the power to decide who can and cannot vote in this country.

The president, in this order, seeks to redefine the terms of citizenship, in direct violation of the 14th Amendment. The slew of preliminary rulings putting this order on hold shows that judges believe those challenging it will ultimately prevail.

We also await an important ruling by the U.S. Supreme Court on whether those lower court rulings can continue to apply to the nation as a whole. CLC has filed a brief ([link removed]) in relation to these lawsuits on behalf of Secure Families Initiative (SFI) ([link removed]) .

Executive order on voting: In late April, CLC and our co-counsel filed a lawsuit ([link removed]) opposing an illegal presidential order asserting broad powers to control the electoral process. The order is clearly unconstitutional because the power to run elections and pass election-related laws is reserved for the states and Congress: The Constitution gives the executive no role in election procedures.

One part of the order also seeks to ban certain types of vote-counting machines — a provision no doubt grounded in conspiracy theories about our elections. If states decline to follow this provision, as they should, it is not difficult to imagine this administration using that as a pretext to challenge future election results, based on false claims of machines miscounting votes.

CLC and our clients in this case celebrated a federal court ruling ([link removed]) last month stopping key parts of the order, a ruling which the Department of Justice uncharacteristically decided not to appeal. We will, of course, pursue this case until it is fully resolved, and the president’s order is no longer a threat to the freedom to vote.

New barriers to voting: There’s a common thread running through the presidential executive order on voting, legislation moving through Congress and laws being debated and enacted at the state level: the imposition of unnecessary and overly burdensome documentation requirements for registering to vote.

One of CLCs most recent attempts to stop these measures is a lawsuit representing voters in Louisiana ([link removed]) who are challenging a law that violates the National Voter Registration Act (NVRA).

In Congress, we also are urging the U.S. Senate to reject legislation passed by the House, the SAVE Act ([link removed]) , a bill with documentation requirements that have the potential to deny the freedom to vote to millions of Americans.

The broad consensus among pro-democracy advocates is that these proposals amount to little more than tools for voter suppression. States already have effective measures in place to verify voter eligibility, maintain accurate voter registration rolls and keep our elections secure. All these laws do are make it harder for Americans to exercise their freedom to vote.

A new threat to the Voting Rights Act: It has long been understood that Americans have the right to challenge racially discriminatory voting laws in court under the Voting Rights Act of 1965. This “private right of action,” ([link removed]) as it is called in the legal world, was upheld by the U.S. Supreme Court in 1969.

Today, officials in North Dakota are advancing the radical legal theory that only government attorneys have the right to bring lawsuits under Section 2 of the Act. CLC is on the other side of this dispute, representing clients from Native American tribes ([link removed]) who are fighting for fair representation in state government.

Preserving the private right of action is essential to deterring discriminatory voting practices and procedures, as well as for raising legal challenges when the government either chooses to ignore these practices or does not have the capacity to sue. Unfortunately, a panel of judges on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eighth Circuit recently ruled against ([link removed]) allowing such private lawsuits but we will continue the fight on this critical issue, starting by asking the full Eighth Circuit to review this case.

The threats I’ve described show that protecting the freedom to vote in this country is a mission that must be pursued at all times, election year or not. Fortunately, Campaign Legal Center’s dedicated attorneys and voting rights experts, supported by concerned citizens across the nation ([link removed]) , have proven time and time again that they are up to the challenge. We will remain vigilant and will not allow these looming threats to grow into fundamental challenges to our democracy.
Sincerely,

Trevor Potter
President, Campaign Legal Center

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