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Democracy rarely dies with a single blow. It ekes out — vote by vote, law by law, restriction by restriction — until the people still cast ballots, but the outcome is already written. Step 10 in the 10 Steps to Autocracy and Authoritarianism [ [link removed] ] is the endgame: dismantling the machinery of free elections and replacing it with a system where power never truly changes hands.
The death of the democratic process begins with a familiar story: false claims of “fraud” that justify new restrictions. Cynical politicians insist — despite evidence to the contrary — that “election integrity” requires limits on who can vote, how they can vote, and whether their votes will even count. Integrity becomes code for worthy, and the arbiters never mean those whose views might differ from their own. In practice, administrative measures replace the violence of past suppression efforts, but the effects are the same: change and complicate the rules to smother the democratic process. But just in case an ardent voter successfully navigates the obstacles, the authoritarians have one last hope: they redraw the boundaries of political participation until only a chosen few are left inside.
The playbook for this last step has already been perfected within the bounds of the United States, its ignominy shared across the states. In Georgia, four years after lawmakers passed Senate Bill 202 — one of the nation’s most sweeping anti-voting laws — new evidence [ [link removed] ] shows exactly how these tactics work. The law slashed access to drop boxes, shortened absentee voting windows, and imposed new ID requirements that disproportionately affected Black, Latino, and Asian American voters. According to Democracy Docket [ [link removed] ], “the number of Black voters who used mail ballots to vote dropped sharply from 29% in 2020 to 5% in 2024 — a 23-point decline. Among Asian American voters, mail ballot use fell from 40% to 7%, and among Latino voters from 23% to 3%. In comparison, mail ballot use by white voters fell by 19 points.” Why? Entire counties lost most of their drop boxes. Thousands of voters — many of them elderly, disabled, or poor — had their ballots rejected. This has been the plan all along.
What’s happening in Georgia is a blueprint. Every restriction on early voting, every closed polling place, every purged voter roll serves the same purpose: to limit the electorate and make opposition mathematically harder. Each new rule is marketed as “neutral,” but the results tell a different story — participation down where it threatens those in power. Once the rules themselves are rigged, the ballots don’t need to be.
In Texas, Missouri and North Carolina, new maps have been drawn and passed in order to narrow the aperture for voter choice. The new mid-decade Texas map is a case in point. According to State Rep. Vince Evans [ [link removed] ], under the newly drawn maps, “[t]he value of a Latino resident in Texas is one-third of the political power of that that a white resident in Texas delivers, and again, for Black residents in Texas, it’s one-fifth.” Similar dilutions in voting power have echoes in other state chambers considering unprecedented overthrows of citizen power. All using the law to justify stripping voters of their voice.
The purpose of Step 10 is to maintain the guise of democracy, but crush our collective spirit. The lines still form on Election Day. The ballots are still counted. The candidates still debate. But the system has been tilted so far that the peoples’ will can’t break through. Gerrymandered districts, purged rolls, and closed precincts turn voting into an obstacle course. When those in power control both the ballot and the referees, elections become theater.
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This is how every autocrat closes the circle. After undermining courts, capturing legislatures, gutting the civil service, and scapegoating vulnerable groups, they lock the door on the way out. Once voting is hollowed out, the rest of the system can keep its titles — “president,” “Congress,” “courts” — but the people no longer rule.
Yet even here, resistance is possible. Georgia’s data also reveals something else: people are fighting back. Just look at the impressive turnout [ [link removed] ] for this year’s elections. Organizers are activating new voters. Neighbors are sharing rides. Churches are opening their doors. Despite every barrier, citizens are still voting — not because the system was fair, but because they refused to let it fail quietly. That determination is democracy’s last defense. Lawsuits have already been filed against a raft of new voter suppression laws, and while victory is far from certain, the fight matters.
Recently on Assembly Required [ [link removed] ], I spoke with Ari Berman to examine how Trump is poised to use this authoritarian playbook to undermine the 2026 midterms.
The work ahead is clear. Protect access to the ballot. Strengthen independent election administration. Defend and expand the Voting Rights Act and restore federal oversight. Challenge gerrymanders in court and in public. And above all, reject the desperate lie that participation doesn’t matter. The point of suppression is despair. Our answer must be insistence and engagement. My personal passion for democracy isn’t about the nobility of the act of casting a ballot. I am driven by the reality that access is the progenitor of change. If we are locked out of having a say, we are victims to those who don’t care about what we need.
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Democracy is under siege but we cannot let them think we won’t reclaim it. As long as there are voters willing to persist against barriers, organizers who find new ways to reach non-voters, and communities determined to show up for one another, democracy isn’t over. The ballot box is both a mechanism and a promise — and keeping it alive is the ultimate act of resistance.
In case you missed it
Check out our breakdown of every step in the autocrat’s playbook
…and more on the 10 Steps Campaign [ [link removed] ] section.

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