A Raging Battle for Democracy One Year from the Midterms

From the Desk of Trevor Potter

BY TREVOR POTTER, Founder and President of Campaign Legal Center

With just one year until the midterm elections that will determine the balance of power in Congress, the composition of state legislatures and many other important elected offices across the country, the fight to preserve and protect the freedom to vote next November is already very much underway.

One of the core purposes of an election is to give voters an opportunity to hold their representatives in government accountable for decisions made while in office. Every voter who wants to make their voice heard must have the opportunity to do so; every vote must count equally; every vote must be counted; and every result certified and accepted. Any attempt to distort these fundamental principles strikes at the heart of what it means to live in a system of representative self-government.

As recent elections demonstrated, the mechanics of our electoral process work well and are worthy of all Americans’ trust. Instead of embracing this reality, President Trump has, for at least a decade, chosen to sow distrust in our elections, consistently calling election results into question when he or his preferred candidates do not win, and attacking some common methods of voting and administering elections as “fraudulent.”

Over the last 10 months, the president and his election denialist allies in the executive branch have gone to great lengths to weaken our electoral system in ways that certainly have the potential to undermine the will of American voters. At Campaign Legal Center, we have no intention of letting the administration implement its anti-democracy plans without putting up a serious fight.

We began confronting the threats from this administration early in 2025, when Campaign Legal Center, working alongside Democracy Defenders Fund, filed the first lawsuit challenging an illegal and unconstitutional executive order that purported to assert broad presidential authority over how our elections are administered.

The Constitution is clear on this question: The states run elections, with Congress having the power to pass laws that apply to federal elections. There is no constitutional role for the president to determine how our elections are run. The courts thus far have overwhelmingly agreed, putting major portions of the executive order on hold as the legal process proceeds.

Campaign Legal Center is celebrating a recent victory on behalf of our clients in this case — the League of United Latin American Citizens (LULAC), Secure Families Initiative, and the Arizona Students’ Association. In late October, a federal court permanently blocked a major provision of the order, which would have made Americans using a federal form for voter registration comply with a burdensome and unnecessary documentary proof of citizenship requirement, potentially preventing millions of Americans from registering to vote.

Moving forward, our goal is to also win court rulings blocking a portion of the order requiring overseas military personnel to provide documentary proof of citizenship when registering, as well as another that overrides state deadlines for receiving and counting valid mail-in ballots.

Our fight to protect voters from restrictive proof of citizenship laws is not limited to opposing the White House in court. Campaign Legal Center has lobbied strenuously against similar proposals in Congress and state legislatures. One such piece of federal legislation known as the SAVE Act has the potential to disenfranchise more than 20 million Americans. Fortunately, there is no indication that the bill has enough votes to pass the U.S. Senate at this time.

Another front in the administration’s efforts to put a thumb on the scale in 2026 is the ongoing pressure campaign on states to engage in mid-decade gerrymandering of their congressional maps — a clear attempt to marginalize particular groups of voters in the rush to maintain the current majority in the U.S. House of Representatives.

Campaign Legal Center is suing lawmakers in Missouri on behalf of voters in that state, challenging a hastily prepared redistricting plan that violates the state constitution and splits up communities in Kansas City. On a related front, our redistricting work in Utah has drawn the ire of President Trump, where we are doggedly pursuing a legal remedy on behalf of voters that will put a fair congressional map in place in time for the midterm elections.

When the administration’s anti-voter agenda manifests in different parts of the executive branch, Campaign Legal Center mobilizes our legal experts to mount challenges based on the law and the Constitution’s separation of powers.

We are working with chapters of the League of Women Voters to stop a nationwide effort by the Trump Department of Justice (DOJ) to gain access to troves of sensitive, private voter data. The DOJ has so far sued eight states that have refused to comply with its demands. We have filed motions to intervene on behalf of the League in three of these lawsuits, targeting New York, Maine and Michigan.

This Trump DOJ’s unwarranted privacy invasion is part of the administration’s broader campaign to assert a role for the executive branch in our elections where none exists. The administration seems to think it can get away with distributing this data across the federal government without telling the American people how it will be used. In response to this lack of transparency, Campaign Legal Center and the organization American Oversight recently filed three new lawsuits demanding that the administration turn over public records related to the federal government’s plans to utilize this data to target state voter rolls.

There is no denying that we are faced with a president who tried to overturn the 2020 election results; who has stacked his administration with officials who endorse election conspiracies; who uses the Justice Department as a tool for achieving political goals; and who runs roughshod over rules guiding the deployment of military troops on U.S. soil.

What also cannot be denied is the fact that the pro-democracy coalition in our nation has successfully blocked efforts to unlawfully interfere with our electoral process during the past few elections and this year, with Campaign Legal Center playing a significant leadership role. For anyone who worries about the midterm elections, I want you to know that Campaign Legal Center, in partnership with our allies, is fully engaged in a process to anticipate, prepare for and respond to any efforts that would threaten the will of the voters on November 3, 2026.

Looking for more in-depth insights on issues critical to our democracy? Consider subscribing to the “From the Desk of Trevor Potter” newsletter, written by Campaign Legal Center’s founder and president, Trevor Potter. Get expert analysis and learn more about Campaign Legal Center’s efforts to protect and strengthen democracy for all Americans by subscribing via email or on LinkedIn.