Reading · States at the Core

If you have scrolled through the news with any regularity in the last several months, headline after headline outline the grim but very real threat to our elections. The scale and severity can be overwhelming as the headlines often make it seem as if there isn’t much we can do about election sabotage. We hear about executive orders, threats, subpoenas, the SAVE act, and judge’s interceding, but where does that leave us?

It leaves us with a lot to do. Because while some of this can be fought in courtrooms and by states, communities of people – neighbors organizing - neighbors will have a huge impact, if not the greatest impact. At its core, the threat to elections is just one part of a modern authoritarian advance because the authoritarian movement can’t continue to consolidate power unless they subvert or sabotage free and fair elections.

A movement threat needs a movement response. Join us for our ongoing training series on how you can build a movement response in your neighborhood – Protect Elections. Demand Democracy. Part 2: Making a Plan – on Wednesday, July 15 at 6pm CT / 7pm ET. Note: Attending Part 1, while helpful context, isn’t a required prerequisite to attend Part 2.

A movement threat means election sabotage will come from all directions. It will show up differently in different communities. Some threats will be coordinated attacks from the federal level, others will be state specific efforts, and others still will be lone actors not in official positions pushing their own election sabotage tactics. We think about the threat as 1000 cuts to the elections. Throughout our training series we will examine the threats and categorize them into three types to better plan our possible responses:

Atmospheric: Propaganda promoting disinfo and distrust around the elections. This could be an election denier with a platform, robo calls, AI videos, billboards with false info - anything that’s contributing to this atmosphere of election sabotage. There are already massive and ongoing efforts to push the lie that our elections lack integrity or outright malicious lies to limit participation in the election.

Physical: Intimidation or interference in election processes. Coordinated and individual efforts to demobilize Americans from registering or participating in the election. This could be bad actors intimidating people at the polls, ICE activity near polls, or patriot or militia groups threatening poll workers.

Technical: The legislative, legal, or administrative maneuvers to impact elections. This could include attacks on vote by mail, racist redistricting, closing the polls while people are in line, refusal to certify the votes, ballot seizures, purging voter rolls, etc.

In part one of the series – Assessing the Threat – we discussed practical steps on how to get started by designing your own Neighborhood Midterm Action Plan. These Neighborhood MAPs are a tool to organize your neighbors with a clear message about how you can take informed action together to protect elections and demand a more robust democracy that delivers for all of us. (Don’t worry if you missed part one. We will offer this training throughout August and briefly cover how to get started with a Neighborhood MAP in the coming training on Wednesday)

In part two we focus on how you can incorporate your MAP into your broader organizing plans. We will talk about sharpening your community organizing and storytelling strategies. We will focus on how to organize to ensure sweeping documentation of authoritarian overreach around the election and how to develop local storytelling to expand the power of your organizing. We will dive deeper into election sabotage scenarios and how your neighborhood might organize a protective response.

And while you’re here register and mark your calendars for part 3 on Wednesday, July 22, Protect Elections. Demand Democracy. Part 3: Sharpening your strategy.

Building a Movement Response To Authoritarian Election Sabotage

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