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Alongside this important engagement work, other groups are turning to the courts and other forms of pressure to raise the costs of anti-democratic behaviors. Groups like Protect Democracy and the Brennan Center, for example, have helped prepare hundreds of legal cases to hold individuals responsible for spreading dangerous conspiracies and violence accountable in the courts.
“Any time classified materials go to a place they’re not supposed to go, there is almost always an inquiry into how they got to that place,” said Kristy Parker, the former deputy chief of the criminal section of the DOJ’s civil rights division and now counsel at Protect Democracy, an organization that seeks to check authoritarian attacks on American democracy. “The department always takes that really seriously.”
In the Colorado gun control case, the firm is working with Everytown for Gun Safety, the group founded by the former New York City mayor Michael R. Bloomberg, as well as Davis Polk, Mr. Dunne’s former firm. On the Florida voting rights case, they have met with a group called Protect Democracy, a nonprofit group aiming to curb authoritarian politics, as well as Paul Weiss, where Mr. Pomerantz was a partner for many years.
Although the U.S. Congress at first failed to meet the moment in the insurrection’s aftermath, the work it accomplished in the past year has left American democracy in better shape than before, according to the nonpartisan, anti-authoritarianism nonprofit D.C.-based Protect Democracy.
Those accomplishments include reforming the 135-year-old Electoral Count Act to patch up vulnerabilities that Trump supporters attempted to exploit, as well as other advances that Protect Democracy says have furthered transparency, accountability and government efficiency.
But the threat has not passed, the nonprofit warns in a report released Wednesday.
This was a “blatant example” of voter intimidation and the judge granted all the relief sought by Protect Democracy, according to John Paredes, a lawyer for the group.
“Voter intimidation is something different from political expression. It is not protected by the First Amendment, and that if anyone chooses to intimidate voters or engage in political violence, they can be held liable in a court of law,” Paredes said.
In a survey of voters in five battleground states conducted by the research firm Citizen Data for the advocacy group Protect Democracy, a third who cast ballots for a mix of Democrats and Republicans in November cited a concern that G.O.P. candidates held views or promoted policies “that are dangerous to democracy.”
“If we imagine” that preventing another assault on the democratic process “is only about preventing the misconduct of a single person,” Grant Tudor, a policy advocate at the nonpartisan group Protect Democracy, told me, “we are probably not setting up ourselves for success.”
“The select committee’s investigation marks the beginning of a much longer-term project to pursue accountability for Jan. 6th. Public access to its records is critical groundwork for those ongoing and future efforts,” said Grant Tudor, a policy advocate at Protect Democracy, a nonpartisan, anti-authoritarianism group.
This reform is “a critical step to strengthen the guardrails for our democracy and ensure that the will of the voters is upheld following a presidential election,” said Holly Idelson, a counsel with Protect Democracy.
The House already passed its version of ECA reform in September. All Democrats and nine Republicans voted in favor of it.
Idelson emphasized the bipartisan support around ECA reform “shows this is not something to benefit one party or the other.”
“The fact that it was able to make it into the end-of-the-year spending package is in testimony to bipartisan support and support from a swath of outside allies,” she added.
One of the few polls to try to isolate the question came out this week. In surveys commissioned by Protect Democracy, a nonpartisan watchdog group, 46 percent of voters in five battleground states said that the Jan. 6 hearings were a factor in their decision. And a larger group — 57 percent — said they had been at least some exposure to the hearings.
The poll zeroed in on so-called ticket-splitters — Republicans and independents who voted for a Democrat in one race and a Republican in another. In Arizona, 20.9 percent of those ticket-splitters said that Jan. 6 was a top factor in their vote. In Pennsylvania, that number was just 8.5 percent. Those numbers are pretty modest, but every vote counts.
Defeating authoritarianism is going to take all of us. Everyone and every institution has a role to play. Together, we can protect democracy.
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