Taking on the Threat
As Americans, we have strong tools rooted in our Constitution and system of checks and balances to prevent our democracy from declining into a more authoritarian form of government. With experience upholding the guardrails of democracy in the American government, and working with experts who study the rise and fall of democracies around the world, we’ve identified key areas of risk that need our immediate attention. Here is what we’re doing to Protect our Democracy in each of those key areas:
Corrupting Elections
Free, fair, and regular elections form the cornerstone of the American experiment, allowing citizens to exercise their most basic political right: the right to choose who governs. But elections only achieve that goal if they take place on a fair playing field, where candidates of different parties start out on equal footing. In recent years, we’ve seen a disturbing trend in which elected officials have abused their powers to tilt that playing field for their own advantage. In 2018, for instance, Georgia Secretary of State Brian Kemp used his authority over elections to restrict voter registration and participation in order to improve his own chances in a bid for governor. President Trump has also shown a willingness to undermine our elections for his own advantage, using U.S. aid to Ukraine to pressure that country’s leaders to pursue a politically advantageous investigation; attempting to undermine the legitimacy of elections by repeatedly calling into question the results; and exaggerating the prevalence of voter fraud in what appears to be a prelude to restricting the franchise. Through a litigation and advocacy campaign, we are working to prevent public officials from manipulating elections in this way in the future.