A prominent civil rights group garnered headlines last week by detailing how Russia's 2016 election disinformation campaign was focused on highlighting racial tensions. But the National Urban League's report also forcefully argued that widespread voter suppression policies made Russia's efforts easier, and the fine print is a case for enacting almost all the most prominent proposals in the "democracy reform" movement.
The 43rd annual "State of Black America" report, which focuses on a different aspect of African-American life and public policy each year, recommends 11 policy changes to fight what it believes is a "serious threat and sustained attack" on democracy through American politicians' efforts to disenfranchise one-eighth of the electorate.
The group's president, Marc Morial, says the message "to the enemies of democracy is this: We see you. We know what you're doing, and we won't let you get away with it. We will shine a light on these evil deeds."
The report details how black voters were targeted "with surgical precision on social media" by a Russian-based organization called the Internet Research Agency, which reached millions of users across Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and other platforms with messages aimed at dividing America on racial lines.
Recommendations that are high on the to-do list for many "good government" groups address both foreign and domestic challenges to voting rights and election administration, including:
- Eliminating the strictest voter ID requirements.
- Permitting automatic voter registration, online registration and same-day registration.
- Restoring voting rights to felons after completing their sentences.
- Requiring paper verification of ballots as a check on computer tampering.
- Ending systems that too aggressively purge voter rolls.
Some of the more ambitious items on the Urban League's wish list are:
- Rewriting the Voting Rights Act to revive requirements that jurisdictions with histories of racial discrimination get preclearance from Washington before changing any election rules.
- Making it illegal to distribute false information designed to dissuade certain groups from voting.
- Giving statehood (and thereby full-fledged seats in Congress) to Washington, D.C.
- Persuading states to award their electoral votes to the national popular vote winner.
Demonstrators rally outside the U.S. Supreme Court as justices hear oral arguments on whether President Donald Trump can deny citizenship to children born to parents who are in the United States illegally or temporarily, on Capitol Hill, in Washington, Wednesday, April 1, 2026. (AP Photo/Mariam Zuhaib)
Luz Angela Nuñez with her daughter Aisha Quershi Nuñez at their home in College Point, Queens. Photo: Mia Anzalone for Documented.
Kimberly Alvarez, 25, with her daughter Evangeline and her husband John Alvarez in Medellin, Colombia. Photo courtesy of Kimberly Alvarez.Alvarez arrived in New York City in February 2024 with her husband John Alvarez as asylum seekers from Venezuela. In April 2025, Alvarez found out she was pregnant with her first child, a baby girl. Her first reaction, she said, was fear.“How am I going to keep her alive?” she said. “That’s what I was thinking. ‘How am I going to be able to take care of her?’”At the beginning of Alvarez’s pregnancy, she said she was aware of the immigration enforcement occurring around the country, but vowed not to let it deter her from showing up to her doctor’s appointments.“When you went out, you were always on alert because you didn’t know if [ICE] might be around. I never saw anything suspicious,” Alvarez said. “But of course, you feel scared.”In October, when Alvarez was six months pregnant, her husband was detained by ICE agents at 26 Federal Plaza. When the immediate shock wore off, she obsessively checked the Online Detainee Locator System to find out where her husband went. A day later, she discovered that he was being kept at Delaney Hall detention center in New Jersey. Alvarez quickly set up an account to pay for phone calls, and every two days, she would pay about $10 for a one-hour call, updating her husband about the baby, her appointments and how she was doing.“Crying was the only way for me to release the tension,” said Alvarez, who worried that her lack of sleep and bad diet were impacting her baby. “Crying was the only way for me to release the tension.”—Kimberly AlvarezThat tension built up day by day, week by week following her husband’s arrest. Alvarez had stopped her work as a cleaner in the neighborhood’s synagogues two weeks before her husband’s detention because of her pregnancy. The plan, she said, was to rely solely on his income as a maintenance worker for “the food, the rent, everything.” Left with few choices, Kimberley had to rely on her mother’s income as a cleaner. The older woman had moved to New York from North Carolina to assist with Alvarez’s pregnancy. “I feel like I’m supposed to help my mom, not the other way around,” Alvarez said. “I felt powerless because I couldn’t do anything.”On Dec. 9, Alvarez gave birth to a daughter, Evangeline. While her baby was healthy, Alvarez’s anxieties did not go away. While she returned to cleaning synagogues a few months after Evangeline’s birth to help make ends meet, Alvarez and her daughter rarely left home. Alvarez said she felt paralyzed, getting frequent alerts from a neighborhood WhatsApp group when ICE was spotted nearby. One day, she said, ICE arrested her friend’s husband in Sunset Park, in an area where she would sometimes take Evangeline for walks.“I’m so afraid that I’ll go out and run into one of them and that they’ll take her away from me,” Alvarez said. “That’s my biggest fear, that someone will take her away from me and I won’t know where my daughter is.”In March, her husband decided to voluntarily remove himself from the United States and move back to Colombia, where he is originally from. It was a family decision, but it was not a happy one — hiring immigration lawyers was too expensive, Alvarez said, adding that staying in the U.S. felt too uncertain. 
