The fate of our Democracy is on the ballot this fall. Get the inside story on how a coalition of Democrats, independents and Liz Cheney Republicans can combine forces to stop the Trump faction from winning big offices in swing states and gaining control of future elections. The media treats the 2022 campaign like the rerun of a traditional mid-term election where the in-party takes a shellacking and loses control of Congress. But smart voters know the stakes are much higher than that this year.
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David Becker on Defending U.S. Elections from New Threats
Aug 22, 2026
The Unity Forum presented by Alumni for Freedom & Democracy and the Fulcrum is a cross‑partisan civic education program that strengthens reasoned discourse and advances a more open society. Each episode features respected experts who help audiences make sense of current events, elevate civil dialogue, and deepen public understanding of the social, legal, and institutional challenges confronting the nation.
In a recent conversation, Unity Forum founder Chris Malone spoke with David Becker, Executive Director and Founder of the Center for Election Innovation & Research (CEIR). Becker is one of the nation’s most experienced election law experts, having led Pew’s elections program, spearheaded the creation of ERIC—the interstate system that has helped states update tens of millions of voter records—and served seven years as a senior trial attorney in the Department of Justice’s Voting Section. He also co‑authored The Big Truth and serves as CBS News’ election law contributor.
What follows synthesizes Becker’s key insights on election security, misinformation, the courts, and the resilience of American democracy from a recent Unity Forum webinar.
Election Officials Under Threat—and the Work to Protect Them
Becker began by thinking about how dramatically the environment for election officials has changed since he founded CEIR in 2016. What was once a largely anonymous profession has become a frontline target for harassment, doxing, false conspiracy theories, and even threats of violence. Secretaries of state, county clerks, local administrators, and volunteer poll workers have all encountered unprecedented pressure.
In response, CEIR created the Election Official Legal Defense Network, recruiting thousands of pro bono attorneys nationwide to assist officials whose jobs, safety, or livelihoods have been threatened. Becker emphasized that many need a lawyer to advise them when they are pressured to take illegal or improper actions.
Although these challenges exist, Becker noted that the last four federal general elections—2018, 2020, 2022, and 2024—were among the highest‑turnout and most scrutinized in American history. Yet each withstood intense legal and public examination. As Becker put it, the fact that the party controlling the federal government lost the presidential election in 2016, 2020, and 2024 is powerful evidence that no one is “putting a thumb on the scale.”
Our elections, he argued, are more trustworthy today than ever before thanks to the professionalism of election officials across the country.
What Citizens Should—and Should Not—Worry About
When asked about the biggest election integrity issues facing voters, Becker began by clarifying what isn’t a problem.
- Paper ballots and audits: Every state except Louisiana (which will convert in 2028) already uses paper ballots. Every state audits election results by hand. Machines are not connected to the internet and remain under strict chain‑of‑custody controls. Paper ballot audits are already standard.
- Non‑citizens voting: Becker cited New Jersey’s recent discovery of 400 non‑citizens who voted due to a system fault—just 0.009% of statewide ballots. Federal reviews of 68 million records found 99.96% were citizens.
- Voter roll accuracy remains extremely high.
- Mail voting: Used since the Civil War, mail voting is secure and widely relied upon by both parties. Mail voting security is well‑established.
The real threat, Becker argued, is disinformation—especially claims that elections are chaotic, inaccessible, or rigged. Foreign adversaries learned long ago that hacking U.S. election systems is nearly impossible due to decentralization. Instead, they aim to “hack our heads” by weakening trust.
Becker urged voters to be skeptical of claims that reinforce their biases and to rely only on official sources such as Vote.gov and state election offices.
Vote‑by‑Mail and Early Voting: Secure, Legal, and Widely Available
Becker offered a historical reminder: mail voting expanded largely because Republican lawmakers in western and rural states championed it for their constituents. Until 2020, it was broadly uncontroversial.
A recent Supreme Court case affirmed the legality of counting ballots cast on or before Election Day but delivered shortly afterward—a practice used in 14 states. In a 5–4 decision written by Justice Barrett, the Court ruled that nothing in federal law or the Constitution prohibits this.
Early in‑person voting is available in 47 states, and Becker personally prefers it. It delivers flexibility, community, and the advantage of early ballots typically being among the first reported on election night. It is secure, nonpartisan, and widely used.
The Courts: A Balancing Force Amid Turbulence
Becker emphasized that courts have regularly upheld the rule of law in voting disputes. In 2020, every lawsuit challenging the results failed because challengers produced no evidence. Defamation cases against conspiracy theorists also collapsed, with Fox News settling for nearly $800 million and Rudy Giuliani and Carrie Lake conceding liability.
He highlighted the importance of the Elections Clause (Article I, Section 4), which gives state legislatures primary authority over elections and none to the president. Courts have enforced this principle, blocking executive orders that attempted to dictate election policy to states.
Becker also noted that the Department of Justice recently lost 16 out of 16 lawsuits seeking sensitive voter data—decisions issued by judges appointed by both parties.
With the election approaching, courts are unlikely to permit major changes to election rules. Becker warned against “sore losers” filing lawsuits after losing, arguing that disputes must be brought before elections, not after results are known.
AI, Deepfakes, and the New Disinformation Landscape
Becker divides election misinformation into two categories:
- Campaign‑related misinformation, such as deepfakes targeting candidates.
- Process‑related misinformation, which aims to confuse voters about how elections work.
Becker believes the latter is far more dangerous. AI can generate false alerts about polling place closures, traffic, or mail ballot deadlines. Becker noted that federal fact‑checking infrastructure built during the first Trump administration and maintained under Biden has been dismantled, leaving election officials and voters to fill the gap.
He stressed that AI may not dramatically worsen the situation—not because AI is harmless, but because the disinformation environment is already saturated.
Becker warned of grifts on both the right and left falsely claiming our national elections are stolen. He was unequivocal: no national election in American history has been stolen. Even the contested 2000 election was resolved under the rule of law.
Federal Agents at Polling Places? Not Going to Happen
Responding to concerns that federal enforcement officers might appear at polling places, Becker was emphatic: “ICE won’t be at the polls. Troops won’t be at the polls.”
He cited federal law (18 U.S.C. § 592), logistical impossibility, political backlash, and the decentralization of voting—most ballots are cast early or by mail. Fear‑based messaging, he argued, is an authoritarian tactic designed to suppress turnout.
January 3rd Scenarios and the Decline of Guardrails
Becker acknowledged that scenarios described by David French—such as attempts to block duly elected members from being seated—are possible but unlikely to succeed. The House does not exist until 218+ members take the oath, and attempts to manipulate certification would face judicial and procedural barriers.
He noted that organizations, including CEIR, are preparing for such contingencies to guarantee a smooth transition regardless of who wins.
Still, Becker warned that the mere fact these scenarios are being discussed reflects the erosion of institutional guardrails.
A Call to Joy, Participation, and Civic Renewal
Despite the challenges, Becker ended in a positive mood. Fear, he argued, is intentional—used by those who distrust the American voter. The antidote is joy, participation, and civic engagement.
He urged Americans to:
- Recruit 50 people to vote.
- Engage with 10 people who disagree politically.
- Volunteer as poll workers
- Celebrate democracy’s 250th anniversary.
MAKE YOUR VOICE UNMISTAKABLY CLEAR:
The highest midterm turnout in modern history is 50%. Becker believes Americans can surpass it in 2026.
Elections are the living safeguard of our constitutional republic. They are the mechanism through which the American people renew their consent, reaffirm their voice, and remind every leader that power flows upward from the citizenry, not downward from the state.
As David Becker reminded us, those who fear the American voter want us anxious, divided, and overwhelmed. They want us to believe our system is fragile, our institutions are broken, and our participation doesn’t matter. But the truth is exactly the opposite.
For 250 years, our democracy has endured because ordinary people—neighbors, families, poll workers, volunteers, and voters of every background—show up. They choose involvement over apathy, clarity over confusion, and courage over fear.
Every ballot cast is an act of faith in the American experiment. Every election celebrates our common inheritance.
And you can make that celebration stronger.
If Becker’s insights connected with you, listen to the full Unity Forum interview HERE. Then turn what you learn into action.
David Nevins is the publisher of The Fulcrum and co-founder and board chairman of the Bridge Alliance Education Fund.
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A Democracy Cannot Run on an AI Model
Aug 22, 2026
Tallying the results of Washington, D.C.’s first ranked-choice election last month took about 10 days – longer than many voters are used to. In an age when artificial intelligence can generate an answer in seconds, waiting days for election results can feel old-fashioned, inefficient, even suspicious.
But that slowness may be one of its most democratic features.
I come to this question from health informatics, where I study how even AI-generated information that sounds clear, fluent, and helpful still requires careful review before it reaches a patient. The same verification problem applies to elections. The more authoritative a system sounds, the more important it becomes to make sure the output can be checked.
D.C.’s June 16 primary followed a system that requires more than a simple tally: voters rank candidates, and if no candidate receives more than 50% of first-choice votes, lower-performing candidates are eliminated, and votes are redistributed according to voters’ next choices. New York City already uses ranked-choice voting in local primary and special elections.
There is nothing wrong with ranked-choice voting, but it must be carried out with verifiable results. Because election counting is not just a math problem; it is a trust problem, especially in the U.S. today, where election workers face harassment, routine counting delays are recast as fraud, and many voters already doubt institutions before a single ballot is counted.
In this climate, counting ranked-choice votes in a way that allows for public verification might take longer than people are used to. Every ballot must be tied to a voter-verifiable record. Every round of tabulation must be explainable. Every disputed outcome must be auditable by people who can inspect the evidence themselves.
AI is not yet counting votes, but AI and machine-assisted systems are already touching elections before ballots are counted, including information voters receive and how their signatures are reviewed. In 2024, X’s Grok chatbot gave users false information about ballot deadlines; after election officials from five states complained, X changed Grok so election-related questions directed users to Vote.gov, the federal government’s official voting information website. In North Carolina, 10 counties piloted automated signature-verification software for absentee-by-mail ballots in 2024. The pilot did not affect whether any ballot was counted, but later reporting found reliability problems: the software failed to match about 11 percent of signatures, most software-flagged signatures were approved after human review, and technical issues complicated the test. Neither example is the same as artificial intelligence counting votes, but both show how software can shape what voters are told or what happens before a ballot enters the count.
I have seen the problem in my own research. AI systems can cite studies that do not exist, with titles, authors, and journals that look real until you check them. A 2026 Nature analysis warned that hallucinated citations are polluting scientific literature, and OpenAI researchers have warned that some training and evaluation systems reward guessing over acknowledging uncertainty. A system that gives a confident answer may look more useful, even when that confidence is misplaced, than one that says “I don’t know.”
That matters because elections often turn on ballot conditions that are not immediately machine-readable and need human review: stray marks, undervotes, overvotes, damaged ballots, or ambiguous voter intent. In races where the margin between the candidates is narrow, a few disputed ballots can change the result. These questions should not be resolved by a system whose rules, error rates, or decision process the public cannot understand or meaningfully examine. They should be handled through documented procedures, human review, paper records, and public audits.
Human counting is also imperfect. But precisely because humans are fallible, democratic systems have developed safeguards such as paper ballots, bipartisan observation, chain-of-custody rules, cure processes, recounts, and post-election audits. Risk-limiting audits, for example, hand-check samples of paper ballots and can trigger a fuller count if the sample does not support the reported result. Colorado was the first state to conduct a statewide risk-limiting audit in 2017; today, all Colorado counties conduct one before results are certified. Other states have since adopted, required, or piloted risk-limiting audits.
The best election systems do not ask voters to trust either a person or a machine. They produce evidence. That is where current policy is behind the curve. States have moved quickly to regulate AI-generated deepfakes in campaign communications, because fake videos and robocalls can mislead voters. But far less attention has been paid to the AI inside election administration itself. That gap should close before AI moves deeper into election administration, especially into decisions that could affect whether a ballot is accepted, cured, rejected, or counted.
Federal and state governments should establish clear standards for AI used in anything election-related. The Brennan Center for Justice has called for such safeguards around quality, transparency, consistency, certification, and monitoring. Election offices should have to explain to the public what an AI system does, who checks it, and how voters can verify the evidence. AI systems whose rules, error rates, or decision process the public cannot understand or meaningfully examine should not make final decisions about whether a ballot counts.
Voters have a role, too. Ask your local election officials whether AI tools are being used anywhere in election administration and how those decisions can be audited. Ask how voters will know if the AI setup gets something wrong. And volunteer as a poll worker. You don't need a background in elections; local officials train you. Democracy needs more people who understand how ballots are handled, checked, and verified.
AI may soon be able to produce election results in seconds. That does not mean it should. The labor of democracy is not a bottleneck that needs streamlining. It is part of the safeguard.
A Democracy Cannot Run on an AI Model was first published by Common Dreams and is republished with permission.
Davis Austria is an assistant professor of health informatics conducting AI research at Xavier University of Louisiana, a Hopelab HBCU Translational Science Fellow, and a Public Voices Fellow with The OpEd Project.
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A large cat, such as a tiger or panther, that is composed of United States currency.
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(Don't Fear) Money in Politics
Aug 22, 2026
In late June, the Supreme Court ruled against limits upon state political party spending in federal elections. The specter of Money in Politics, already looming large, grew several sizes. It begs the question, naturally: just how much will all this additional inflow affect our elections? And can anyone compete against so much damn money?
In late November 2020, the website OpenSecrets reported that some 88% of federal races that year were won by the candidate who raised the most money. That’s eight in every nine. That’s decisive. That’s dominant.
Or is it?
Consider that the majority of these races were in lopsided states or districts where the outcome was never really in question, and the hopeless challengers weren’t able to muster much in the way of donor or party excitement. Consider how many times the candidate who ran the stronger campaign, who had the more resonant message, simply attracted more support. And consider that much of the donations involved weren’t meant to sway results at all — they were meant to curry favor with whom donors perceived to be the likely winner.
Does money matter? Of course it matters. As an independent strategist, I’ve seen the major parties whip out the war chest for mass mailers, TV ad campaigns, text and phone barrages, and field teams on every street corner. These things can make a difference. They can very much impact electoral outcomes.
But what seems to have an even greater impact is the perception that money rules politics, that it is an impossible hurdle for most any outsider to overcome. The very idea of money in politics, of the major parties’ infinite and insurmountable war chest, creates a sense of defeatism and hopelessness in many would-be challengers and their supporters — all of which is precisely what the major parties would want.
I present this not to argue that parties’ political spending should be unlimited, or that the massive amounts of money in our politics aren’t corrupting our institutions. The calls for reform are very much justifiable. The outrage is very much justifiable. But that outrage can be weaponized against the very reform-minded candidates and political movements.
The Numbers That Matter
At the end of the day, all political spending serves to do is broadcast a candidate’s message to prospective voters, and to build out the campaign infrastructure — field teams, consultants, media capabilities — to make that broadcast as far-reaching and as loud as possible. Reaching voters doesn’t mean that you’ll be able to sway them, and that’s often not what political campaigns are trying to do, anyway.
In a 2018 study, political scientists Joshua Kalla of UC Berkeley and David Broockman of Stanford conducted a meta-analysis of 49 field experiments covering canvassing, phone banking, direct mail, TV ads, and digital advertising across multiple election cycles. What they found was that the persuasive effects of all of these outreach methods on voters were essentially zero. Voters, it seemed, were not terribly swayed.
But persuasion isn’t necessarily the point, as Kalla and Broockman themselves observe. What campaign spending can do, and what it does reasonably well, is mobilize: to make sure the voters who already support their target candidate have the motivation to go out and vote, and that they remember when Election Day is (this can be especially important in primaries). Donald Green and Alan Gerber, the authors of Get Out the Vote: How to Increase Voter Turnout, have led the way for decades in researching this mobilizing power of promotion, and what they’ve found is that it does work, if done properly.
That this limited effect has nonetheless justified the multi-billion dollar industry of political advertising speaks to a sort of commoditization of our politics. When most of the voters know who they’re going to vote for (if they vote), and when the candidates are just about interchangeable, turnout becomes a key difference-maker, because it’s just about the only difference-maker left in play.
This is why the political spending machines are fundamentally limited, and why they’re beatable. When you can break from the commodity model of politics, and offer something dramatically new, with an appeal to a large coalition of voters not bound by a single party label, you can get the numbers — the most important numbers — on your side. If you can add new resources and technology to broadcast your message more effectively, then this supposedly insurmountable barrier begins to feel distinctly surmountable.
The Equalizers
The spending gap is real, but it is not the whole story. A new generation of tools, organizations, and structural realities is quietly rewriting the math for coalition-minded insurgents — and the parties, for all their resources, cannot buy their way out of any of them.
The clearest proof of concept is social media. For better or worse, platforms like X, TikTok, and YouTube have already shattered the myth that controlling the information environment requires controlling the ad budget. Outsider candidates and movements have built massive audiences, driven news cycles, and toppled well-funded incumbents on the strength of a message that travels organically. Money did not save establishment candidates from viral moments they didn't pay for. The gatekeeping function of political spending — the ability to simply drown out challengers by outbuying them — has been permanently disrupted.
The catch, for the independent movement specifically, is that social media's organic amplification tends to favor the loudest and most inflammatory voices, with tribal allegiances carrying each message forward. The algorithm rewards outrage and conflict, precisely the dynamic that most coalition-minded independents are running against. But what social media demonstrates — that new technology can fundamentally alter the calculus of political broadcasting — points directly toward the tools that do serve the movement well.
Organizations like Good Party (not actually a party) have begun equipping nonpartisan and independent candidates with the voter data, outreach tools, and campaign management infrastructure that used to require either a party machine or a seven-figure budget to access — often at little or no cost. Meanwhile, the Forward Party (yes, actually a party, in places) has developed a model for providing party infrastructure and ballot-access mechanisms to candidates without machine-like control or ideological obligation. Neither of these existed in their current form even half a decade ago. Both are growing.
These tools help candidates earn attention rather than buy it. A single well-placed news story, a debate performance that breaks through, a viral moment of authentic connection — these generate coverage that no ad spend can manufacture, and that coverage bolsters the perception of viability. This perceived viability matters enormously in a political environment where the notion of major party inevitability is the parties’ first line of defense against outside challengers.
Underneath all of this sits the structural reality that no amount of party spending can fix: the voters are exhausted. Congressional approval hovers around 15%. Nearly two-thirds of Americans tell Gallup they want a new political party or a genuine alternative to the two on offer. That is not a niche sentiment. That is a supermajority of the electorate waiting to be reached — by candidates with the tools, the message, and the credibility to reach them.
The money doesn't control that. It never did.
Hills Left to Climb
Even with a growing resource network, the journey is far from easy for coalition-minded upstarts. There are many more barriers to entering and competing in the political arena than money alone, and the parties have spent decades making sure of it.
The most basic obstacle, and the first to clear, is simply getting on the ballot. In states like Georgia, independent candidates for U.S. House must gather petition signatures equal to 5% of the district's registered voters — tens of thousands, a threshold so punishing that no independent has successfully submitted the required petition for a House seat in Georgia since 1964. Texas requires independent candidates to collect signatures from registered voters who did not participate in either party's primary — a window that opens only after the primaries close, compressing an already difficult process into a matter of weeks. These laws did not emerge from neutral administrative logic. They were designed, over decades, to protect incumbent parties from the inconvenience of competition.
And when structural barriers aren't enough, things can get dirty. In Nebraska this summer, a mysterious effort emerged to create a new political party called the "Nebraska Working People Party" — a name strikingly similar to the established national Working Families Party, which forcefully denounced the effort and announced it was considering legal action. Nebraska Democrats alleged the campaign was backed by groups aligned with Senator Pete Ricketts, who faces independent challenger Dan Osborn in November — the apparent goal being to divide the vote and muddy the waters. Whether the allegation proves true, the playbook is familiar: when you can't beat a challenger on the merits, manufacture confusion.
That the parties are all too eager to press these advantages, to use underhanded tactics and structural roadblocks to ward off independent and third-party challengers, is not exactly a sign of strength or confidence. If it were so simple to simply overpower by outraising and outspending, then they wouldn’t need to be doing this. But they do - because they understand that their position may not be as safe as it seems. Because they’re scared. And they can’t hide behind their piles of money forever.
Nathan Smolensky is a political messaging and communications strategist specializing in independent campaigns, and the author of Common Ground from the Ground Up.
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Protecting Immigrant Families from Over-Surveillance
Aug 22, 2026
For months, Chicago has been a focal point of the Trump administration’s aggressive immigration enforcement. Across our neighborhoods, families live with uncertainty and fear as loved ones are detained and separated from their communities. Few Chicagoans have escaped the emotional toll of these operations.
As a lifelong Gage Park resident and child of immigrants, these events are personal to me. My community has seen too many stories of parents dropping their children at school only to never return home, and of families being torn apart without warning or due process. No neighborhood should endure such fear.
Yet we have also witnessed something extraordinary: neighbors, faith leaders, advocates, and community organizations stepping up to support families, providing legal assistance, and exercising their constitutional right to peaceful protest. This response reflects the values that define Chicago—looking out for one another during difficult times.
As we reckon with these events, we must ask how better to protect our communities. A crucial starting point is scrutinizing the companies our local governments choose for business and how taxpayer dollars are spent.
That conversation is especially important when it comes to surveillance technology.
In 2019, the ACLU of Illinois warned that Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) could use automatic license plate reader data to locate immigrants. Given recent operations, these concerns about privacy and government surveillance deserve renewed attention.
Axon Enterprises, a company that many Chicago-region municipalities already contract with for body cameras and TASER devices, raises significant questions. As communities consider expanding these partnerships to include artificial intelligence and integrated surveillance, residents deserve transparency regarding the long-term implications.
Axon is a major technology contractor for federal immigration and homeland security agencies, securing contracts worth hundreds of millions of dollars for equipment used in enforcement. Recent public financial disclosures indicate that President Donald Trump purchased between $1 million and $5 million in Axon stock shortly before ICE announced a new five-year contract with the company. Additionally, a former Axon executive responsible for the company’s Department of Homeland Security strategy now holds a senior leadership position at U.S. Customs and Border Protection after serving as Acting Director of ICE.
Whether viewed individually or together, these developments underscore why greater public scrutiny is warranted.
The larger question extends beyond any single contract: Do we want private companies collecting and storing vast amounts of data about our communities?
Axon’s vision reaches far beyond body cameras. The company is investing heavily in AI and integrated surveillance platforms like Fusus, which aggregates video from body cameras, fixed cameras, third-party systems, and building data into a single real-time awareness platform. While supporters argue these tools enhance public safety, critics warn they could expand surveillance, erode privacy, and exacerbate policing disparities without strong oversight.
Those are questions every community should confront before expanding these technologies—not after.
Local governments have a responsibility to ensure public safety while protecting civil liberties. As municipalities weigh future technology investments, they must evaluate who builds these systems, how data is used, and whether these partnerships reflect community values.
Today’s decisions about surveillance technology will shape the relationship between the public and law enforcement for years. Chicago and communities across Illinois should lead by ensuring these choices are guided by transparency, accountability, and a commitment to protecting the rights of every resident.
The Price of “Situational Awareness”: Protecting Immigrant Families from Over-Surveillance was first published by Illinois Latino News and is republished with permission.Aarón M. Ortíz is a Democratic member of the Illinois House of Representatives for the 1st district.
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