The Democracy Initiative is a coalition of 75 progressive groups advocating for voting rights and campaign finance regulation. On the board are Karen Hobert Flynn of Common Cause, Tefere Gebre of the AFL-CIO, Ray Curry of the United Auto Workers union, Derrick Johnson of the NAACP, Virginia Kase of the League of Women Voters, Erich Pica of Friends of the Earth, K. Sabeel Rahman of Demos and Gustavo Torres of CASA.
In the United States, we the people elect our leaders and every voter has the right to have her or his vote counted.
That article of faith has sustained us to this Election Day. But our democracy is facing a severe and unprecedented stress test. During a historically deadly coronavirus pandemic that has remade the campaign, we have seen attempts to make it harder for people to vote safely, efforts backed by "dark money"to cast doubt on the legitimacy of the results; and a new Supreme Court justice rushed through the Senate just days before a presidential election that may very well require a ruling by that very same court.
Despite all these cynical maneuvers, a record-shattering 97 million had already cast their ballots, by mail or in person, by the start of Monday afternoon — suggesting that, by the time voting ends Tuesday, the share of eligible voters turning out will be greater than in more than a century. It will be up to state and local election officials, not any candidate, to process, count and certify the results.
There are no sidelines in our democracy. Every citizen, regardless of party; every nonprofit organization, regardless of mission; and every business, regardless of industry, has a role to play in standing up for civil society, the rule of law and the peaceful transfer of power after an election. We take these things for granted in the United States — but there is no law of politics or physics that guarantees a stable democratic outcome. We the people do that.
Our organizations are part of a vibrant grassroots democracy movement fighting to expand ballot access and create more equitable, healthy options for voting. As detailed in our "Roadblocks and Remedies" report, our movement has successfully won voting reforms in dozens of states. As a result, all but five states are allowing absentee voting without an excuse this fall and all but seven states had early in-person voting.
The story of voting, however, doesn't end when a ballot is cast. It's got to be counted. And we'll be making sure that happens.
Along with other civic organizations, we're working to make sure every vote is counted in this historic election, and to keep polling places safe from the coronavirus and from illegal attempts to intimidate voters. And we have been engaged in coast-to-coast voter education, explaining that this year's final results will probably not be available on Tuesday night. Counting tens of millions of vote-by-mail ballots may take more time than usual. It's more important to get it right than to get it done fast.
We're encouraged that business leaders from organizations including the Business Roundtable, the Chamber of Commerce, the Leadership Now Project and the Civic Alliance have joined the effort to ensure a fair and transparent electoral process. All these groups are urging patience and civility during the time it takes for local and state election officials to count every vote. Players associations from major sports leagues have actively promoted civic engagement and voting too. And it's good to see the Major League Baseball and NFL commissioners have signed the Civic Alliance statement on election integrity.
This common-sense pledge to uphold the integrity of our democracy deserves support from every private sector employer. Business leaders have enormous influence with both political parties. The private sector also gains enormous benefit from the long history of political stability in the United States. This, in turn, creates the stable labor, capital and consumer markets that drive sales, revenue and profits.
As business leaders learned in the aftermath of George Floyd's murder, keeping a low profile during periods of social and political controversy is not an option in today's fast-moving, information-hungry environment. Standing together, business and civil society can send a strong message that we won't tolerate any false claims about our elections or any attempt to manipulate results and overturn the will of voters.
It's inspiring to see tens of millions of Americans sending in their mail ballots, standing in line to vote and taking active steps to participate in our democracy. We owe them a free and fair election, with every vote counted and all results respected. That's our mission in the coming days. The more people, organizations and businesses who join us, the greater our voice will be — not only on Election Day but in the crucial days to follow.
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. 
