From a Supreme Court gerrymandering ruling to efforts to reshape voting rules, U.S. election protection groups are preparing for 2026.
Election protection is taking on a sharper edge heading into the 2026 midterms, as voting-rights advocates warn that court rulings and federal actions are converging into an unprecedented fight over how votes can be cast and how district lines can be drawn.
Protect Democracy executive director Ian Bassin. who previously served as Associate White House Counsel in the Obama administration. argued that the current moment is fundamentally different from earlier elections—even though he said the U.S.. has never produced “completely free and fair” contests.. In his view. the change is driven by a president who. he said. rejects constitutional and democratic principles. and by an expanded federal approach that he described as “democracy denying.” Bassin pointed to the 2020 aftermath. arguing that Donald Trump refused to accept defeat and incited a violent attack on the Capitol. while continuing to dispute the results.
Bassin’s concerns also flow directly from the Supreme Court’s decision in Louisiana v.. Callais. which he said makes partisan gerrymandering constitutional while restricting districts drawn to give minority voters an opportunity to elect preferred candidates.. For Protect Democracy. that ruling matters not only as a legal precedent. but as a roadmap for what may be attempted next—particularly in parts of the country where battles over representation have long history and entrenched political power.
Protect Democracy sees the Court’s decision as part of a “perfect storm” involving two threats. Bassin said: longstanding barriers to voting rights dating back through slavery and Jim Crow. and what he characterized as an autocratic turn in the White House.. He warned that new redistricting strategies could reduce minority voting power in the South and. he argued. could give Republicans an artificial chokehold on political control in the region—an outcome he compared to earlier eras when party lines and ideologies were reversed.
At the heart of the response is a litigation effort that has been building for months and. in some cases. more than a year.. Bassin pointed to preparations by blue-state attorneys general and long-running legal organizations that. he said. have been ready to challenge efforts to interfere with the midterms.
He also described what he believes is unfolding in real time: calls from Trump and allies for sweeping redistricting across the South. and attempts to interrupt elections that are already underway.. Bassin cited an example from Louisiana, where Gov.. Jeff Landry declared a state of emergency aimed at stopping voting while primaries were in progress and mail ballots had already been sent to military and overseas voters.. In Bassin’s telling, the urgency reflects political desperation rather than electoral necessity.
Asked why he thinks these efforts will fail, Bassin offered three lines of argument.. First. he said last-minute redistricting is likely to run into slow and complex court proceedings. especially because Callais did not eliminate Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act but instead. in his view. created a more convoluted and narrowed path for bringing cases.. Second. he said the legal standard Justice Alito discussed in Callais—requiring proof of overt racism—has historically been difficult to meet. but that the Trump era has produced unusually direct statements and admissions from lawmakers.
Third, Bassin predicted backlash.. He argued that attempts to manipulate districts or interrupt elections could trigger voter rebellion rather than submission.. To illustrate his point. he referenced recent special elections and primary contests in which. he said. turnout patterns shifted and some voters who previously supported Republican candidates moved toward Democratic ones.. He also framed efforts like emergency actions during voting as a political risk. claiming they could anger Republicans. Democrats. and independents alike.
Voting by mail has emerged as another central battleground, Bassin said, connecting election administration to constitutional structure.. He described an executive order on voting by mail that requires the Postal Service to refuse delivery or collection of mail-in ballots unless voters are included on a list compiled by the Department of Homeland Security.. Under that approach. Bassin said. mail carriers would also be instructed to verify individual names against the DHS database before handing ballots to voters or retrieving completed ballots.
In Bassin’s view, the scheme is both operationally unrealistic and constitutionally vulnerable.. He argued that election rules are fundamentally the responsibility of states. rooted in the founders’ design to decentralize power between branches of government and between federal and state authority.. From that perspective. he said the president does not have the power to dictate election rules through an executive order. and that courts are likely to strike down attempts to do so.
Bassin also said the administration would need local and institutional allies to make any such plan work. which he argued explains the broader pattern of claims about election fraud and efforts to seize voting machines in places such as Fulton County.. He described the logic as a strategy to manufacture reasons for rule changes by convincing officials and courts that elections are broken.
Even so, he argued that the country has moved through elections successfully when Trump lost in 2020 and when he won in 2024, and he said voters can do the same in 2026. Bassin emphasized that a “largest turnout” could be the strongest protection against attempts to interfere with results.
Concerns about election-day chaos can also include post-election attempts to disrupt ballots, Bassin said.. He discussed a test run in California in which Riverside County Sheriff Chad Bianco—running for governor and identifying as a Republican candidate—seized hundreds of thousands of ballots connected to a November 2025 special election related to redistricting.. Bassin said the sheriff described the move as a recount-related. fact-finding effort. while California Attorney General Rob Bonta sought court intervention.. He noted that the return of the ballots took time.
For Bassin, the value of that incident is preparation.. He said election officials need to be ready for situations involving warrants or seizures by law enforcement. including understanding their rights. preserving chain-of-custody records. and ensuring access to state legal resources.. He called the incident a “dry run” that could help county officials respond more effectively if similar dangers arise during November.
The election protection focus also runs alongside a separate but related political and legal fight: how the U.S. Justice Department handles extremist threats—and who is allowed to investigate them.
The Trump Justice Department has brought criminal charges against the Southern Poverty Law Center. Bassin’s segment did not delve into that directly; instead. the program shifted to history with Steven J.. Ross, a historian at USC and author of Hitler in Los Angeles and a new book on U.S.. resistance to antisemitism and white supremacy.. Ross said the charges reflect a broader pattern he associates with political weaponization of the Justice Department.
Ross described the SPLC as a civil rights organization that. he said. has relied on undercover agents to infiltrate far-right and neo-Nazi groups and report information to authorities.. He said government failures would make organizations like the SPLC necessary. arguing that when the state cannot protect people. non-government groups often step in.
He also pointed to the shifting posture of law enforcement across decades, including an era in which the FBI relied on the SPLC during the Obama years. Ross said earlier government thinking tended to treat far-left threats as the core concern, while underestimating or sidelining far-right violence.
Ross then broadened the discussion to the post-World War II rise of Nazi-adjacent movements and antisemitic violence in the U.S. He argued that after the war, some Americans organized Nazi groups to preserve Hitler’s legacy, and he linked that period to later cycles of extremism.
In Ross’s account. a group of people he called the “betrayed generation” believed they had been wronged by the government and viewed legislation affecting housing and competition as evidence of betrayal.. He described how those beliefs fed lynchings and threats aimed at Black veterans and antisemitic bombings that he said targeted churches and synagogogues across the South.
He traced the bombing campaign he discussed to the aftermath of the 1954 Brown v.. Board of Education decision, arguing that attempts to dismantle segregation were met with resistance that included terror.. Ross said the wave of bombings became associated with Birmingham. Alabama. and he described the far-right response as organizing to oppose integration and maintain white supremacy.
Ross said Jews were targeted because of what he described as contradictions in southern antisemitism—portraying Jews as both architects of communism and controllers of capitalism. politics. media. and finance.. He also discussed leaders and organizations he said called for extermination. while promising benefits to Christians and the forced removal of Black people.
He returned to a figure he said helped disrupt extremist organizing: Stetson Kennedy.. Ross described Kennedy as a white southern figure who. despite family ties to segregationist history. became an anti-racist and went undercover to gather information for groups including the Anti-Defamation League. a nonsectarian anti-Nazi organization. and the assistant attorney general of Georgia. later also infiltrating additional extremist groups.
Ross then addressed whether he sees a direct ideological line between postwar Nazi sympathizers and later extremist movements such as the Proud Boys and Oath Keepers.. He said that even without drawing a detailed genealogical map. ideas and training networks created continuity across decades. with new groups rebuilding old frameworks.
He also offered a view of Donald Trump’s relationship to the modern far right. arguing that although Trump may not be a true believer in neo-Nazi ideology. the movement sees him as useful.. Ross suggested that what matters to extremists is that Trump’s public messaging validates their fears and ambitions.
For Ross, the work of researching extremist history has been demanding but also, he said, deeply purposeful. He said his nights were less burdened because the project felt like a form of “revenge” and fulfillment, and he tied his motivation to the experiences of his parents, Holocaust survivors.
Across both segments—the fight over ballots and maps, and the long arc of U.S.. resistance and hate—one message came through: legal and civic preparation now will shape what the country looks like next.. Whether through court battles aimed at protecting voting access. or through historical reckoning with how extremist networks have reinvented themselves. the stakes heading into 2026 remain high. and the political response is already taking shape.
Election protection 2026 midterms Louisiana v. Callais voting by mail redistricting Protect Democracy Southern Poverty Law Center