This piece was originally written for Democracy Docket members. We’re sharing this one with everyone because the stakes for this election are too high not to. Become a member to get Marc’s exclusive analysis first.

Election Day is less than 100 days away.

Donald Trump is deeply unpopular. The Republican Party has little to show for its time in power. Prices are up, and the economy is stagnant. We are at war in the Middle East.

The GOP is not acting like a party trying to persuade voters to support its candidates — because it isn’t. Instead, the Republican Party's entire strategy boils down to this:

1. Change the rules and misuse government resources to make it harder for Democratic voters to cast ballots.
   
   
2. Control and manipulate voter registration databases to disqualify enough Democrats from voting.
   
   
3. If all else fails, make false claims of fraud as an excuse to subvert the results.

I have written about each of these tactics separately. But with less than 100 days until the election, it is important to understand that they are part of one holistic strategy.

For example, the threat to place federal agents near polls is not only aimed at intimidating immigrant communities. Closing roads and imposing checkpoints will be used to make voting more inconvenient for everyone in high-density Democratic areas.

The same is true of so-called proof-of-citizenship laws. For U.S. citizens born in the United States, proving citizenship is surprisingly difficult — requiring either an unexpired U.S. passport or an original birth certificate. Except in five states along the Canadian border, driver's licenses — including REAL ID — will not do the trick.

Women who changed their last name when they married face additional hurdles. Their current last name won't match the name on their birth certificate, leaving a passport as their only straightforward option.

Then there is the vast array of typical voter suppression techniques Republicans are set to deploy — making it more difficult to vote by mail, reducing the number of early voting days, targeting college students, and rejecting ballots.

This cycle has seen an explosion of litigation over these technical rules. The Republican Party has used its vast pile of cash to litigate case after case aimed at challenging laws that allow people to cast ballots and have them counted.

We have fought back, and in the biggest case — Watson v. RNC — we won in the U.S. Supreme Court. As a result, hundreds of thousands of mail-in ballots that were set to be discarded if the RNC had prevailed will now be counted.

But the most significant legal fights this election cycle have been over Donald Trump's efforts to collect vast troves of sensitive voter data from the states. He wants this highly personal information to build a nationwide database of registered voters that he controls. Once in possession of such a database, his administration would dictate to states which voters must be removed from their current rolls.

The threat to free and fair elections is existential. Indeed, there is no more important fight happening in the courts right now than this one.

The Department of Justice has sued 30 states for access to this data. So far, they are 0–17 in those cases, including eight defeats before judges nominated by Trump. But they are appealing these defeats, and the fight in court continues.

As soon as these cases were filed, my law firm moved to intervene to defend against them. Representing various groups of voters and voting organizations, we are undefeated.

But Donald Trump is not done. His administration is trying to use the Department of Homeland Security's existing SAVE database to force states to purge voters.

He is withholding funds from states. He is threatening criminal prosecution of election officials. He is even trying to co-opt the U.S. Postal Service to refuse to deliver mail-in ballots unless states hand over their lists.

All these tactics are being challenged in court, and so far, the Trump administration has been blocked from its most egregious abuses. My law firm sued and blocked Trump’s first anti-voting executive order and is litigating his most recent one. Democratic state attorneys general and other groups are doing the same.

Disqualifying Democratic voters before the election is not Trump's only reason for seeking access to this critical information. Like promoting lies and baseless conspiracies, the data Trump seeks can be misused after the election to subvert the results.

Recall that this was one of the chief concerns we had going into the 2024 election. The news cycle was dominated by election deniers infiltrating local offices and Trump pressuring statewide Republicans into refusing to certify Democratic victories.

The fact that Trump won — and these threats were not needed — did not make it disappear. In fact, in many ways, the threats loom larger in 2026 than ever before.

That is because Trump now controls the federal government and has shown a willingness to use it to advance nakedly partisan objectives — including prosecuting his political opponents and seizing ballots.

In the aftermath of the 2020 election, Trump decided against issuing an executive order directing the government to seize ballots and voting equipment. This time, he surely won't hesitate.

Nor can we count on the Republican Party to resist his calls to simply ignore results and certify Republicans as the winners. There are no heroes in the GOP. No one is going to stop them but us.

That is not a reason for despair — it is a reason to act.

For lawyers like me, that means treating this like the emergency it is. We must move fast and litigate with urgency. We must be willing to bring difficult cases and challenge suppression laws and contest refusals to certify accurate results.

Non-lawyers have a vital role to play as well. First, check your registration status. Vote early if you can, and make a plan for how, when and where you'll cast your ballot.

If you can, volunteer as a poll worker or poll watcher. And if you see something that looks like intimidation, an illegal purge, or a refusal to certify, report it immediately to a voter protection hotline or your state's election officials.

The fight ahead will be hard, and none of this guarantees the outcome we desire.

But the last decade shows that when lawyers litigate aggressively, and citizens stay engaged and informed, we can protect voting rights and the ballot box. The GOP is counting on exhaustion and resignation to do what persuasion cannot. We cannot give them either one.