October 8, 2025

I don’t usually write about my law firm, but today I’m going to make an exception.

With fewer than 60 lawyers, we are currently litigating 63 voting and election cases in 30 states — a number that will almost certainly rise in the weeks to come. The only thing that could cause it to fall anytime soon would be court closures resulting from the Republican-caused government shutdown.

The states with the most cases are not surprising: Arizona with six, Georgia with five, and Florida and North Carolina with four each. These cases span both federal and state courts. We have matters pending before the U.S. Supreme Court, as well as in trial courts and courts of appeal throughout the country.

In many of these cases, we represent voters and nonprofit organizations challenging restrictive voting laws designed to make it harder for them and their members to vote in 2026. In others, we represent the Democratic Party or individual candidates to ensure a level playing field.

Unfortunately, the biggest area of growth has been defensive interventions — fighting lawsuits brought by the Republican Party or their right-wing allies. In recent months, we’ve had to add the Department of Justice to that list. While in the past we often found ourselves allied with the DOJ, we are now forced to oppose them to prevent the trampling of voting rights.

This December, I will argue a case in the U.S. Supreme Court, defending a law against a Republican challenge that has been on the books for five decades and previously upheld by the Court.

We were compelled to intervene on behalf of the Democratic Party because, while the case was pending before the Court, the Department of Justice abruptly announced it was switching sides. A law that both Democratic and Republican administrations had long defended was suddenly deemed unconstitutional by the Trump DOJ.

This is not an isolated incident. Those of us engaged in this fight are witnessing a wholesale attack on free and fair elections. From executive orders to budget cuts, the Trump administration is undermining election security and promoting voter disenfranchisement.

Republican state legislatures and governors are enacting laws that make it harder for citizens to vote, targeting voting methods and communities they believe could undermine their partisan advantage in 2026.

Nowhere is this more apparent than in redistricting — where the GOP is literally redrawing maps to disenfranchise minority voters and secure more congressional seats for themselves. From Texas to Missouri to Louisiana and Alabama, Republicans are targeting minority communities and their representatives.

And it’s about to get worse. Republicans in Florida, Indiana, and Kansas are all discussing mid-cycle redistricting plans that would continue this trend. Meanwhile, the Supreme Court is set to hear reargument this month in a case brought by white voters in Louisiana seeking to effectively gut what remains of the Voting Rights Act. If that happens, the consequences for voting rights and fair districting could be catastrophic.

Aside from attention on Texas’s redistricting, these attacks on voting rights and elections have largely gone unmentioned by legacy media. Every day brings a litany of illegal and unconstitutional actions by this administration — and the lawsuits challenging them are essential to protecting democracy.

But these cases, and the many victories we’ve achieved, will mean little if the midterms are not free and fair. We must pay attention to both Trump’s authoritarianism and his plans to retain power regardless of the voters’ will.

Donald Trump has openly stated his desire to control the counting and tabulation of ballots. He has made clear that he wants to ban voting methods disfavored by Republicans. He even sells merchandise suggesting he can remain in office after a second term — despite the Constitution’s explicit prohibition.

Most recently, Trump has begun deploying the military to American cities. What started in June in Los Angeles has spread to Washington, D.C., and Memphis. He is determined to deploy the National Guard in Portland — one way or another — and, after months of threats, has finally done so in Chicago.

This attack will not end with those cities, nor will its presence be limited to protecting federal law enforcement. Its deployment will likely spread to more blue cities, and when we reach November 2026, I fear they could be used to influence the election’s outcome.

This is not alarmism or wild speculation. Following the 2020 election, Trump wanted to take similar measures in Georgia, even drafting an executive order and holding a White House meeting to discuss it.

He ultimately backed down — but only because his staff and senior officials at the Department of Justice threatened to resign en masse. Does anyone believe those same guardrails exist now? If you’re counting on Attorney General Pam Bondi and Stephen Miller to defend democracy, you might as well throw in the towel.

A healthy pro-democracy movement must do many things at once — and one of the most important is protecting elections. In addition to running a pro-democracy law firm, I started Democracy Docket in 2020 to provide detailed reporting and analysis of legal challenges. Other lawyers, publications, and pro-democracy groups are doing their part as well.

The fight for democracy is the defining battle of our generation. Within that struggle, protecting free and fair elections must be our top priority. As the Supreme Court said more than 60 years ago, “the right to exercise the franchise in a free and unimpaired manner is preservative of other basic civil and political rights.”

We have a little more than a year to ensure that remains true for another election cycle. Let us all commit now to making sure it does.