Elections

Free and fair elections are an essential pillar of democracy around the world. However, the validity of elections are often threatened by the state or individuals introducing barriers to voting, including violence, and political or financial corruption.

Before You Vote, Know Where Your Candidates Stand on Abortion (and the Economy and Healthcare and Education and Immigration and…)

PUBLISHED 10/12/2026 by and

A candidate for the U.S. House in Florida and the hosts of an antiabortion podcast recently debated whether abortion bans should include exceptions for rape and incest. The candidate said he hoped people in those circumstances would choose “to have the baby” and allow God to take a crime and make “something incredible” out of it.

Voters have the right to know their candidates’ beliefs on abortion and reproductive healthcare access. Would they protect access to abortion when a pregnancy threatens a patient’s life? What about a pregnancy resulting from rape? Would they support federal restrictions or protect access to care?

Guides.vote produces nonpartisan voter guides with the help of experienced editors, researchers and veteran journalists. The guides provide information about candidates’ positions on issues and are designed to help voters compare candidates before casting their ballots. They also link to sources, so readers can learn more about the statements and records behind the comparisons.

After Her Near-Fatal Pregnancy Crisis, Amanda Zurawski Is Finally a Mom

PUBLISHED 10/1/2026 by

In 2022, Amanda Zurawski became a national figure after she nearly died from pregnancy complications in Texas. Zurawski had conceived that pregnancy through intrauterine insemination (IUI), but when her water broke at 18 weeks, doctors delayed abortion care until she developed life-threatening sepsis. The infection left severe scarring in her reproductive organs, leading her and her husband, Josh, to pursue IVF and a surrogate, who gave birth to their son, August, on Sept. 13.

“August Mikel James Zurawski was born on Sep. 13, and he is happy and healthy. We are the happiest. … For the present, we hope to stay in Texas and fight. But now we have someone else to think about.”

Who Cares if Political Candidates Associate With Sex Offenders?

PUBLISHED 9/30/2026 by

Republican candidates in two pivotal North Carolina races are being taken to task for their public association with convicted sex offenders who served time for taking indecent liberties with children.

Former North Carolina GOP chair Michael Whatley—the Republican candidate for the U.S. Senate—and GOP Supreme Court candidate Sarah Stevens have been called to account in the leadup to the midterm elections for accepting support from one or more individuals either formerly or currently on the state sex offender registry. That support includes campaign work, financial contributions and even public prayers.

North Carolina state Rep. Sarah Stevens (R), who resigned from the state House of Representatives in June to run for a seat on the North Carolina Supreme Court, attended and accepted a donation from a fundraising picnic last year at the home of convicted sex offender Harvey West. Though Stevens said she “didn’t even know” West, she had appeared on his wife Kim West’s podcast to promote the picnic and was Facebook friends with Harvey West, a former police officer who served six years in prison after being convicted of five counts of indecent liberties with a child in 2000.

This month it was also reported that Pastor Daimon L. King, a registered sex offender “twice sentenced to prison for convictions involving children,” according to ABC, who led the opening prayer at a recent campaign stop for Whatley. King, who leads the Christian church New Beginnings Celebration, declared his church members “fully support and are behind” Whatley’s U.S. Senate candidacy.

We Fought Too Hard for This Vote. Here’s How We Protect It.

PUBLISHED 9/25/2026 by

The ability to participate in free and fair elections is arguably the most essential American right. Yet on Jan. 6, 2021, the nation watched as a mob overran the Capitol. In an act designed to interfere with the peaceful transfer of power from one president to the next, they attacked law enforcement officers who were there to protect the building and members of Congress inside. Rioters desecrated the Capitol. Our vote and our democracy seemed fragile that day and in the days that followed.

Now, President Donald Trump is trying to create a role for the president in running and overseeing elections. That’s not how the Constitution works.

The effort to interfere with the November midterms isn’t going to consist of a single, dramatic event on Election Day. It is what we are already seeing: a combination of efforts by Trump and his supporters to make it more difficult to vote, to create confusion about who is eligible to vote, to pressure state and local officials, and to manufacture uncertainty. As Jan. 6 proved, distrust among the American people makes it easier for an administration to contest election results they don’t like. And the Trump administration is doing all of this with an eye toward shifting as much control over elections as possible from the states to the federal government.

We can already see where pressure is being applied to voters and election officials, and we can identify the kinds of problems that are likely to arise.

You don’t need to be a constitutional law scholar to make a difference. It just takes a desire to be useful, to engage in democracy and become a participant, not a bystander. Know your state’s rules and deadlines for registering. Research whether you can vote early or by mail. Help the people around you, who may be less informed, do the same. Volunteer as a poll worker if you can. Volunteer to do election protection work if you are a lawyer, law student, retired lawyer or simply someone willing to be trained.

Trump and DOJ’s Epstein Cover-Up Is Front of Mind for Voters Going into Midterms

PUBLISHED 9/10/2026 by

With just two months until the midterm elections, voters across party lines are looking for candidates who are willing to take on corruption, hold powerful abusers accountable and demand the full release of the Epstein files.

A new nationwide poll conducted by public opinion research firm GBAO and released Wednesday by COURIER and Reckoning Action found that 88 percent of Americans who plan to vote in the midterms, including 83 percent of Republican voters, will prioritize candidates who promise to hold powerful people accountable, including through the release of the full Epstein files. Justice for Epstein’s victims ranked higher for voters than almost every other issue, including healthcare, affordability, immigration, public safety and the Iran War.

Releasing the Epstein files became a national priority in 2025, as the Trump administration became engrossed in an apparent cover-up of the records, what they contained, and who they might implicate. The most grievous transgressions include secret meetings in the Situation Room; moving Epstein’s convicted co-conspirator Ghislaine Maxwell to a low-security prison; holding a fake Epstein files release party with far-right media personalities; and closing its investigation into Epstein without additional prosecutions after a hasty review of less than 7 percent of the DOJ’s investigative files.

In lieu of executive accountability, the public turned to Congress. Pressure from voters grew so intense that the bipartisan Epstein Files Transparency Act (EFTA) passed with virtually unanimous support.

But the new polling suggests that voters may now turn to the ballot box to punish those they believe have failed to ensure the law is upheld. To date, only half of the 6 million records from the government’s case files on Epstein have been released, and the U.S. Department of Justice has failed to provide Congress with explanations for redactions and omissions as required by law.

The full release of the Epstein files will take a Congress willing to use its power to force the DOJ to comply with the law, as Attorney General Todd Blanche has stonewalled any attempts to do so. Senate Republicans approved Blanche’s nomination to his role in August, despite pleas from survivors of Epstein’s abuse to reject him. Blanche took lead on the Epstein investigation in 2025, members of Congress currently investigating his handling of the case say his priority has been to protect the president every step of the way.

(Editor’s note: The Donald J. Trump and Jeffrey Epstein Memorial Reading Room—a traveling exhibit that organizes the 3.5 million pages of DOJ’s released Epstein files into 3,437 bound books—is on tour. Five cities will host the full Reading Room; the smaller Bookmobile will visit 20+ more along the way; read on for the full schedule.)

Want to Protect the Vote? Become a Poll Worker

PUBLISHED 8/13/2026 by

For months now, hundreds of active and caring friends and supporters have been writing and calling us with a version of the same question: In addition to sending money, what else can I actually do?

Here’s one suggestion—and it may be the most useful thing you can do between now and Tuesday, Nov. 3: Show up as a poll worker, and get your friends to show up too.

We’ll keep calling out this war on women. But calling it out is not the same as helping to end it. The voter standing in a four-hour line in a shuttered-precinct district does not need our concern. She needs someone at the check-in table who showed up.

Let that someone be you—and your friends.

How Can We Get More Young People to Vote? Start Registering Them in High School

PUBLISHED 8/9/2026 by

This year, about 4 million Americans will turn 18, just in time to vote in November’s midterms. However, fewer than 30 percent of newly eligible young voters are currently registered to vote—half the number of students who go to college—and that percentage is only going down. In 2024, by comparison, 44 percent of U.S. 18-year-olds were registered, compared to approximately 75 percent over voters aged 45 and up.

For midterm elections in particular, not much more than a quarter of eligible 18-year-olds vote—meaning about 2 million young people are missing the chance to let their voices be heard.

A common refrain from some is that the younger half of Gen Z isn’t interested in voting or politics, but the data doesn’t back this up. According to research from The Civics Center, among 18-year-olds who are registered, voter turnout is high. More than 75 percent of registered young voters 18 through 24 have turned out to vote in every presidential election going back to 2004—suggesting the issue isn’t with young voters themselves but how they’re (not) being registered.

“Young people are told so frequently, ‘Your vote doesn’t matter, what you say doesn’t matter,’” Laura Brill, The Civics Center’s founder and CEO, told Ms. “And these things have a negative impact, because actually young people probably do know that they matter, and we don’t want to have a future where people are just feeling cynical and as if they’re intentionally being left out of the process.”

A Jim Crow-Era Voter Suppression Tool Is Back: Mass Voter Challenges

PUBLISHED 7/27/2026 by

In March 2025, two members of the DOGE team communicated with a political advocacy group that was seeking to “find evidence of voter fraud and to overturn election results in certain States.” The group was trying to match Social Security records with copies of voter files that it had acquired. One of the DOGE team members even signed a “Voter Data Agreement” with the group. While it’s still unclear whether DOGE members shared any personal Social Security data, the revelation raised a scary prospect: The federal government might collaborate with election deniers seeking to block American voters from the ballot box.

Most states have laws that allow voters to challenge other voters’ eligibility. Baseless mass challenges to hundreds or thousands of voters at a time are a growing problem. They threaten voters. They swamp overburdened election officials with unnecessary work. And they fuel mistrust in our elections.

Even in Summertime, We Can’t Lose Focus: State-Level Democracy Dispatches From Maine, Kansas, Idaho and Virginia

PUBLISHED 7/20/2026 by

Summertime—and the fight for democracy—is sizzling, especially in the states. Here’s what is happening across the country.

Sudden shakeups in U.S. Senate elections have foisted reproductive rights front and center. The upcoming primary in Maine to replace Graham Platner as the Democratic candidate, combined with deep antipathy voters there have toward Republican incumbent Sen. Susan Collins, is a golden opportunity to elevate abortion in the midterms—especially given Collins’ recent comment that she has no regrets about her pivotal vote to confirm Brett Kavanaugh to the Supreme Court.

In South Carolina, Sen. Lindsey Graham’s unexpected death last weekend has created a surge of public attention and momentum for the Democratic candidate, Dr. Annie Andrews, a pro-choice, pro-science pediatrician (with an A+ Instagram game).

Too often, summer is a season all too ripe for sneak attacks on direct democracy. Ohio Republicans made a case study out of the strategy when they orchestrated a special election in August 2023 to quietly raise the threshold for ballot measures—all in service of attempting to thwart a popular abortion proposal. In the end, voters saw the power grab for what it was and rejected the rules change while turning out in force that November for abortion.

Now Kansas is resurrecting the play and will hold an August election to decide how state Supreme Court justices are chosen.

In Maine, a measure was also proposed, but Secretary of State Shenna Bellows (one of the potential U.S. Senate candidates) invalidated more than 12,000 signatures on the citizens’ petition that had been forged and/or duplicated. Last week a judge upheld blocking the referendum; any appeal will need to be resolved by Aug. 25 for it to appear on the November ballot.

It is a tough balancing act—the need to revel in the lazy, hazy days of summer and grasp the reality that these fights require our constant vigilance. This is where we have to hold each other up. Please take the time to refresh and rejuvenate, and be ready to come back swinging.

Trump’s Executive Order to Restrict Vote by Mail Is a Five-Alarm Fire

PUBLISHED 6/23/2026 by

Republican voters regularly use mail-in voting. Nearly one in five registered Republicans vote by mail. One in four Democrats does too.

Data on who votes by mail suggests that many Americans trust and rely on it.

Trump himself uses mail voting. He has defended casting his own ballots by mail, saying he did it “because I’m president” and “I had a lot of different things” to do.

Trump has repeatedly tried to restrict Americans’ ability to vote by mail. His latest effort, following several failed attempts, began with an executive order he signed on March 31: “Ensuring Citizenship Verification and Integrity in Federal Elections.” The order seeks to shift authority over federal elections from the states—which the Constitution grants primary responsibility for administering elections—to the federal government.

There are, of course, lawsuits challenging this executive order. The challenges to this executive order may well determine how and when you vote this November. So I asked my Brennan Center colleague Wendy Weiser, one of the lawyers in the League of Women Voters case, to share her perspective.