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When Harmeet Dhillon, the Department of Justice (DOJ) civil rights chief, announced that her agency would be sending election monitors to 15 jurisdictions in six states during the 2026 primaries, she was quick to note that previous Democratic administrations have likewise sent observers to monitor primaries.
The fight over the NVRA’s quiet period goes beyond one state law or lawsuit. It is a fight over whether eligible voters will have meaningful protection from being wrongly removed from the rolls at the moment when the consequences are hardest to undo.
Facing increasingly dire polls, President Donald Trump is determined to prevent Democrats from reclaiming the U.S. House in the 2026 midterm elections. So he’s pressuring Republican-controlled states to give the GOP an unfair edge by gerrymandering their congressional maps.
Republican local officials, conservative activists and election deniers have tried to use ballot measures, county boards, city charters and local election offices to restrict voting or interfere with election administration on the local level — even where state law preempts them.
California takes longer than many states to count votes for a mix of logistical and legal reasons, from the sheer size of its electorate to the state’s rules for mail-in ballots, signature verification and voter protections that give people time to fix certain ballot issues.
But if Democrats are willing to play political hardball, that edge could be neutered by 2028. In fact, by doing their own partisan redraws in big blue states like New York, New Jersey, and Illinois — and trying again in the Old Dominion — the party could even potentially emerge from this scorched-earth battle with anywhere between a six- and thirteen-seat advantage over Republicans, according to a Democracy Docket analysis.
Days after the U.S. Supreme Court gutted the Voting Rights Act, Illinois lawmakers were forced to shelve a proposed ballot measure that would have given voters a chance to strengthen redistricting protections in their state.
Legal experts, voting rights advocates, and even the VRA’s loudest foes all agree with Justice Elena Kagan: “[I]n fact, those ‘updates’ eviscerate the law.”
Within days of the Supreme Court’s decision to gut the Voting Rights Act (VRA), its devastating effects are already unfolding— throwing voting rights cases across the country into chaos as courts pause proceedings and GOP state officials rush to shut down claims and redraw maps.
Just months before the 2026 midterms, election officials from across the country gathered this week to meet with a key federal voting panel, the U.S. Election Assistance Commission (EAC).
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