Analysis
American elections are facing new and intense national political pressures. The basic machinery of democracy — who runs elections, who is on voters lists, how votes are counted, and who certifies results — has become entangled in wider struggles over power and legitimacy. Once a quiet domain of administrators, election systems are now a contested arena for partisan influence and manipulation.
In recent months, we’ve seen National Guard deployments in major cities, sweeping federal data requests from states, and increasingly aggressive legal and political maneuvers by both parties. Concerns Americans once associated with fragile and backsliding democracies abroad — about impartial administration, state versus federal authority, and the limits of executive power — are now part of our own political landscape.
Today’s statewide elections in Virginia and New Jersey provide an early test of how these pressures play out and a preview of how election administration, legal strategy, and political rhetoric may shape the 2026 midterms. More than referenda on individual candidates, these contests are a measure of where the line between fair elections and manipulation now lies.
This year, the systems that ensure free and fair elections have faced new and coordinated challenges.
In July, the U.S. Department of Justice sent letters to multiple states requesting sweeping access to voter rolls, election records, and past election data, alarming state officials who warned of potential partisan overreach from Washington. The requests stemmed from a March executive order that sought to expand federal authority over election administration — a domain the Constitution assigns to the states and Congress, not the executive branch. Meanwhile, in April, the House passed the SAVE Act, which would require documentary proof of U.S. citizenship to register for federal elections. The bill rests on an unsubstantiated narrative of widespread noncitizen voting and would place heavy new burdens on both voters and local election offices.
At the same time, states have launched an aggressive mid-decade redistricting arms race — far outside the usual post-census cycle — undermining electoral competitiveness and tilting representation toward the majority party in each state. In Texas, Republicans passed a new congressional map in August 2025 designed to add up to five GOP-leaning seats ahead of the 2026 midterms. In California, Democrats led by Governor Gavin Newsom responded by proposing to override the state’s independent redistricting commission and redraw maps favoring their party, seeking up to five additional U.S. House seats. The measure is headed to a special election today.
Meanwhile, the federal cybersecurity framework that once protected state and local election systems has been hollowed out under partisan pressure. In February, CISA cut funding for two cornerstone initiatives — the Elections Infrastructure Information Sharing and Analysis Center and its multi-state threat network — and by March had suspended major election security programs altogether. The result has been a sharp reduction in the flow of cyberthreat intelligence to local officials. Simultaneously, the dismantling of federal programs like the Global Engagement Center and the FBI’s Foreign Influence Task Force has left the country more exposed to foreign interference operations from Russia, China, and others seeking to erode public trust in elections.
Even actions that appear tangential to elections — such as recent National Guard deployments — carry serious risks for the integrity of the vote. This past week, The Atlantic’s David Graham explored how future election nights could unfold under heavy federal and local security presence, where troops and guard units stationed in urban counties create an atmosphere of coercion, and legal maneuvering overlays state and local oversight. Such outcomes — unthinkable just a few months ago — are now in the realm of possibility. The challenge is to distinguish legitimate enforcement of election law from efforts to manipulate or undermine it. Neutral policies can have unequal effects; partisan interventions can masquerade as impartial administration.
Many of these developments are alarming precisely because they echo the early warning signs seen in backsliding democracies around the world. In “How Democracies Die,” Harvard political scientists Steven Levitsky and Daniel Ziblatt describe three recurring arenas of authoritarian behavior: capturing the referees, sidelining the opposition, and tilting the playing field. The patterns emerging in the United States right now increasingly reflect each of these dynamics.
Authoritarian efforts to entrench power often begin by undermining the neutral arbiters who enforce the rules of the game — the judges, administrators, and institutions meant to apply laws fairly. In the United States, that process has taken subtler forms: continued attacks on election officials, the cutting of cybersecurity protections, and novel efforts by the U.S. Department of Justice to go after political opponents and obtain states’ voter data under the banner of “integrity.” These moves collectively erode the independence and credibility of the officials who keep elections honest. When election administrators are harassed, underfunded, or replaced with partisan loyalists with a history of supporting false narratives to overturn election results, it becomes harder to trust that rules will be applied evenly or that disputes will be resolved impartially. The continued denial of the 2020 results — and the normalization of that denial within one of the country’s major parties — completes this pattern, recasting neutral referees as partisan actors and corroding the foundation of shared democratic legitimacy.
A second hallmark of democratic decline is the use of political power to marginalize rivals rather than compete with them. In the current environment, that pattern has grown more visible: threats of prosecution or investigation aimed at political opponents (such as Adam Schiff, J.B. Pritzker, and Zohran Mamdani); the labeling of protesters and critics as “un-American;” and the routine framing of dissent as disloyalty. These tactics chill participation and narrow the field of legitimate political discourse. By criminalizing opposition and delegitimizing pluralism, they reduce politics to a loyalty test, where disagreement becomes suspect and accountability vanishes. Democracy depends not on unanimity but on the willingness of those in power to accept defeat — a commitment now openly tested by the rhetoric and actions of national leaders.
Finally, authoritarian-leaning regimes manipulate rules to entrench themselves in power even in defiance of the will of the people. In the United States, efforts to entrench power are visible in the ongoing wave of mid-decade gerrymandering, the tightening of voting rules that disproportionately burden certain communities, and the procedural changes that weaken independent oversight. These maneuvers are often justified in the language of “efficiency” or “integrity,” yet their cumulative effect is unmistakable — elections that are formally free but substantively unfair. As competitive districts vanish and access to the ballot narrows, voters’ ability to change course through the ballot box diminishes. That is how democratic erosion takes root — not through a single dramatic rupture, but through steady rule-bending that advantages those already in power.
These national dynamics are not merely theoretical, but so far they have not destabilized the basic mechanics of voting on the ground. Today’s elections in Virginia and New Jersey — modest in scale but significant in meaning — offer a useful test of how national pressures translate into practice. By most indications, so far these contests have been conducted fairly, with few signs of serious concern across the key domains of electoral integrity. Still, a handful of early warning signs merit attention as we look toward 2026. These elections give us a chance to exercise and sharpen our collective ability to recognize, deter, and counter efforts to erode the foundations of free and fair elections.
In Virginia today, voters are choosing three statewide offices — governor, lieutenant governor, and attorney general — along with all 100 seats in the House of Delegates. The gubernatorial race features Democrat Abigail Spanberger against Republican Lt. Gov. Winsome Earle-Sears; the undercards match Democratic state Sen. Ghazala Hashmi against Republican John Reid for lieutenant governor and Democratic former delegate Jay Jones against Republican incumbent Jason Miyares for attorney general.
As a baseline, Virginia retains several guardrails against overt partisan manipulation. Voters approved a 2020 constitutional amendment creating a bipartisan redistricting commission, and the state’s 2021 court-drawn maps have generally been assessed as balanced and competitive relative to prior cycles. Nonpartisan analysts have described the maps as “quite balanced,” and the Princeton Gerrymandering Project gave top marks to the independent commission’s draft congressional map in 2021.
When it comes to “capturing the referees,” Virginia was among at least 13 states contacted by the Justice Department’s Criminal Division to discuss a new “information-sharing agreement” related to voter data — a push that raised significant questions among election officials and legal experts. However, Virginia’s Department of Elections has stated that it has not provided a response yet and is still “reviewing the request.” Beyond that, Virginia typically ranks in the upper tier on the MIT Elections Performance Index, and Governor Glenn Youngkin (R) has signaled an emphasis on election cybersecurity. Taken together, these are encouraging signs that the commonwealth’s election administration systems and staff are comparatively resilient — a pattern that aligns with calm on-the-ground reports from election officials.
As for “sidelining the opposition,” the campaign has seen heated moments but not structural interference. Jones apologized after old texts surfaced suggesting violence toward a GOP lawmaker, and Reid faced calls to step aside after allegations linked him to an explicit social media account he denies owning. Despite the rhetoric, neither episode has produced ballot disqualifications or late-breaking procedural exclusions; the line between hard-edged criticism and rule-bending has, so far, held.
Yet this does not mean Virginia is without areas to monitor. Among the most concerning patterns — with the potential to “tilt the playing field” — is Gov. Youngkin’s approach to voter roll management. In September, just a week before early voting began, the governor signed an executive order directing state election officials to coordinate with federal data systems and remove suspected noncitizens from the rolls. While removing ineligible voters from voting rolls is undeniably vital, implementing such sweeping removals so close to an election raises the risk of misclassification and disenfranchisement, which is why federal law does not allow systemic roll changes within 90 days of a federal contest.
This is not a new pattern. In 2024, another executive order from Governor Youngkin targeted some 6,303 voters flagged as noncitizens; the move sparked both a federal lawsuit and a temporary court injunction commanding the reinstatement of over 1,600 registrations (although the Supreme Court later overturned that order). And in 2023, state officials acknowledged that nearly 3,400 legitimate voters were incorrectly removed from the rolls due to misclassified probation violations — an error disclosed just days before the legislature elections.
And finally, while Virginia’s redistricting commission remains the default, map-war pressures are rising here as they are elsewhere. On Oct. 29, 2025, the Democratic-led House advanced a constitutional amendment that would let the legislature redraw congressional lines in 2026, bypassing the commission — which supporters say is a response to aggressive mid-decade moves in GOP-led states. The proposal must pass again next year and then win voter approval, but it signals that Virginia is now on the front line of the national redistricting arms race.
Bottom line: Virginia’s election infrastructure and institutional safeguards remain comparatively strong so far. The chief risk vectors in the 2025 elections have been administrative — late-stage voter-roll actions and externally-driven data demands — but to date they have not translated into widespread disenfranchisement, undermining of fairness, or process failures. The test ahead is whether Virginia can preserve that stability as redistricting fights and executive branch power plays intensify into 2026.
In New Jersey, voters are choosing a new governor and lieutenant governor, with incumbent Phil Murphy (D) term-limited. The contest pits Democratic U.S. Representative Mikie Sherrill against Republican former state legislator Jack Ciattarelli, with several third-party candidates also attempting to mount bids.
At the structural level, New Jersey enters the race with favorable markers of representation. Like Virginia, the state’s most recent congressional and legislative maps earned an “A” grade for fairness from the Princeton Gerrymandering Project, suggesting that district boundaries do not heavily skew toward either party. Yet when it comes to election administration, New Jersey shows room for improvement. On the MIT Elections Performance Index, the state ranks 42nd nationwide, reflecting chronic issues such as slow ballot processing, limited data transparency, and uneven implementation of best practices.
Even so, the state has taken notable steps this cycle to shore up security and process. In late August 2025, the New Jersey Election Law Enforcement Commission proposed rules explicitly allowing campaign funds to be used for candidate security services and protective equipment — a newly formalized acknowledgment of the heightened threat environment facing public officials amid rising political violence. Election administrators have also coordinated new guidance for polling place safety and emergency communication procedures, part of a broader bipartisan effort to deter intimidation and ensure safe access to the vote.
Most concerning in New Jersey, however, is the Justice Department’s decision to deploy federal election monitors to at least one county — Passaic County — ahead of this election. The move followed a formal request from the state GOP, which asked the DOJ to “oversee the receipt and processing of vote-by-mail ballots” and “monitor access to the Board of Elections around the clock.” While federal monitoring under the Civil Rights Division has a long precedent, the timing, location, and political framing of this deployment have raised questions about motive and precedent. The DOJ confirmed the assignment on Oct. 24, 2025, citing the need to “ensure transparency, ballot security, and compliance with federal law” in Passaic and several California jurisdictions.
Passaic County is no ordinary site: a diverse and closely divided suburban area that flipped narrowly toward Donald Trump in 2024 and could prove decisive in the Ciattarelli-Sherrill race. Critics, including New Jersey Attorney General Matt Platkin, have warned that the deployment risks blurring the line between legitimate oversight and federal intrusion, arguing that the DOJ “has not even attempted to identify a legitimate basis for its actions.” Election law experts also note a subtle but important shift: Monitors traditionally focus on protecting voting rights under the Voting Rights Act, whereas this deployment emphasizes “ballot security” and “processing of vote-by-mail ballots” — phrases often invoked in recent partisan disputes over alleged fraud.
That distinction matters. Even if no misconduct occurs, the optics of federal agents overseeing local election operations can alter how voters and officials perceive legitimacy, potentially chilling participation or constraining routine administrative judgment. In the framework of “How Democracies Die,” this development edges toward “capturing the referees” — not by replacing election administrators outright, but by inserting new forms of pressure and surveillance that may subtly reshape their behavior.
Bottom line: New Jersey’s electoral infrastructure remains fundamentally sound — fair maps, increasingly competent administrators, and proactive security planning provides a strong foundation. Yet the convergence of heightened political tension, evolving rules around candidate security, and the potential weaponization of federal monitoring underscores how even well-established systems can face stress tests in periods of polarization and federal level backsliding. So far, there are no indications of systemic breakdowns, but the warning signs visible here merit close attention as the country heads toward 2026.
In the lead-up to today, these elections appear to have unfolded largely as they should: fairly, transparently, and without serious disruption. That is an encouraging sign — and one worth pausing on. Amid the noise of national conflict, the basic machinery of democracy still works when competent state and local officials act impartially and are empowered to run it. But the deeper value of these contests is not only who wins or loses, but what they reveal about the pressures shaping the system itself.
The coming year will test those pressures in full. Between now and the 2026 midterm elections, we can expect more efforts to capture the referees, sideline the opposition, and tilt the playing field — not just through overt power plays, but also through gradual changes to rules, procedures, and public rhetoric. Each small change to how ballots are counted, maps are drawn, and voters are verified carries cumulative weight. The lesson from this year’s races is that vigilance must now be part of ordinary civic life, not a special posture reserved for crises.
The guardrails are under growing attack, but so far they have held. But the work of defending free and fair elections can no longer rely on the assumption that institutions will act as they always have. It depends on preparation: ensuring that election officials have resources and protection; that cybersecurity networks and disinformation defenses are rebuilt, not dismantled; and that citizens understand not just how elections function and why their legitimacy matters, but are willing to stand up to defend them.
In the past decade, Americans have grown accustomed to asking whether elections are safe, secure, and bipartisan. Those questions remain crucial. Yet it may now be time to ask something more fundamental: What does it mean to conduct truly free and fair elections in a country so polarized that the rules themselves are contested, and where executive overreach can directly threaten their legitimacy?
We are not pessimists. The record from Virginia and New Jersey suggests that capable institutions and professional administrators can still deliver elections worthy of public trust. But preserving that trust will require active effort: from lawmakers who resist executive interference and weaponizing election law, from citizens who reject apathy or conspiracy, and from all of us who recognize that democracy’s quiet machinery is only as strong as the people who choose to defend it.
The story of 2025, then, is not one of collapse, but of testing. The story of 2026 will be whether the lessons of this moment — about preparation, fairness, and resistance to manipulation — are heeded in time.
Issue: Election Protection
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