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voting rights
A Citizen's Declaration of Independence for July 4, 2026
The history of the government of the United States in this century, especially under this president, is a history of repeated injuries and usurpations, all tending to the establishment of a corporate despotism over the American people.
Jul 04, 2026
When in the course of human events, it becomes necessary for the people to dissolve the bands which have subjected them to a government which has burdened and oppressed them, and to restore the powers and rights to which the laws of nature and nature’s God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of humankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation.
We hold these truths to be self-evident: That all people are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights; that among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness; that to secure these rights, governments are instituted among the people, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed; that whenever any form of government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the right of the people to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new government, laying its foundation upon such principles, and organizing its powers in such form, as to seem to them most likely to them to effect their future safety and happiness. Prudence, indeed, will dictate that governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes: and accordingly all experience hath shown that people are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing the same object, evinces a design to reduce them under an absolute despotism it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such government, and to provide new guards for their future security. Such has been the patient suffering of the American people, and such is now the necessity which constrains them to alter their present government.
The history of the government of the United States in this century, especially under this president, is a history of repeated injuries and usurpations, all tending to the establishment of a corporate despotism over the American people. To prove this, let facts be submitted to a candid world.
On repeated occasions, the current government has manipulated elections from which officials have assumed their offices.
A government whose character is thus marked by actions that exhibit such arrogance is unfit to be the government of a free people.
Its current president has allowed his subordinates to suggest a postponement of the constitutionally required date of a presidential election, a step unprecedented in United States history, even in times of war and civil rebellion. While doing so, he has suggested that no further national elections will be necessary.
The current government has repeatedly undermined access to equal voting rights, and has promoted the power of the dollar to replace the voice of the people in elections.
It has compromised the security of the people in their persons, homes, workplaces, schools, travels, papers, and effects by sponsoring actions that harass the people with both open and clandestine searches and surveillance.
It has denied immigrants their rights under asylum law and the Constitution, subjecting them to arbitrary arrest and cruel and unusual punishment.
It has refused detainees under its authority access to counsel and security from physical mistreatment, in violation of international covenant, the supreme law of the land, and the English-speaking tradition of law dating from Magna Carta.
As has been the case for nearly two generations, it has failed to erect adequate safeguards against domestic terrorism and the massacre of children and young people in our schools and colleges.
It has long evaded international covenants for the protection of the environment, the humane treatment of prisoners of war, the security of nations from invasion, and the prevention of war crimes, thereby subverting the law of nations and the supreme law of the land. The current president’s actions in this respect are especially cruel and malign.
It has acted to render the military independent of, and superior to, the civil power.
It has weakened enforcement of environmental laws most wholesome and necessary to the public good, has compromised others, and has allowed corporations to poison the environment on which the public’s health, prosperity, and well-being depend.
It has hollowed out the nation’s civil service and established bribery as standard government practice.
It has further endangered public health by weakening legislation that would remedy the people’s woefully inadequate access to essential medical care.
It has reduced benefits and medical care to veterans of current and previous wars and their families.
It has created a population that lags behind the rest of the developed world in educational attainment, life expectancy, access to decent housing, and prevention of infant and maternal mortality.
It has eaten away at the substance of ordinary people by denying them a living wage, and initiated class warfare in our nation by promulgating laws and taxes that favor the already wealthy at the expense of the people at large.
It has failed to protect the people’s hard-won savings from obscure and deceptive investments, and usurious mortgages on their homes, thereby undermining their material security and driving hard-working citizens into the street.
It has lavished financial support on failed investment banks and corporations while denying the working class, the poor, and the jobless minimal support for their existence.
It has at times deprived federal workers pledged to protect the nation’s security the right to bargain collectively to secure fair compensation for their labors.
It has promoted international trade regulations that deprive laborers of rights protected by international agreement.
Through economic policies that have extended over a generation, it has plunged one-eighth of its population and one-fourth of its children into a permanent state of poverty and hunger.
It has undermined the security of future generations and burdened them with debt by turning record federal surpluses into unprecedented deficits.
It has on occasion neglected to provide its troops at war personal equipment that is necessary to their safety and comfort in the field, and violated the terms of their original enlistments.
It has promoted the development of weapons systems beyond any rational military requirement, and equipped its armed forces with weapons dangerous to their users.
In like manner, it has evaded the obligations of international law and common decency by holding all humanity hostage to an existentially perilous nuclear arms race.
It has distracted the nation from the necessary struggle against terrorism and arms proliferation by initiating offensive war abroad without sufficient cause and has subjected civilians abroad to the horrors of combat, in violation of international covenant, its own rules of engagement, and the supreme law of the land.
In defiance of international law, it has threatened neighboring and allied nations with invasion and annexation, and misused our tax money to finance and abet genocide directed against a foreign people.
It has replaced the world’s respect for the United States of America with apprehension, contempt, and fear.
In every stage of these oppressions, which our current president has encouraged and promoted, the American people have petitioned for redress in most humble terms; our repeated petitions and supplications have been answered chiefly by repeated delays and indifference. A government whose character is thus marked by actions that exhibit such arrogance is unfit to be the government of a free people.
Nor have we been wanting in our attentions to its individual members. We have warned them, from time to time, of attempts to extend an unwarranted jurisdiction over us. We have reminded them of the circumstances of our common heritage here. We have appealed to their sense of decency; and we have conjured them, by the ties of common kindred, to disavow these usurpations, which would inevitably interrupt our connections and correspondence. More often than not, they, too, have been deaf to the voice of justice and common citizenship.
We, therefore, the people of the United States of America, appealing to the Supreme Judge of the world for the rectitude of our intentions, do solemnly publish and declare, that all political connection between ourselves and the present federal administration is hereby abandoned. And for the support of this declaration and the restoration of our liberty, with a firm reliance on the protection of Divine Providence, we mutually pledge to each other our lives, our fortunes, and our sacred honor.
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Don't Let False Claims of Fraud Make It Harder to Vote
As the Supreme Court prepares to hear a case that could overturn grace periods for mail-in ballots, and the Trump administration targets mail-in voting as well, it's important to refute false claims about mail ballots and misreadings of election laws.
Jun 26, 2026
The Supreme Court is set to decide a case that could overturn laws in 30 states that provide grace periods, which allow counting mail ballots received after Election Day but sent on time.
Meanwhile, President Donald Trump has issued two executive orders seeking to displace states’ mail voting laws, including one that attempts to deny federal funds to states that do not reject mail ballots received after Election Day. (The Brennan Center and other voting rights groups have challenged both orders in court.)
These efforts seek to undermine state policies for when mail ballots may be counted. They are centered on false claims about mail ballots and misreading of election law and are occurring as states pass restrictive voting laws—some of which even rely on the executive orders or the ongoing litigation.
While many states have expanded access to mail voting since 2020, between 2020 and 2025, 27 states enacted laws restricting mail voting. These restrictions have followed false claims by Trump and his allies about fraudulent mail ballots. Indeed, Trump made similar claims due to ballot processing times following California’s recent primary. These false claims and restrictive laws around mail voting persist even though the overwhelming evidence shows that it continues to be safe and secure.
Lawmakers who focus on voters when enacting election laws recognize that some face unique hurdles when accessing the ballot box.
Laws restricting mail voting include laws eliminating grace periods. Notably, between 2020 and 2025, at least seven states, including Arkansas, Iowa, Kansas, North Carolina, North Dakota, Ohio, and Utah, have either tightened the deadline for returning a mail ballot or blocked officials from accepting mail ballots arriving after Election Day. At least four states have done so in the past year, including two that did so after the executive orders or Supreme Court litigation.
North Dakota eliminated its grace period, which counted mail ballots so long as they were postmarked by the day before Election Day, in April, shortly after Trump’s March 2025 executive order on voting. Among other things, that order illegally directs the Election Assistance Commission, an independent federal agency, to condition funding on a state’s adherence to an Election Day ballot-receipt deadline, even if the ballots were submitted on time under state law. Just three weeks after Trump issued the order, state legislators amended an elections bill to include a new section “addressing the new executive order” by eliminating the state’s grace period.
Then, in December 2025, Ohio passed a law eliminating its grace period, which counted ballots postmarked before Election Day and received by the fourth day after (a period that Ohio had already shortened in 2022 from the 10th day after the election). One of the 2025 bill’s sponsors pointed to Trump’s executive order. But Ohio lawmakers also made their decision while the Supreme Court case, Watson v. Republican National Committee, had yet to be argued, let alone decided.
That case began in early 2024 under a sham legal theory: that century-old federal “Election Day” laws, which require states to have presidential and congressional elections on the first Tuesday of November, preempt Mississippi’s policy of accepting mail ballots postmarked by Election Day and received within five business days thereafter. Those federal laws do not set the date by which states must receive and count ballots, and a federal district court rejected the lawsuit. But in March 2025, the US Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit reversed the ruling in a deeply flawed opinion that inaccurately described the plain text, historical practice, and congressional history of the “Election Day” laws.
The same week in November 2025 that the Supreme Court agreed to hear Watson, Ohio’s Legislative Budget Office cited the Fifth Circuit’s flawed reasoning in its analysis for lawmakers. By the following month, Ohio had eliminated the state’s grace period except for military and overseas voters. (Mississippi, for its part, recently enacted a “trigger law” that, if the court overturns Mississippi’s current grace period, will require mail ballots to be received a full day before Election Day.)
To be sure, North Dakota and Ohio lawmakers also pointed to other states that do not provide grace periods. But North Dakota and Ohio’s passing of restrictive voting laws following a contested executive order and grace period-related litigation, respectively, shows the damage that the executive branch and courts alike can cause by elevating debunked legal theories.
In contrast with the executive order and Watson litigation, multiple states have exercised their authority to develop mail voting policies under a different approach: addressing voters’ needs. Today, at least 14 states, the District of Columbia, and three other US territories provide a grace period for all voters. At least 16 states provide a grace period specifically for military and overseas voters. And Montana provides a grace period specifically for users of the Federal Write-In Absentee Ballot, which serves as a backup ballot for military and overseas voters.
During the Civil War, officials in states including Maryland, Maine, New Hampshire, and Rhode Island gave military voters additional time after Election Day to have their ballots arrive so they could be counted. In 2010, US Postal Service delays resulted in over 26,000 mail ballots arriving too late to be counted in California’s general election. This led California to adopt a three-day grace period for all voters, which the legislature lengthened to 17 days during the Covid-19 pandemic and shortened to seven days following the pandemic. Texas decided in 2005 to accept ballots postmarked by Election Day and received the day after. It added longer deadlines in 2017: five days after Election Day for civilian ballots and six days for military service members deployed abroad and their families. And some states, like Alabama and Colorado, that have adopted grace periods specifically for military and overseas voters have done so to build upon protections embedded in the federal Uniformed and Overseas Citizens Absentee Voting Act.
Lawmakers who focus on voters when enacting election laws recognize that some face unique hurdles when accessing the ballot box. As the Brennan Center and co-counsel Covington & Burling noted in a friend-of-the-court brief in Watson, overseas civilian and military voters can face mail delays that prevent ballots from arriving on time, through no fault of the voter. Rural voters, like many in largely rural Alaska, can be wholly dependent on mail voting to participate in elections. So too can voters with disabilities, or certain communities of color that may rely on mail voting as an effective alternative to in-person voting. Indeed, recent research on the rescission of Ohio’s grace period suggests that thousands of valid votes in the 2024 election would not have been counted under the new rules.
Court decisions sanctioning Trump’s unconstitutional executive orders or the misleading claims underpinning Watson could add to the burdens some voters already face. But even if Trump’s executive orders fail and the Supreme Court upholds the grace period at issue, policymakers and advocates should still be concerned about how lawmakers can turn the false claims behind executive orders and litigation into restrictive state voting laws.
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State AGs Applaud Court Blocking 'Unconstitutional' Trump Proof of Citizenship Voting Requirement
"As President Trump has made clear today, the fight to protect the right to vote isn’t over," said California Attorney General Rob Bonfa.
Jun 24, 2026
A federal judge on Wednesday blocked portions of an executive order signed by President Donald Trump last year that required Americans to show proof of citizenship when registering to vote.
US District Court Judge Denise Casper ruled that Trump's March 2025 executive order establishing proof-of-citizenship requirements was illegal because the US Constitution explicitly gives states the power to implement elections, with some oversight and input from the US Congress.
In contrast, wrote Casper, the Constitution "does not grant the president any specific powers over elections," making any effort to regulate voter registration via executive order unconstitutional on its face.
Casper's ruling came about after 19 states sued to block the Trump executive order from taking effect.
New York Attorney General Letitia James expressed gratitude that the court "blocked the president’s unconstitutional attempt to seize control of our elections."
"Generations of Americans fought tirelessly for the right to vote, and we honor their legacy by protecting that right against anyone who tries to undermine it," said James. "As we approach this year’s midterms, I will continue doing everything in my power to protect free and fair elections and defend the sacred right to vote for New Yorkers and all Americans."
Nevada Secretary of State Cisco Aguilar called the ruling "an important reminder to our president that he does not administer our elections." Aguilar vowed that he and other state-level officials nationwide would use every tool we have to protect the right to run our elections at the local level, and the ability of our voters to lawfully participate.”
California Attorney General Rob Bonta celebrated the court victory but warned that Trump would continue efforts to rig the 2026 midterm elections in the GOP's favor.
"As President Trump has made clear today, the fight to protect the right to vote isn’t over," Bonta said. "While President Trump continues to spread lies and feed into delusions about our elections, our coalition of AGs will continue to stand strong in protecting our democracy."
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