The Trump Administration Wants You to Be Afraid to Vote

The vote is the heart of democracy. Every two years, citizen organizations mobilize to register Americans and ensure they are on the rolls. That work is especially vital in poor and minority communities. The Ohio Organizing Collaborative is the leading voter registration group in the Buckeye State. In 2024, it registered 100,000 voters.

The group helped lead the fight for fair maps against an egregious gerrymander in Ohio. The Brennan Center represented it in court, where we prevailed repeatedly. When legislators simply ignored those court rulings, the activists went to Ohio voters. Together with a former chief justice of the state supreme court, Republican Maureen O’Connor, they supported a campaign to pass a state constitutional amendment to create a nonpartisan redistricting commission. They called the amendment Citizens Not Politicians. It would have benefited neither party but empowered voters. The ballot measure fell short in 2024, but it was an example of nonpartisan, cross-ideological civic activism at its best.

That’s why what happened late last week is so troubling. Indeed, so outrageous.

In a massive sweep, 100 FBI agents and other federal officers raided the Ohio Organizing Collaborative’s office and fanned out to the homes of volunteers, board members, and staff. Agents seized phones and computers, scooped up papers, and questioned startled citizens.

The rationale? According to a search warrant, the hunt for voter registration fraud.

This gives every indication of being an extraordinary abuse of power. It is part of a strategy that aims to intimidate voters and those who would help them exercise the franchise.

This is, after all, the same Justice Department that repeatedly has probed or prosecuted President Donald Trump’s critics, only to see those cases crumble before grand juries and judges. Combine that with an FBI led by Kash Patel, who wrote an election-denying children’s book about his fealty to the “king.”

This expanded strategy was mapped out in Project 2025, the Heritage Foundation’s blueprint for what became many Trump administration policies. Use the Justice Department, it urged, to go after state election officials and registration groups. Hunt the imaginary threat of widespread voter misconduct.

The Heritage Foundation for decades has been a principal purveyor of the myth that many voters are committing fraud. Now the entire federal government is in the grip of that conspiracy theory.

A reminder: The Brennan Center’s research shows that you are more likely to be struck by lightning than to commit voter fraud.

What will be produced by this massive display of prosecutorial force? Probably not much of anything but—its progenitors likely hope—dread. If citizens are afraid to register to vote, or to help others register, mission accomplished.

In fact, the strategy seems focused not on enforcing the law but fomenting fear.

We saw that in January when the FBI raided the election office in Fulton County, Georgia, seeking to “prove” that Joe Biden did not win the 2020 election there. When the affidavit that authorized the raid was released, it turned out to be a collection of long-debunked claims. The raid sent a message to election officials everywhere: If you oversee an election where we dislike the results, you might be met by a knock on the door.

We saw it last week when Trump declared that California’s primary election was “rigged,” because a Republican reality show star did not finish in the top two for the mayoral election in deeply Democratic Los Angeles.

We saw it last year when armed, masked federal border patrol agents showed up in force at a press event held by California Gov. Gavin Newsom to announce a redistricting ballot measure.

What can we do to protect voters?

We should stand up for those working to register and mobilize voters and ensure they have the best legal advice and follow the rules. We should redouble efforts to protect election officials who face torrents of abuse. We should encourage states to step up, by passing legislation to make doubly sure that Immigration and Customs Enforcement and other federal law enforcement agencies cannot wreak havoc at the polls. We should lift up the nonpartisan work of police, prosecutors, and sheriffs through the Committee for Safe and Secure Elections, which brings together election officials and law enforcement to train officials around the country. And we should unite against efforts to interfere in elections or intimidate voters.

The Brennan Center honored the Ohio Organizing Collaborative in 2024 at our annual Brennan Legacy Award Dinner, together with Chief Justice O’Connor. I told the crowd, “This is kind of a buddy movie that I want to watch.”

Molly Shack, the group’s dynamic leader, told attendees about how it approached its work. “We are organizing people in communities around education and criminal justice reform and democracy issues and an ability to have a government that works, that can actually be responsive to citizens in all of our interests.”

She continued: “I think the idea that democracy is a partisan issue is something that I think we’re all trying to fight against. A functioning democracy shouldn’t be about right versus left. It should be about right versus wrong.”