Letters from a Fragmented Democracy

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Introduction

American democracy is under profound stress. This stress was caused by the legal erosion of hard-won voting rights protections. Landmark Supreme Court decisions like Shelby County v. Holder and Brnovich v. Democratic National Committee have chipped away at the Voting Rights Act’s safeguards, emboldening a wave of restrictive voting policies under the guise of promoting election integrity in a society less riddled with overt racial discrimination.[1] These measures—voter ID laws, purges of voter rolls, closure of polling places—are often defended as neutral bureaucratic management or lawful audits of the voter rolls to eliminate non-citizen registration.[2] But in practice, they fall hardest on marginalized communities.[3] When combined with extreme partisan gerrymandering and unrestricted campaign spending, the political playing field gets skewed, and public faith in the democratic process are corroded.[4] The Constitution’s broad promise of equal access to the ballot and fair representation in the political process is thinning into a patchwork of obstacles.[5] The result is an unsettling paradox: At the very moment when electoral participation should be most protected amid democratic backsliding, it is increasingly precarious.[6]

This piece confronts the stakes of our current trajectory by looking to the future. It presents six fictional letters to illustrate where today’s ominous currents could lead. In this imagined tomorrow, contemporary voting restrictions, judicial erosion, and administrative manipulation have gradually hollowed out the franchise, transforming formal democracy into little more than an empty spectacle.[7] Each letter voices a different facet of democratic erosion: a voter disenfranchised by bureaucratic hurdles, a candidate’s voice hijacked by deepfake technology, a neighbor ensnared by punitive voting laws, a community erased by gerrymandering, a campaign drowned in dark money, and even a corporate memo cheerfully touting the “efficiencies” of voter apathy. Pieced together, these forces operate to fragment a withering liberal democracy, turning the franchise into an illusion of choice rather than a vehicle for self-governance.[8] These dispatches from our potential future aim to sound an alarm in the present; the fate of liberal democracy in America hinges on how we respond to current dynamics now.

I. The Disappearing Precincts

November 8, 2040

Dear Fulton County Board of Elections (Reorganized),

I don’t know where my precinct is anymore.

Last time I tried to vote, the place I had always gone, John Lewis Middle School, was locked, abandoned, and boarded up. A spray-painted sign on the plywood said ”Precinct 8D Consolidated—See District Portal,” accompanied by a QR code for further information. I followed the instructions. The portal said I had been moved to Precinct 34C, nearly six miles[9] away; public transit is unreliable, there is no other way to get there without a car, which I don’t own, and absentee voting is a relic of prior decades.[10] Now that Georgia’s State Election Board has ruled that Lyft’s once‑offered discounted rides to the polls violated state law and must be discontinued, even the little lifeline of a promotional discount is gone.[11]

I moved apartments last spring, just a few blocks over. Same city. Same zip code. But the view had changed: The communication towers that once etched clean lines through the mountains have been replaced by AI data centers: hulking, windowless fortresses that obscure the expanse entirely, radiating a kind of ambient residue—democratic, environmental, and social.[12]

The move changed my voting district, too. I updated my address through the DMV, but that wasn’t good enough under Georgia’s Secure Voting and Residency Verification Act of 2038. Apparently, I missed a second confirmation mailing.[13] I never saw it. Maybe it was returned as undeliverable? Perhaps it was never sent? I don’t know. Either way, my registration was tagged as “pending verification.” That’s the new phrase—as if reliability were a metric that voters have to prove.

I had voted in every federal election since I was eighteen, but this time, my name had been flagged. A poll worker, polite but unmoved, explained that my registration had in fact been purged by the new “Participation Reliability Index.”[14] He handed me a clipboard, a provisional ballot, and a return envelope stamped ”Undeliverable unless verified by two state witnesses at a certified government building between the hours of 5:00 a.m. and 9:00 a.m.”[15] Who are these witnesses? Where do I find them? The instructions were vague. It was, by design, a test of endurance, not eligibility.[16]

While reading the ten-point fine print on my provisional ballot, I ran into my neighbor, Ms. Kim, who had voted in every election since Eisenhower. She couldn’t figure out the new ID requirement. Apparently her passport wasn’t “state compliant,” although she had lived here since 1953.[17]

My cousin Kwame used to call this administrative disenfranchisement: bureaucratic requirements aiming to preserve election integrity while disenfranchising underrepresented communities as collateral damage. Back when he still believed the courts would step in.

They didn’t. In Brnovich, the Court assured us that these kinds of burdens were part of the “usual burdens of voting.”[18] Who knew disenfranchisement could be so bureaucratic?[19]

I returned my completed provisional ballot and received a QR code to track my status. It led me to a website that crashed each time I tried to open it.[20] This used to be known as voter suppression; now the state just calls it resource optimization. Budgets and research data justify it, the state says.[21] Low turnout means fewer precincts. So, when turnout drops because people can’t find their precinct, they close even more.[22] Lines at the existing spot get longer. Then, people don’t vote at all.[23] I watched this happen across South Atlanta—one church basement, one community center, one school gym at a time. They said it was budgetary. Efficient. Race-neutral.

When I was a kid, my grandmother used to tell me how she walked six miles to vote in the 1968 election. She carried my mother in one arm and her voter registration card in the other. “They had the decency to try and stop us to our face,” she used to say. “Now they just erase the building.”

The Voting Rights Act would have stopped this once. But that was before “retrogression” became a word we teach in history classes, but not in constitutional law; before Shelby County v. Holder.[24]

I’ve started drawing X’s on a map of the city for every polling place that has closed in the last ten years. The number of open spot has gone from 400 in the 2008 primary to thirty and declining.[25] It’s beginning to look like a burial ground. And maybe it is.

Danielle L. Carter

Formerly of Precinct 8D

Currently, of Nowhere

II. The Deepfake Drop

October 27, 2041

Dear Federal Election Communications Bureau (Dormant),

I saw myself on TV last night. Not metaphorically. Not in the way people say they “see themselves” in a movie character or meme. I saw myself, pixel for pixel, breath for breath, delivering a message I never authored. I watched a hologram of myself tell voters in Florida to stay home, warn people of “cyber-biological contamination” and urge “patriotic withdrawal from civic exposure.” My voice, my gestures, an “I Voted” sticker on my jacket, telling people not to vote and that the election had been postponed to December. [26]

I never said any of it. But there “I” was, echoing in a thousand living rooms, stitched into a million feeds—fragments of my own technological fingerprints used to throttle my voice. [27] AI feeding on every word I’d ever offered online: community organizing footage from the 2017 campaign in Florida’s Thirteenth District, Google searches about the next Global pandemic, viral Twitter rants about potholes in my district.

Not a hack nor a crude impersonation, but a manifestation of harvested data from my opposition candidate’s research. A spectral remix built from years of livestreams, campaign trail clips, my high school debate club videos, and, God help me, those oversharing TikToks videos from 2022. The AI didn’t just steal my voice; it simulated my ethos, my grit, and my signature tell-the-truth squint.[28] My opponent fed the AI enough of my words to build a ghost that looked and sounded like me. Then they unleashed it one week before early voting because, of course, elections are less about educating voters and more about strategic election interference in the ever-expanding free market of democracy.[29]

People believed it.[30] Why wouldn’t they? My neighbor skipped the polls because she said she saw “my” emergency warning video. My cousin tried to correct the rumor online but was banned for spreading “disinformation.”[31]

My campaign’s General Counsel filed a complaint. You, the Bureau, acknowledged receipt with an auto-response: ”We are currently experiencing high inquiry volume due to electoral cyber events, expect significant delays.”

There was a time when we had effective truth in political advertising laws, when campaigns could be held liable for false claims.[32] There was a time when the Constitution protected not just the act of voting, but the conditions that make voting possible—access to reliable information and a shared reality.[33] Now? Reality itself is up for auction.[34]

The courts, of course, have long since abandoned us. They say First Amendment jurisprudence doesn’t easily allow for prophylactic regulation of political speech for truth, even if that speech is algorithmically generated by bad actors and precision targeted at vulnerable voters.[35] The logic of Citizens United has metastasized: Speech is speech is speech, no matter how synthetic, deceptive, or disembodied.[36]

I can’t undo the video. I can’t convince everyone that it wasn’t me. I can’t unring the notification bell that warned voters to “stay home for their safety.” This is the new disenfranchisement: a war on reality.[37] A perfect illusion designed to dissolve the will to participate before a single ballot is ever cast.

Arlene R. Long

Candidate FL-13

III. My Neighbor’s Trial Plea

February 19, 2047

Dear Georgia General Assembly,

Evelyn Thomas didn’t qualify for a public defender service under Georgia’s Citizenship and Ballot Integrity Reform Act of 2045, because casting a vote while being ineligible to do so is classified as a “moral turpitude” fraud.[38] A felony. Nonbailable. And not defendable without privately retained counsel.[39] Evelyn worked as a cafeteria manager in our local middle school. She didn’t have $14,000 for a lawyer. Her entire retirement fund amounted to a broken-down Dodge and $623 in a credit union account.

Evelyn voted in the runoff election for the U.S. Senate in December 2046. She’d completed her sentence for a nonviolent drug conviction a year prior. She believed her rights had been restored. She even showed me the letter she got from the parole board: ”You have completed the terms of your sentence.” But no one told her that completion didn’t restore her voting rights.

The Secretary of State’s office flagged her ballot. Two weeks later, she was arrested during her shift at the school. Her coworkers stood frozen, plastic gloves still dusted with cornstarch. It was on the local news with a chyron reading ”Felon Arrested for Voter Fraud in Lunch Line.” They played the security footage over and over—like she’d been caught with a weapon instead of a pen.[40]

They charged her for “knowingly submitting an unlawful ballot.” She cried when she heard the word “knowingly.”[41] She kept repeating: ”But I thought I could,” like it would conjure a loophole, a sympathetic judge, or a universe where rules didn’t metastasize into traps. The prosecutor offered her a plea deal: five years. Decline, and she’d face twenty years in prison. Is that justice or coercion dressed up as process?

I watched her being bullied by the prosecutors who cited Brnovich to argue that we must accept the “usual burdens” of voting regulations.[42] He said that it was her responsibility to verify her eligibility, not the state’s, despite full awareness that the state’s re-enfranchisement system was intentionally defunct and purposefully misleading.[43]

She signed the plea that afternoon. There was no hearing on the record. No fact finding. Just a digital acknowledgment and a muted Zoom appearance in a courtroom where no one said her name.

They sentenced her to five years. And so, she returned to the very system she thought she had left, not for committing fraud, but for believing in her right to participate. Perhaps this is carceral logic of modern constitutionalism: vague rights, precise punishments.
We used to warn people that not voting had consequences. Now, voting does too.[44]

Respectfully,

Jared M. Pierce

Friend, neighbor, and witness

IV. Redrawing the Map

April 13, 2052

Dear Wisconsin Elections Commission (Dissolved),

You don’t exist anymore, but your maps do. I’ve lived in Wisconsin my entire life in what used to be District 78, then 99. My parents marched in Milwaukee during the Fair Maps protests of the 2020s.[45] They were big, sweaty, enthusiastic gatherings. “Your vote should count!” Someone would scream, and someone else would reply, “But it does!” as though the answer lay in volume.%

2022 was the last time my ballot felt real. No matter how many votes we stacked up as a family, the map made sure they dissolved on contact. Since then, my community has been sliced and rearranged like a corporate asset, reconstituted, dismembered, spun off into absurd new formations.[46] By 2026, they cut my urban-adjacent neighborhood into four districts. All this slicing was supposed to rebalance against partisanship. But no one seems to ever agree when the map is bipartisan enough, so everything gets sliced again. Some call this back-and-forth “dummymandering.[47] Whatever you call it; it’s just vote dilution. My block votes now with dairy farmers who live 27 miles away.

My civics teacher once told us that maps were how power hides in plain sight.[48] Back then, people still believed the courts might fix it.

The 2022 election was the last time my vote felt like it counted. Democrats won 51 percent of the statewide vote, but only 35 of the 99 seats in the Assembly. In 2024, it was 52 percent, and they still couldn’t crack 40 seats. People started calling it the Unbreakable Map. The lines had been drawn so strategically, so precisely, that no amount of popular could dislodge the gerrymandered majority.[49]

When we challenged it, the Wisconsin Supreme Court said the maps were “legally sound” under the state constitution. The U.S. Supreme Court refused to intervene. Rucho v. Common Cause had already closed that door.[50] Partisan gerrymandering is nonjusticiable, they said. That was their word—”nonjusticiable.” Meaning: too political for the courts. Meaning: not our problem.[51] But it was ours.

Drawing from memory,

Asha Iqbal

District 99. Formerly District 78. Formerly a voter.

V. The Candidate Who Never Spoke

March 14, 2052

Dear Federal Election Commission (Suspended Indefinitely),

I remember when candidates used to speak. They shook hands at union halls, stumbled through pancake breakfasts and fish fries, mispronounced county names, and fumbled with microphones in drafty gymnasiums, appearing gawky, unscripted, and occasionally sincere. Awkward as it was, they still stood in front of us in physical form, fallible yet visible.

Now, they don’t speak at all. They don’t have to.

Their campaigns are silent orchestras of Super PACs, dark money committees, and algorithmic microtargeting bots that whisper to each voter the exact fear or dog whistle they most want to hear or simply convince them to stay home.[52] Algorithmic microtargeting and behavioral nudges that all but replace the handshake. There are no more town halls, no press scrums, no door-to-door leafleting. Only data points and psychological triggers, orchestrated like a private symphony for each voter’s mind.

The ideal of impartial public service, in many ways, has been eroded by Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission.[53] You remember that one, don’t you? The case that equated dollars with words, corporate treasuries with citizen voices. Now “speech” is sacred, no matter its source, no matter its volume, even if it’s paid for by a shell corporation domiciled in a mailroom in Delaware and owned by a Cayman account controlled by a small group of billionaires.[54]

And now, free speech is everywhere—and nowhere.[55]

Our elections are flooded with so much “information” that it drowns truth. A tsunami of half facts and algorithmic rumor, stoked (and funded) by billionaires who never appear on a ballot, corporations that exist only on tax filings, and foreign shell accounts that masquerade as “American heritage coalitions.”[56]

The line between liberal democracy and illiberal democracy used to be clear: free, fair elections; peaceful transfer of power; independent institutions; equality before the law. But what good are free elections when voters live in separate realities? What good is equality when megadonors can build parallel worlds for each district, each zip code, each social media feed?[57]

My representative hasn’t held an open forum in five years. My senator’s last public town hall was holographic—an AI simulacrum optimized to avoid gaffes. The last presidential debate I attended in person was in 2028; by 2036, debates were canceled for “security reasons” and replaced by interactive ads streamed to your personal device, tailored to confirm your biases.

We keep calling this a democracy because we have ballots; slogans; and red, white, and blue bunting. But in truth, our politics is now a luxury marketplace: Candidates are brands, voters are segmented consumers, and the highest bidder owns the narrative.

I voted last cycle. My ballot offered twelve referenda and four offices. I realized I recognized none of the candidates’ voices. They had no voice. Only money.

A silent candidate is the loudest confession of a dying republic.

You won’t read this letter. Your offices have been “paused for restructuring” since 2045 after the Supreme Court ruled that campaign finance oversight was a “chilling burden on expressive autonomy.”

But I write anyway.

Because once, we believed that free speech meant more than the freedom to pay. Once, we believed that public service meant standing before the public, not lurking behind a donation portal.[58]

I still believe it, even if it’s just me.

Even if my candidate will never speak.

Samira K. Townsend

Retired civics teacher

VI. We the Profiteers: Q3 Democracy Performance Memo

September 30, 2052

Dear Stakeholders in Democracy™,

We are pleased to report that Quarter 2 has exceeded all projections. Voter apathy is up 17 percent! Burdensome and unnecessary regulations remain conveniently paused.[59] In short, the system is working as designed.

Thanks to your generous contributions, Citizens for Democratic Efficiency (CDE) has successfully launched its sixth microtargeted ad campaign across all 93 billion attention vectors. Our proprietary “PatriotSync™” behavioral engine now predicts and prevents civic participation with 89.4 percent accuracy.[60] That’s real freedom: the freedom from doubt, deliberation, or discourse.

We’ve neutralized accountability vectors in most regions. Gone are the disruptive town halls, the tedious FOIA requests, and the public comment periods.[61] Instead, we offer a sleek, frictionless democracy experience.

Some relics still resist. Civic groups. Pro bono lawyers. Ministers with archival memories. But thanks to expanded coordination with state legislatures, most pro-democracy activity now carries a moderate civil penalty or a moral turpitude designation.[62] That’s efficiency.

We are especially proud of our efforts to streamline redistricting.[63] As you know, our team supported mid-decade initiatives in Texas and North Carolina that outpaced even the most ambitious gerrymandering models. The courts, of course, were never a problem. Rucho gave us the green light; we just upgraded the vehicle.

Let’s be clear: This isn’t about partisanship. It’s about optimization. Democracy, after all, is a competitive marketplace. And in markets, the marketplace of money, some voices rise, and we are blessed to be one of them. We look forward to another record-breaking quarter.

Onward and upward,

Mallory Quant

Executive Director

Citizens for Democratic Efficiency

Conclusion

Democracy is not self-sustaining. It does not exist by mere invocation of the word “vote” or by the empty repetition of civic rituals. It relies on legal doctrines that guard access; administrative practices that ensure fairness; and a civic culture that values truth, participation, and shared reality. A democracy can crumble in plain sight,[64] not through tanks in the streets, but through court opinions that alter fundamental separation of powers principles and rewrite history; precinct maps that render entire communities irrelevant; and disinformation campaigns that distort the very fabric of reality. The future these letters imagine is not yet inevitable. The arc of constitutional interpretation, the shape and structure of electoral administration, and the integrity of public discourse remain, for now, within our collective reach, and the Court’s too.

Copyright © 2025 Maureen Edobor, Assistant Professor of Law, Washington and Lee School of Law, DeLaney Center Fellow. Thank you to all of the fantastic editors at the California Law Review: Angela Chung, Sean You, Katarina van Alebeek, and Noosha Aliabadi, Simran Deokule, Ji Hyun Lee, and Diego Morales, and to Alexi Pfeffer-Gillet and the members of W&L’s Junior Faculty Writing Workshop.

          [1].     570 U.S. 529, 547 (2013) (arguing “[n]early 50 years later, things have changed dramatically [with respect to racial discrimination]. […] In the covered jurisdictions, ‘[v]oter turnout and registration rates now approach parity. Blatantly discriminatory evasions of federal decrees are rare. And minority candidates hold office at unprecedented levels.’) (citing Northwest Austin Mun. Util. Dist. No. One. v. Holder, 557 U.S. 193, 202 (2009); 594 U.S. 647, 672 (2021) (finding Arizona’s interest in preventing voter fraud a legitimate state interest justifying burdens on the right to vote that have discriminatory impacts).

          [2].     Va. Exec. Order No. 35, (Aug. 7, 2024), https://www.governor.virginia.gov/media/governorvirginiagov/governor-of-virginia/pdf/eo/EO-35-Comprehensive-Election-Security-Ensuring-Legal-Voters-and-Accurate-Counting---vF---8.7.24.pdf [https://perma.cc/4BN3-N2LC]; Rick Hasen, Breaking: Supreme Court, on (Apparent) Party Line Vote, Allows Virginia Purge of 1,600 Voters Identified as Possible Non-Citizens (But We Know Some Are Erroneously on This List), Election L. Blog (Oct. 30, 2024), https://electionlawblog.org/?p=146780 [https://perma.cc/3Y5D-3DQ5]; Al. Coal. for Immigrant Just. v. Allen, Preliminary Injunction, No. 2:24-cv-1254-AMM (N.D. Al. Oct. 16, 2024); Press Release: Governor Abbot Announces Over 1 Million Ineligible Voters Removed from Voter Rolls, Off. Tex. Governor (Aug. 26, 2024). https://gov.texas.gov/news/post/governor-abbott-announces-over-1-million-ineligible-voters-removed-from-voter-rolls [https://perma.cc/XQ64-6FZV].

          [3].     See Richard C. Sadler, Thomas W. Wojciechowski, & Eileen Hayes, Spatial and statistical predictors of voter purge rates in Michigan, 105 Soc. Sci. Q. 1791, 1799 (2024) (identifying Black residents in urban areas in Michigan were more likely to be affected from voter purges), https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/epdf/10.1111/ssqu.13447 [https://perma.cc/MSC6-TTYL]; Kevin Morris, Voter Purge Rates Remain High, Analysis Finds, Brennan Ctr. Just.: N.Y.U. Sch. L., (Aug. 1, 2019), https://www.brennancenter.org/our-work/analysis-opinion/voter-purge-rates-remain-high-analysis-finds [https://perma.cc/4RSF-XYZF].

          [4].     Brett Milano, ‘Money and politics, and partisan gerrymandering, matter more than any other electoral rules today,’ Harv. L. Today (Feb. 7, 2025), https://hls.harvard.edu/today/money-and-politics-and-partisan-gerrymandering-matter-more-than-any-other-electoral-rules-today/ [https://perma.cc/A4S4-YFEL]; David Daley, How did we get all this gerrymandering? A short history of the Republican redistricting scheme, The Guardian (Aug. 9, 2025), https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/aug/09/gerrymandering-republican-redistricting [https://perma.cc/SUN9-FPJ2].

          [5].     See Maureen Edobor, Brnovich: Extratextual Textualism, 26 U. Pa. J. Con. L. 1495, 1499, 1533-1534 (2024) (“Section 2 of the VRA is coextensive with the [Fifteenth] Amendment’s Enforcement Clause.”).

          [6].     Ian Millhiser, It sure looks like the Voting Rights Act is doomed, Vox (Oct. 15, 2025), https://www.vox.com/politics/464754/supreme-court-voting-rights-act-louisiana-callais [https://perma.cc/VW36-B8BL].

          [7].     See Cass Sunstein, Sludge and Ordeals, 68 Duke L.J. 1843 (2019) (arguing that access to legal rights and entitlements are increasingly overtaken by “sludge,” administrative demands, and temporal impossibilities like hours long wait times and other red tape, which force individuals to forego their entitlement to those legal rights and benefits and to tacitly accept outcomes they never actively choose if other avenues were made readily available).

          [8].     See Guy‑Uriel E. Charles, Luis E. Fuentes‑Rohwer & Farris Peale, Reconstructing (The Law of) Democracy, __ Geo. L.J. __  (forthcoming 2025) (manuscript at 31) https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=5245339 [https://perma.cc/43KQ-FL7W] (stating that “[t]hough there is a real difference between a two-party system and a multiparty system, the choice between the two is not a choice between democracy and fascism. There may be policy reasons for preferring an open primary to a closed primary. However, these policy choices do not call into question the goals of the political order and the possibility of self-government.”); Richard L. Hasen, The Stagnation, Retrogression, and Potential Pro-Voter Transformation of U.S. Election Law, 134 Yale L.J. 1673, 1733-41 (2025) (discussing the stagnation, doctrinal regression, and potential pro‑voter transformation in the U.S. election‑law theory and practice over recent decades).

          [9].     See Maia Rosenfeld, Steve Osunsami, Kaitlyn Morris, Tomas Navia, & Peter Charalambous, Protecting Your Vote: 1 in 5 Election Day polling places have closed over last decade, ABC News (Oct. 25, 2024), https://abcnews.go.com/US/protecting-vote-1-5-election-day-polling-places/story?id=114990347 [https://perma.cc/S4Q8-QXMB] “(For Wanda Jenkins, a resident of Beall Springs, Georgia, [polling place closures] meant she had to travel an additional seven miles by car compared to casting her ballot at her local fire station, where she served as a poll worker for over a decade before that site closed.”)

        [10].     Maya Homan, State election panel recommends ending no-excuse absentee voting in Georgia, Ga. Recorder, (Oct. 23, 2025), https://georgiarecorder.com/2025/10/23/state-election-panel-recommends-ending-no-excuse-absentee-voting-in-georgia [https://perma.cc/U88Z-NAGH]; see also Carrie Levine, How one rural county struggles to find polling places, Ctr. Pub. Integrity (Oct. 30, 2020), https://publicintegrity.org/politics/elections/ballotboxbarriers/rural-county-struggles-to-find-polling-places/#:~:text=In%20poor%2C%20rural%20counties%20like,to%20a%20neighborhood%20polling%20place [https://perma.cc/5B7P-KS3V]; John Whiteside, Polling places become battleground in U.S. voting rights fight, Reuters (Sep. 16, 2016), https://www.reuters.com/article/world/us-politics/polling-places-become-battleground-in-us-voting-rights-fight-idUSKCN11M0WX/#:~:text=Brooks%20says%20he%20will%20not,voting%20sites%20in%20Upson%20County [https://perma.cc/6DH4-PN9G].

        [11].     Maya Homan, State Election Board accuses Lyft of violating the law by offering discounted rides to the polls, The States (Jul. 30, 2025), https://www.newsfromthestates.com/article/state-election-board-accuses-lyft-violating-law-offering-discounted-rides-polls [https://perma.cc/PK4M-V254].

        [12].     See Karen Hao, Empire of AI: Dreams and Nightmares in Sam Altman’s OpenAI (Penguin Press, 2025) (arguing that the global infrastructure of artificial intelligence replicates imperial extractivism, concentrating power while depleting democratic governance, ecological balance, and social cohesion).

        [13].     See Marc Meredith, Michael Morse, Amaya Madarang & Katie Steele, Measuring Lost Votes by Mail, Sci. Advances (Dec. 20, 2024), https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/sciadv.adr2225 [https://perma.cc/GK7H-K9CW] (explaining how procedural requirements for vote by mail lead to lost votes that that are not merely de minimus but affect significant blocks of the electorate).

        [14].     See generally Paul M. Smith, Use It or Lose It: The Problem of Purges from the Registration Rolls of Voters Who Don’t Vote Regularly, A.B.A.: Hum. Rts. Mag. (Feb. 09, 2020), https://www.americanbar.org/groups/crsj/resources/human-rights/archive/problem-purges-registration-rolls-voters-who-dont-vote-regularly/ [https://perma.cc/8VV6-ERRB] (explaining the issues related to purge of voters who do not vote regularly).

        [15].     See Cass Sunstein, Sludge: What Stops Us from Getting Things Done and What to Do about It 71 (MIT Press 2021) (“Removing people from the rolls obviously creates sludge, because it forces people to take steps to reregister. At least one state permits people to be removed from the rolls for something as simple as not voting int he previous election. In 2017, Georgia’s year-end total of voters purged from the rolls reached 660,000—over 6 percent of Georgia’s population.”).

        [16].     See Cass Sunstein & Julien L. Gosset, Optimal Sludge? The Price of Program Integrity, 70 Duke L. J. Online 1082 (2020) (examining how paperwork and procedural friction serve as modern tools of bureaucratic control, penalizing marginalized citizens).

        [17].     See Andrew Garber, Connie Wu, &Catherine Silvestri, State Bills Would Require Passport or Birth Certificate to Register to Vote, Brennan Ctr. Just.: N.Y.U. Sch. L. (Jun. 25, 2025), https://www.brennancenter.org/our-work/research-reports/state-bills-would-require-passport-or-birth-certificate-register-vote [https://perma.cc/MVF4-L3KZ] (explaining how proposed proof of citizenship laws have potential to disenfranchise naturalized citizens who lack the means or ability to obtain required documents to register to vote).

        [18].     Brnovich v. Democratic Nat’l Comm., 594 U.S. 647, 669 (2021) (holding that Arizona’s out-of-precinct policy, discarding ballots inadvertently cast in the wrong precinct and ballot collection ban was not a discriminatory burden on the right to vote because the state is permitted to enact reasonable burdens on the right to vote to prevent hypothetical instances of voter fraud).

        [19].     See generally Pamela Herd & Donald P. Moynihan, Administrative Burden: Policymaking by Other Means (Russell Sage Foundation, 2018) (arguing the intricate administrative framework for registering to vote and voting are stymied intentionally to reduce participation as a policy end goal).

        [20].     See Ross Williams, Georgia Secretary of State says bug in new web voter portal briefly spilled personal data, GA. Recorder, (Aug. 2, 2024), https://georgiarecorder.com/2024/08/02/georgia-secretary-of-state-says-bug-in-new-web-voter-portal-briefly-spilled-personal-data/ [https://perma.cc/GCJ8-RWCJ].

        [21].     See Rosenfeld, supra note 9, reporting that “In justifying reductions to the number of polling sites, election officials have pointed to reduced budgets, accessibility concerns, changing voter preferences, security issues and population changes, among other reasons.”; see generally Enrico Cantoni, A Precinct Too Far: Turnout and Voting Costs, 12 Am. Econ. J. Applied Econ. 61 (Jan. 2020) (empirically finding that in nine cities in Massachusetts and Minnesota, a one mile difference in the distance someone must travel to a polling place can reduce turnout in majority-minority districts by 19% and up to 5% reduction for majority-white districts); Moshe Haspel and H. Gibb Knotts, Location, Location, Location: Precinct Placement and the Costs of Voting, 67 J. Am. Pol., (May 2005), https://www.journals.uchicago.edu/doi/epdf/10.1111/j.1468-2508.2005.00329.x [https://perma.cc/ZV2J-WX3P].

        [22].     See Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights, Democracy Diverted: Polling Place Closures and the Right to Vote, (Sept. 2019), https://civilrights.org/resource/democracy-diverted-polling-place-closures-and-the-right-to-vote/ [https://perma.cc/7L37-5SBB] (identifying 1,688 polling place closures in Arizona, Texas, California, Louisiana, Mississippi, Alaska, Florida, Alabama, and Georgia after Shelby).

        [23].     See Stephen Pettigrew, The Downstream Consequences of Long Waits: How Lines at the Precinct Depress Future Turnout, 71 Electoral Stud. 71 (2023) (finding that voters who waited more than 30 minutes were 1.1 percentage points less likely to vote in a subsequent election, illustrating how long lines can significantly depress future turnout).

        [24].     570 U.S. 529 (2013); see also Reno v. Bossier Parish, 528 U.S. 320 (2000) (holding that discriminatory intent is not enough to prove a Section 2 or Fifteenth Amendment violation. In addition to intent, the challenged law must also make things worse for voters of a protected class.).

        [25].     See Joshua A. Douglas, The Court v. the Voters: The Troubling Story of How the Supreme Court Has Undermined Voting Rights, 123-24 (Beacon Press, 2024) (explaining that Arizona’s largest county, Maricopa County, reduced polling places from 400 in 2016 to 60 in 2016 for efficiency resulting in excessive lines with many waiting past midnight to cast a ballot; pre-Shelby, this type of policy change could likely not occur).

        [26].     UC Berkeley, Digital forensic expert breaks down political deepfakes | Academic Review (YouTube, Sep. 26, 2024), https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tVWRfFY9KPA&t=214s [https://perma.cc/22GS-G3MQ].

        [27].     See Maria Pawelec, Deepfakes and Democracy (Theory): How Synthetic Audio-Visual Media for Disinformation and Hate Speech Threaten Core Democratic Functions, 1 Digit. Soc’y 19, 4 (2022) (arguing that deepfakes “threaten empowered inclusion when they skew deliberation, especially during elections, to a degree that prevents citizens from making rational voting decisions and holding representatives accountable.” Deepfake “disinformation [also] threatens collective agenda and will formation, mainly through the infusion of falsehoods into democratic deliberation and thus the erosion of epistemic quality [ … ] these consequences decrease the legitimacy of collective decisions.”)

        [28].     Ali Swenson, Tests find AI tools readily create election lies from the voices of well-known political leaders, AP News (May 31, 2024), https://apnews.com/article/artificial-intelligence-audio-voice-cloning-elections-2024-2500813b642169478c27c168aab1b3e3.

        [29].     Guy-Uriel Charles & James Gardner, Election Law in the American Political System 639 (Aspen 3rd ed. 2023). (“If a liberal speech regime simply produces as much false political information as it does truthful political information, if voters are uninterested in truth because they are more interested in information that confirms their prior beliefs, and if citizens, because of innovations in deep fake technology, simply cannot differentiate a real campaign ad from a fake one, a liberal speech regime may as easily serve illiberal ends as liberal ones.”)

        [30].     See generally Robert Chesney & Danielle Citron, Deep Fakes: The Looming Crisis for Privacy, Democracy, and National Security, 107 Calif. L. Rev. 1753 (2019) (outlining existential threats from deepfakes and synthetic media to democratic systems); Pawelec, supra note 21, at 2 (“AI has now greatly simplified and improved the manipulation and synthesis of audio and video (as well as images). […] Accordingly, in a rare experimental study on deepfakes’ effect on political attitudes, less than 15 percent of participants doubted the authenticity of a deepfake video of a politician shown to them.”).

        [31].     See generally Amy Kapczynski, The Law of Informational Capitalism, 129 Yale L.J. 1460 (2020) (reviewing Julie Cohen’s book, Between Truth and Power: The Legal Constructions of Informational Capitalism, to argue that surveillance, moderation, algorithmic power, and platform monopolies are a direct threat to the information economy, and subsequently democracy).

        [32].     Since 2014, Fair Campaign Codes providing criminal penalties for malicious false speech in political campaigns have not been upheld in several state including Ohio, Massachusetts, Minnesota, and Washington. All codes were found to violate the First Amendment as unconstitutional infringements on speech. See Susan B. Anthony List v. Driehaus, 814 F.3d 466 (6th Cir. 2016) (holding Ohio’s false-statement law, adopting the Sullivan standard, unconstitutional as targeting speech at the core of First Amendment protections: political speech); Commonwealth v. Lucas, 472 Mass. 387 (2015) (overruling the state’s prohibition on false speech in campaigns reasoning it was overbroad in prohibiting protected speech and the state’s interest in preventing voter fraud was insufficient to justify the statute’s reach); 281 Care Comm. v. Arneson, 766 F.3d 774 (8th Cir. 2014) (holding Minnesota’s false-statement law for ballot initiatives unconstitutional because the state’s interest in preventing misinformation was not compelling enough to meet strict scrutiny); Rickert v. Pub. Disclosure Comm’n, 161 Wash.2d 843 (en banc) (overturning the state’ prohibition on making a false statement of material fact about a candidate reasoning the state’s purpose (protecting candidates and preserving the integrity of elections) insufficient to meet strict scrutiny).

        [33].     See generally Christopher P. Guzelian, True and False Speech, 51 B.C. L. Rev. 669 (2023) (critiquing Supreme Court doctrine for failing to meaningfully distinguish between true and false speech, making speech protection unpredictable and limited, particularly when speech is misleading or false). Twenty-one states (Arkansas, Connecticut, Delaware, Georgia, Idaho, Illinois, Iowa, Kansas, Maine, Maryland, Missouri, Nebraska, Nevada, New York, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Puerto Rico, South Carolina, South Dakota, Wyoming, and Vermont) do not have any false speech laws on the books. See Fair Campaign Practice Law, Nat’l Conf. State Legis. (Jan. 28, 2025), https://www.ncsl.org/elections-and-campaigns/fair-campaign-practice-laws [https://perma.cc/2D3P-92WQ].

        [34].     Elon Musk is currently suing Minnesota to overturn its law banning political deepfakes on First Amendment grounds. Steve Karnowski, Elon Musk’s X sues to overturn Minnesota political deepfakes ban, AP News (Apr. 25, 2025), https://apnews.com/article/minnesota-deepfake-law-x-elon-musk-twitter-c423540850ca3837891d62d69c6639f1 [https://perma.cc/GL8Z-77DW]; see Citizens United v. Fed. Election Comm’n, 558 U.S. 310 (2010) (striking down restrictions on independent expenditures by corporations and unions, equating such spending with protected speech by individuals).

        [35].     See generally Gilda Daniels, Voter Deception, 43 Ind. L. Rev. 343, 372-380 (2010) (arguing the First Amendment is a constitutional constraint preventing effective laws criminalizing voter deception targeted at minority voters based on precedent that protects the political speech of the alleged deceiver).

        [36].     See Citizens United, 558 U.S. 310, 349 (finding that the government’s interest in limiting political speech to prevent distortion of facts and political issues was insufficient to justify a restriction on corporate independent expenditures).

        [37].     Id.

        [38].     See generally Bryna Godar, Disenfranchisement Creep, 112 Va. L. Rev. (forthcoming 2026) (arguing that state actors exploit the Constitution’s right to vote guarantees by disenfranchising individuals convicted of crimes beyond the scope of state constitutions through a “complex network of statutes, regulations, and practices”).

        [39].     See generally Pamela S. Karlan, Convictions and Doubts: Retribution, Representation, and the Debate over Felon Disenfranchisement, 56 Stan. L. Rev. 1147, 1149 (2004) (arguing that the nature of criminal disenfranchisement transforms the right to vote from a fundamental right to a state-created privilege, justifying the primarily punitive nature of disenfranchisement).

        [40].     See, e.g., Editorial Board, Crystal Mason’s voter fraud case is a Texas travesty of justice, Dall. Morning News (Aug. 28, 2024), https://www.dallasnews.com/opinion/editorials/2024/08/28/crystal-masons-voter-fraud-case-is-a-texas-travesty-of-justice/ [https://perma.cc/X8T6-M4VF]; Amy Garder, A Texas man was arrested on charges that he voted in the 2020 Democratic primary while on parole. He could face as much as 20 years in prison, Tex. Trib. (Jul. 11, 2021), https://www.texastribune.org/2021/07/11/texas-voter-arrested-parole/ [https://perma.cc/9NYB-PV9S]; Sam Levine, Judge orders new trial for US woman sentenced to six years for trying to register to vote, The Guardian (Feb. 26, 2022), https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2022/feb/25/pamela-moses-new-trial-voting-memphis-judge [https://perma.cc/DX7L-SMMV].

        [41].     See Benjamin Plener Cover, Voter “Fraud” Mistake, 33 Wm. & Mary Bill Rts. J. 709 (2025) (arguing that many ineligible voting incidents are due to mistake rather than intentional fraud, that strict-liability prosecutions punish innocent participants—especially marginalized individuals—and undermine the criminal justice system and democratic participation by chilling voter confidence and misplacing accountability).

        [42].     See Brnovich v. Democratic Nat’l Comm., 594 U.S. 647, 669 (2021) (“[E]very voting rule imposes a burden of some sort. . . . Voting takes time and, for almost everyone, some travel, even if only to a nearby mailbox. Casting a vote, whether by following the directions for using a voting machine or completing a paper ballot, requires compliance with certain rules. But because voting necessarily requires some effort and compliance with some rules, the concept of a voting system that is ‘equally open’ and that furnishes an equal ‘opportunity’ to cast a ballot must tolerate the ‘usual burdens of voting.’”).

        [43].     See generally Merrit Kennedy, ACLU Sues Over Florida Law That Requires Felons To Pay Fees, Fines Before Voting, NPR (Jul. 1, 2019), https://www.npr.org/2019/07/01/737668646/aclu-sues-over-florida-law-that-requires-felons-to-pay-fees-fines-before-voting [https://perma.cc/XYK6-Z258]; see also Marc Meredith & Michael Morse, Discretionary Disenfranchisement: The Case of Legal Financial Obligations, 46 J. Legal Stud. 309, 318–22 (2017).

        [44].     See, e.g., Jane Mayer, The Voter-Fraud Myth, the New Yorker (Oct. 22, 2012) (explaining Hans Von Spakovsky’s research showing voter fraud committed by individuals with felony convictions, arguing that those conclusions support large scale voter purges that target individuals with criminal convictions who are eligible to vote in certain states).

        [45].     See generally Slay the Dragon (Participant 2019) (discussing, in part, Wisconsin’s gerrymandering history as one of the most gerrymandered states in the country).

        [46].     Jane C. Timm, Virginia Democrats plan to redraw the state’s congressional maps, NBC News (Oct. 23, 2025), https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/elections/virginia-democrats-plan-redraw-states-congressional-maps-rcna239379 [https://perma.cc/VS3J-WC7F]; Owen Dahlkamp, Newsom will move to redraw California map if Texas redistricts, teeing up national fight, Tex. Trib. (Jul. 30, 2025), https://www.texastribune.org/2025/07/30/texas-redistricting-california-newsom-retaliatory-congressional-maps/ [https://perma.cc/TX8H-VXN2]; Adam Wren, Indiana Republicans don’t have votes to back Trump’s redistricting, Senate leader spox says, Politico (Oct. 22, 2025), https://www.politico.com/news/2025/10/22/indiana-redistricting-trump-senate-00618155 [https://perma.cc/FYJ6-D6ZH]; Aaron Pellish, Missouri Democrats have an opportunity to block a new congressional map. They say they’re largely on their own, Politico (Oct. 11, 2025), https://www.politico.com/news/2025/10/11/missouri-redistricting-ballot-measure-00602485 [https://perma.cc/WPE8-8RLN]; Juan Salinas II, Nebraska Gov. Jim Pillen ‘open’ to mid-decade redistricting, Neb. Exam’r (Oct. 6, 2025), https://nebraskaexaminer.com/2025/10/06/nebraska-gov-jim-pillen-open-to-mid-decade-redistricting/ [https://perma.cc/U74Z-F738]; Andrew Howard, The latest redistricting salvo: North Carolina gerrymanders out House Democrat, Politico (Oct. 22, 2025), https://www.politico.com/news/2025/10/22/north-carolina-new-house-district-gop-gerrymander-00618225 [https://perma.cc/8MTF-MQDU].

        [47].     Bernard Grofman & Thomas L. Brunell, The Art of the Dummymander: The Impact of Recent Redistricting on the Partisan Makeup of Southern House Seats, in Redistricting in the New Millennium, 183 (2005) (defining “dummymandering” as “a gerrymander by one party that, over the course of the decade, benefits the other party, and actually looks as if it was designed by that party rather than the party in power” and analyzing gerrymandering backfires in Southern states as illustrative examples).

        [48].     See Josh Israel, Wisconsin’s GOP-tilted congressional map results in unrepresentative delegation, Wis. Indep. (Nov. 25, 2024), https://wisconsinindependent.com/politics/wisconsin-congressional-map-results-in-unrepresentative-delegation [https://perma.cc/WA7P-FFSS].

        [49].     Although Wisconsin has been widely regarded as the state with the harshest partisan gerrymander, 2024 marked the first time in over a decade that Wisconsin enacted a competitive electoral map. See Adam Ginsburg, The Gerrymander Has Been Slayed: Wisconsinites Get Fair Maps for 2024 Election, Campaign Legal Ctr. (Feb. 21, 2024), https://campaignlegal.org/update/gerrymander-has-been-slayed-wisconsinites-get-fair-maps-2024-election [https://perma.cc/JFU3-PUAQ]. However, amid the flood of states undergoing mid-decade redistricting for explicitly political purposes at the direction of, and in response to President Trump, equalizing representation as legislative purpose is usurping desires for “fair maps.” See Policy Statement on Mid-Decade Redistricting Response, Common Cause (Aug. 12, 2025), https://www.commoncause.org/resources/policy-statement-on-mid-decade-redistricting-response/ [https://perma.cc/6276-95C4] (“In this grave moment, we understand why some states, including California, are considering counterbalancing measures in response. We will not endorse partisan gerrymandering even when its motive is to offset more extreme gerrymandering by a different party. But a blanket condemnation in this moment would amount to a call for unilateral political disarmament in the face of authoritarian efforts to undermine fair representation and people-powered democracy.”).

        [50].     See Rocho v. Common Clause, 588 U.S. 684, 691 (2019) (holding that the constitutionality of partisan gerrymandering is outside the scope of Article III power because the Court has “struggled without success over the past decades to discern judicially manageable standards for deciding such claims”).

        [51].     Id.; see also Nicholas O. Stephanopoulos & Eric M. McGhee, Partisan Gerrymandering and the Efficiency Gap, 82 U. Chi. L. Rev. 831 (2015) (countering the argument that there is no judicially manageable standard that could satisfy the Supreme Court’s criteria for intervention in all gerrymandering disputes, offering the “efficiency gap” as the proper framework).

        [52].     See, e.g., Vittoria Elliot, Elon Musk’s America PAC Has Created an Election Denial Cesspool on X, WIRED (Oct. 31, 2024), https://www.wired.com/story/elon-musk-america-pac-election-denial-community-x/ [https://perma.cc/JF5L-DFTJ]; See also Bertrall Ross & Douglas Spencer, Voter Data, Democratic Inequality, and the Risk of Political Violence, 107 Corn. L. Rev. Online 1011 (2022) (examining how campaign micro-data targeting fuels racial inequality in voter turnout).

        [53].     558 U.S. 310 (2010) (striking down restrictions on independent expenditures by corporations and unions, equating such spending with protected speech by individuals).

        [54].     See, e.g., How Dark Money Flooded The Race for Pittsburgh Mayor, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette (Jul. 31, 2025), https://www.post-gazette.com/news/politics-local/2025/07/27/pittsburgh-mayor-campaign-finances-gainey-oconnor/stories/202507260006 [https://perma.cc/8CB2-AEW2].

        [55].     See John J. Martin, Self‑Funded Campaigns and the Current (Lack of ?) Limits on Candidate Contributions to Political Parties, 120 Colum. L. Rev. F. 178 (2020) (warning that the deregulation of intra-party contributions by wealthy candidates enables elite capture of parties, worsening information asymmetries and corroding democratic responsiveness).

        [56].     See Brian Sheppard, Andrew Moshirnia, Charles Sullivan, & Brian C. Jones, We Give Laws a Bad Name: An Empirical Examination of How Misleading Law and PAC Names Pollute Legal Perception, 12 Tex. A&M L. Rev. 1233 (2025) (using experimental data to show that inapt, benign-sounding PAC names can significantly influence public perception to favor or oppose laws).

        [57].     Ciara Torres-Spelliscy, A Lie Just for You in 2020, Brennan Ctr. Just.: N.Y.U. Sch. L. (Sep. 21, 2020), https://www.brennancenter.org/our-work/analysis-opinion/lie-just-you-2020 [https://perma.cc/NYL2-3GC3].

        [58].     See Matthew D. Kim, Restoring Public Trust in Elections: An Empirical Study of How Campaign Finance Reform Can Restore Public Trust in Elections, 12 Tex. A&M L. Rev. 1101 (2025) (using empirical research to conclude that, even without quid pro quo corruption, “campaign spending consistently undermines public trust in elections by creating concerns among members of the public about unequal access to voters, outsized influence over elections, dissemination of misinformation, and inefficiency.”)

        [59].     Mike Issac and Theodore Schleifer, Meta Says It Will End Its Fact-Checking Program on Social Media Posts, N.Y. Times (Jan. 7, 2025), https://www.nytimes.com/live/2025/01/07/business/meta-fact-checking [https://perma.cc/KD9W-V86A].

        [60].     See generally The Great Hack (2019) (chronicling Cambridge Analytica’s use and retention of personal Facebook user data to reach millions of “persuadable” voters in critical swing states during the 2016 presidential election).

        [61].     Sean Michael Newhouse, Trump directive aims to speed up deregulation by nixing public input, Gov’t Exec. (Apr. 10, 2025), https://www.govexec.com/management/2025/04/trump-directive-aims-speed-deregulation-nixing-public-input/404474/ [https://perma.cc/CD2N-R2UY]; See American Oversight v. Department of Energy, Complaint, Case No. 1:25-cv-02981 (Sep. 3, 2025 D.D.C.) (suing the Trump Administration for requiring onerous administrative requirements prior to addressing a FOIA request at the Department of Energy, alleging the administrative requirements are intended to usurp transparency); Meredith Lee Hill, No More in-person town halls, NRCC chief tells House Republicans, Politico (Mar. 4, 2025), https://www.politico.com/live-updates/2025/03/04/congress/gop-town-halls-richard-hudson-00210024 [https://perma.cc/M9XW-MH9D].

        [62].     See, e.g., Sam Levine and Andrew Witherspoon, Revealed: Florida Republicans target voter registration groups with thousands in fines, The Guardian (Jul. 13, 2023), https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2023/jul/13/florida-fines-voter-registration-groups [https://www.npr.org/2025/07/30/nx-s1-5485293/texas-redistricting-proposed-congressional-map].

        [63].     See, e.g., Benjamin Swasey, Texas Republicans release a redistricting plan that could achieve Trump’s aims, NPR (Jul. 30, 2025), https://www.npr.org/2025/07/30/nx-s1-5485293/texas-redistricting-proposed-congressional-map [https://perma.cc/UJQ8-VDA8].

        [64].     See Kim L. Scheppele, Autocratic Legalism, 85 U. Chi. L. Rev. 545 (2018) (identifying how elected leaders use legal tools to erode liberal democratic institutions from within and offering early warning signs of “legalistic autocracy”).