Voting is the heart of democracy. In the United States, every two years, civil organizations mobilize to register voters and ensure that they appear correctly on the rolls. That work is essential, especially in poor and minority communities. The Ohio Organizing Collaborative is the largest voter registration group in the state of Ohio. In 2024, it registered 100,000 voters.

The group helped lead the fight for fair electoral maps against a brazen gerrymandering effort that raged in Ohio. The Brennan Center represented him in court, where we won the case more than once. When lawmakers ignored those court rulings, the advocacy group turned its attention to Ohio voters.

Along with Republican Justice Maureen O'Connor, retired chief justice of the state supreme court, they supported a campaign to pass an amendment to the state constitution and create a nonpartisan redistricting commission. They called the amendment “Citizens, Not Politicians.”

It would not have benefited any particular party, but rather would have empowered the electorate. This ballot measure did not reach the necessary votes in 2024, but it was an example of the best civic activism without political or ideological flags.

That's why what happened late last week was so alarming. In fact, it was outrageous.

In a massive operation, 100 FBI agents and other federal officials raided the Ohio Organizing Collaborative office and even raided the homes of the organization's volunteers, employees and board members. Agents confiscated phones and computers, took documents and questioned stunned citizens.

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

This event has every indication of being an extraordinary abuse of power. It is part of a strategy that seeks to intimidate the electorate and those who help citizens exercise their right to vote.

After all, this is the same Justice Department that has investigated or prosecuted critics of President Trump time and time again, only to see those cases fall apart before a grand jury or judge. Add to that an FBI led by Kash Patel, who wrote an election denialist book for children about his loyalty to the “king.”

This expanded strategy was laid out nicely in Project 2025, the manual the Heritage Foundation published for what later became many of the Trump administration's policies. The Department of Justice must be used, Project 2025 said, to attack state election authorities and voter registration groups. The imaginary threat of widespread electoral fraud must be destroyed.

For decades, the Heritage Foundation has been the primary purveyor of the myth that many voters commit fraud during elections. Now, the entire federal government finds itself in the grip of that conspiracy theory.

As a reminder, a Brennan Center study shows that a person is more likely to be struck by lightning than to commit fraud.

What will this enormous demonstration of procedural force produce? Probably not much more than fear, as its creators surely hope. If a citizen is afraid to register to vote or help others do so, mission accomplished.

In fact, the strategy does not seem to focus on enforcing laws, but on instilling fear.

We saw it in January when the FBI raided the Fulton County, Georgia, elections office in order to “prove” that Joe Biden did not win the 2020 election there. When the statement authorizing the raid was released, it ended up being a set of long-debunked allegations.

The raid sent a clear message to all the country's electoral authorities: if they supervise an election where we don't like the results, we could go knock on their door.

We saw it last week when Trump declared that the California primary elections had been “fraudulent” because the Republican candidate, star of a reality show, did not come out among the two most voted in the elections for mayor of Los Angeles, a largely Democratic city.

We saw it last year when armed and masked federal border patrol agents showed up in droves at a press conference hosted by California Gov. Gavin Newsom to announce the addition of a redistricting ballot measure.

We must defend those who work to register and mobilize voters and ensure they have the best legal advice and obey the rules. We must redouble our efforts to protect electoral authorities who face a barrage of attacks. We must encourage states to take matters into their own hands and pass laws that strictly prohibit ICE and other federal law enforcement agencies from showing up and wreaking havoc at voting sites.

We must honor the nonpartisan work of police, prosecutors, and sheriff's stations through the Committee for Safe and Secure Elections, which brings together election officials and law enforcement to train officials across the country. And we must unite in the fight against attempts to interfere in elections or intimidate the electorate.

The Brennan Center honored the Ohio Organizing Collaborative in 2024 during our Brennan Legacy Awards Gala Dinner with Justice O’Connor. I remember telling the audience, “This is the kind of dynamic duos movie I like to see.”

Molly Shack, the organization's energetic leader, told the audience about her approach to work. “We are organizing citizens in communities around issues of education, criminal justice reform and democracy, and around the ability to have a functioning government that can truly respond to all the interests of citizens.”

He continued: "I think the idea that democracy is a partisan issue is something we're all trying to fight against. An effective democracy shouldn't be about the fight between left and right. It should be about the fight between what's right and what's wrong."

(*) Michael Waldmann. President and CEO, Office of the President of the Brennan Center for Justice.

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