Why Your Clients are Most Likely to be Harmed by Attacks on Voting Rights, and What to do About it

You're listening to the Nonprofit Power Podcast. In today's episode, we share why your clients are most likely to be harmed by attacks on voting rights, and what to do about it. So stay tuned. If you want to have real and powerful influence over the money and policy decisions that impact your organization and the people you serve, then you're in the right place. I'm Kath Patrick, and I've helped dozens of progressive nonprofit leaders take their organizations to new and higher levels of impact and success by building powerful influence with the decision makers that matter. It is possible to get a critical mass of the money and policy decision makers in your world to be as invested in your success as you are, to have them seeking you out as an equal partner, and to have them bringing opportunities and resources to you. This podcast will help you do just that. Welcome to the Nonprofit Power Podcast. Hey there, folks. Welcome to the Nonprofit Power Podcast. I'm so glad you're here for today's episode because this may be the most important topic we can talk about in 2026. There is no question that voting rights are under extraordinary attack right now in this country, and the people being targeted are pretty much one and the same as the people most of us serve This is not entirely new, as we know. There have been attempts for years to systematically erode people's voting rights, and there have been multiple attempts at voter suppression in all kinds of ways. We've watched that unfold across the news and in our own lived experience in many of our states. But all of that voter suppression agenda, and not just voter suppression, but attack on the very notion of allowing entire groups of people to have any sort of say in who their elected representatives will be. That level of attack has exploded in the wake of the most recent disastrous Supreme Court decision, dismantling key parts of the Voting Rights Act. A whole group of southern states have basically made a move to go straight into a redistricting effort in the middle of an election to see if they can't remove a few more opportunities for quite frankly, for Black and brown people to have any sort of representation. We're watching this play out all over the South and it's not done. This is gonna go on from now until November. It would be really tempting to just get super demoralized about all of that and say This is depressing and overwhelming, and I can't deal." There's nothing we can do. We're toast. But first of all, that isn't true. And second of all, the only way it is true is if we don't do anything. The fact is there is quite a bit we can do, and our clients' votes have never been more important for how their future will be written. I think it's important for us to realize that there are sort of two main themes occurring here. One is strictly about holding onto power, and that's a huge problem for the Republican majority right now because their policies are deeply unpopular. And the other piece of this is just flat out racism and a white supremacist agenda. It's not really possible, I don't think, to completely untangle those two. They are intertwined. But I think it's helpful to look at them a little bit separately to understand how each of them is playing out. And then understand that we are fighting a common enemy here. So let's look at the holding onto power piece first. And let me just interrupt myself for a second to say there's really no way to talk about this right now without talking about the two major political parties, because they are the players. They are the ones who are pulling the levers of power to make this stuff happen. So we have to talk about that. Now, the good news is I'm not bound by any obligation to be nonpartisan. I'm an independent operator. I run my own business. I don't have to protect my 501[c][3] status 'cause I'm not a nonprofit. So I get to say what's real, and that makes things more efficient in communicating with you. But I also want to acknowledge that I know you can't turn around and do that as a nonprofit leader. I'm just doing this because I want us to be real here and for us to all understand what it is we're dealing with and what's actually driving this extraordinary attempt at extreme voter suppression and disenfranchisement of huge swaths of people. So here's the problem the Republicans face. They are desperate to hold onto power. They hold very slim majorities in the US House and Senate, and they were already facing the generic problem of a midterm election. Typically, the party in power experiences losses, just as kind of a trend, a normal ebb and flow of politics in the US. But this is no normal time. And what's going on is attempting to redraw districts in the middle of an election. And anything and everything to try to somehow manufacture a few more Republican seats so that they can maybe hold onto the House. But here's the reality they face. No amount of gerrymandering can negate the reality that this administration and this congressional majority's policies are deeply, massively unpopular. And when you only have the support of maybe 30, 32% of eligible voters, you can't redistrict your way out of that problem. And in fact, there's plenty of evidence to suggest that actually this whole redistricting thing may backfire on the Republicans. You have a fixed number of voters. And the way redistricting works is you're moving the district boundaries to corral different sets of voters. So if you take what is considered a safe, in quotes, Republican seat, and you carve off a piece of that district that's Republican-heavy, and then you splice it on to what is currently a Democratic district, your hope is that what you're gonna do is you're gonna have enough Republican voters in that district that the Democrat won't be able to get elected anymore. And then you carve up the Democratic voters so that they never have a majority anywhere. That's the theory, and in sort of normal political times, that often works, unfortunately. But this is different. This is a situation where- truly, they have maybe 30, 32% support for all of the disastrous policies that they've been putting out. That are destroying the economy, making life completely unaffordable and even harder than it needed to be. And people are aware that there's a connection between those things. There's a connection between this completely unnecessary war of choice in Iran that has caused gas prices to spike and soon the price of everything else to spike. Add to that the gutting of Medicaid, the impending loss of premium subsidies for Affordable Care Act plans, and on and on. The policies of the Republican Party are basically anti the average person. They're anti just about everybody who's not a millionaire. And it seems the only constituents they care about are the millionaires and billionaires. They've in part turned this into a bit of a class issue and they're recognizing that they have a real problem, that it's going to be extremely difficult for them to hold onto power in the coming elections. So the last-minute redistricting and all of that is one of their desperation plays. But the problem is that with only 30% support, there's no guarantee that if you move a clump of typically Republican voters over in this district and you move a clump of pretty consistently Democratic voters into another, with the idea that you're gonna make there be no Democratic districts. This year, that could massively backfire. And they could wind up actually losing seats in the process because so many people are mad at them. It's not just the Democratic voters who are upset. It's just about all the independents. And a of Republican voters are none too happy right now. The none too happy Republicans may opt simply to stay home rather than actually cast a vote for a Democrat. But if they stay home, then their vote's not being counted, and then the calculus changes. So there's no guarantee this is gonna work, but they're gonna give it a try. The other thing that's going on here that we have to talk about is that they've really just sort of ripped off the last shreds of the already very thin veils on the white supremacy agenda. A lot of what's going on here is about stripping away representation for any and all minorities. This is Jim Crow 2.0. But this is not 1965. And we have a lot more power collectively now than we did 60 years ago. We have the power to organize and reject this agenda utterly. And that effort absolutely must involve the ballot box. We have to organize on a lot of fronts, but if we don't include a massive voter registration and turnout operation, we will waste a huge opportunity to stop this agenda in its tracks. Because if we can change the majorities in the House and Senate, we can start passing legislation to restore voting rights, to reverse a lot of the other most disastrous policies that have been put out by this administration and a completely complicit Republican majority in Congress. We can start to shift that. And I don't have to tell you what the consequences are if we don't start to shift that. Now, I will freely acknowledge the Democratic Party is far from perfect. But the difference between its policy agenda and the agenda of the current administration and the Republican Party is night and day. Fortunately, you don't have to talk about parties when you're talking about the issues. And you don't even have to talk about the issues if you don't want to. Although I would submit that issues like Medicaid, SNAP, basic affordability issues are more than a little relevant to most of your clients. So there's certainly reasons to be talking about these things and how one policy or another is going to change how they experience those benefits and opportunities. But you don't have to do any of that if you don't want to. All you need to do is to make sure that every one of your clients who's eligible to vote is not only registered, but they have double-checked every aspect of their registration to ensure that their vote will be counted. The whole voter suppression agenda here is to make it as difficult as possible for people to vote, and to make it particularly difficult for low-income people to vote, for Black and brown people to vote. That is the goal. So we have to be on top of any rule changes around mail-in ballots, absentee voting, all that. We have to be on top of any changes regarding ID requirements or any other hoops that these jokers who wanna suppress the vote will try. And they'll invent all sorts of stuff. We have friends and allies all across the country who are litigating around this stuff. They're challenging every one of these moves in court. But we don't know how that will turn out, and that will take time to resolve itself So we're really glad that's happening. But number one, we can't wait to see how it turns out. And number two, it's not our job. That's the litigator's job, and we love them. We're so glad they're there. Yay. We can cheer them on and bring them triple espressos while they work to make sure they can keep at it day and night. But it's not our job. Our job, our primary job in this arena is to ensure that our clients are able to have their votes counted. That they get to make their voice heard at the ballot box. We can do lots of other organizing and voter education and all the things if you have the bandwidth for that. But what's non-negotiable is registration and ensuring that every single client, every single volunteer, every single person in your orbit not only votes, but has taken every possible step to ensure that their vote will be counted. So what does that look like? What are some things we can do right now? 'Cause before we know it, Election Day will be here. And in the meantime, we got primaries happening all over the place right now. Memorial Day is done. The Summer of Power starts now. First thing, if you haven't already done so, create a system or a structure by which you ask every single client and volunteer about their voter registration status. Whatever your points of contact with them are, however you do this. And everybody's service model is different, everybody's volunteer system is different, so you have to make a thing that works for how you interact with clients and volunteers. Whatever that looks like, whether you see them in person on a regular basis, or whether you only speak to them on the phone, or maybe you only communicate with them electronically. However it works, build this in. So at every point of contact, until the job is done, at every point of contact First two questions. Have you registered to vote? If the answer to that is no, would you like to register today? And then we help them with that. If they've already registered, we help them to double-check that their registration is 100% in order. And that they have the ID they're going to need in order to cast a ballot and have it counted. That's step one. Are you registered? If not, let's help you get registered. This is, of course, assuming they're eligible to vote, right? That's a given. But if they're eligible, have you registered? Let's register you today. And if you're already registered, that is awesome. Let's double-check and make sure that your registration is completely in order The next thing we're gonna do is make sure that all those clients, all those volunteers, everybody else in your orbit, everyone knows what the rules are around all the different ways to vote and around what you're gonna have to show up with in order to vote, and that's principally a photo ID. I'm gonna talk about that more in a minute. To find out all the voting rules in your state, which are in flux in a lot of places. So let me first tell you this part, that in every state, the state Secretary of State's office is the place that is in charge of elections in the state. Now, there may also be an elections board and some other things, but basically the Secretary of State's office is where ultimate administrative authority resides. But you don't even have to do that. I wanna share with you an easy shortcut that has been created by our friends at the League of Women Voters. They're an organization that has been around since women got the right to vote in 1920. They are an impeccable source of information about voting rules. That is kind of their thing. They have created a website called vote411.org, and I'll include the link for that in the show notes. You can go to vote411.org for basically for all the essential information on voting rules for your state. It's got a drop-down menu of the states. You can select your state, and it'll take you to a quick summary page that will give you a yes or no on all the different possible methods of registration, and all the different methods of voting that are permitted in the state. For each permissible form of registration and for each permissible form of voting, like obviously, at the polling place on Election Day, but like mail-in voting, absentee with an excuse, absentee without an excuse, ballot drop boxes, et cetera. If those are permitted, they will be flagged with a little check mark, and there will be a live link that will take you to the relevant place on the state Secretary of State's website for your state that will give you the detailed rundown on exactly what the rules are for all of it. It's super efficient, super easy. You can basically go to one place and start the research process to get clear about what all this is. I played around with this. I will never send you to a link I haven't checked myself to make sure that it's actually usable and helpful and all those things. This is a great resource. But what I will say is that a lot of the state secretary of state websites, some of them are better organized than others. Some of them are super well organized, some of them are a little wordy. So you may have to spend a few minutes sifting through. And what I recommend is that you just copy and paste it all into a Word doc or a Google Doc, something you can manipulate and edit. What you're ultimately gonna wanna do is strip it down to something that is very concise and clear, that can be shared with people in print, online, and in conversation. Your average client or volunteer is not gonna sit there and read pages of information on a state website. That's not reasonable. But we get to do that one time and then distill it down to, okay, here's what you gotta know. Here's the basics. This is what's really important. Do this, do this, do this. Bring this, bring this, bring this. This is it. This is how you do it. And all of this is about how you make sure that your vote gets counted, that your voice is actually heard. We absolutely wanna make the entire process as easy and frictionless and low effort as humanly possible for your clients and volunteers. Don't make them chase through 150 links to get the information, or read five pages or whatever. You do that one time and create a super simple summary and a step-by-step instruction set that's easy to follow. And I would recommend creating one instruction set for voter registration. And one for each of the different ways you can vote and how you do that. Like, if you wanna vote absentee, here's what you have to do. If you wanna vote by mail, here's what you have to do. Now, I mentioned ID a couple of times. ID is gonna be a huge issue in this election cycle. So in addition to registration and knowing which ways you can vote and how to do that and what the deadlines are and all of that. It is absolutely critical that we ensure that every eligible voter among our clients and volunteers has an accepted form of photo ID that they can take with them to the polls or that they can show proof for other voting methods. Again, you can use the vote411.org site to get to the ID rules as well. It's pretty much one-stop shopping. You just have to then go to the state website and, sift through to get all the information you need. But I'm laying out for you the three categories here that you're gonna wanna make sure you capture. You then may have to work through some online information at the secretary of state's website to gather the relevant forms or the links to forms for getting the ID. And then again, synthesize those options down with a simple, how to apply for each of the options. Some states make this pretty easy. It's really simple. Others make it very cumbersome. So this is not something that people should wait until a couple weeks before the election to start thinking about. They should be getting their ID in order right now. 'Cause it might take a while. They may have to go search up some documents or obtain them. It depends on the rules in your state. But some states you have to show up with a birth certificate, and a lot of people can't locate their birth certificate easily. Maybe they never had it, or if they did, they don't know where it is. So depending on the rules in your state, this could turn into a thing. We wanna be setting people up to be able to be successful in getting the ID they need so that they can then get their vote counted. Now, it's important to know that every state offers some sort of an option for a non-driver's license photo ID. If the person already has a valid driver's license, they're good to go. Every state will accept a valid driver's license as proof of ID. But if a person doesn't have a valid driver's license, they're gonna need some other form of picture ID. And, you know, if they happen to have a US passport, that'll work. But, really, how many of your clients and volunteers have a valid US passport? If they do, awesome, they can use that. Some states actually offer a voter photo ID that's only for the purpose of voting. But honestly, the process for obtaining that is often just as cumbersome as obtaining a state-issued photo ID. That's a call for the client or the volunteer to make for themselves. My recommendation for you is to look into all of those options and find out precisely which identification will be accepted as proof of identity when voting and get that all together. This is all, it sounds like a lot, right? This is gonna take a minute. What I would say before you immediately tell me you can't do this 'cause you don't have time, you don't have the bandwidth. I get that. If you and your team don't have the bandwidth to do this basic research and assemble the distillations and get that together in a simple, easy to understand set of one-pagers or posters, which is really what you want. This is absolutely an outstanding project to give to a group of two or three volunteers. If you put that query out to your volunteer base, you will have people leaping to the front of the line saying, "I'd love to work on that." Understand that the same kind of people who who believe in the work that you do, and who show up with their time and energy to support that, they're bonkers upset about everything that's happening too. And everybody, all of us are feeling like, "Ah, it feels like there should be more we can be doing." Everybody feels that way. So when you put out there, "Would you like to be of a special voter access team that will help make sure that all of our clients are able to make their voice heard at the ballot box this year?" You will have people tripping over themselves to sign up to be on that team. And then just give them this assignment and say, "Here's what you need to do. Go put this together." Please don't think that you have to do this yourself. You just have to lead it. Put out the word, people will come to you and say, "Sign me up. Call it something exciting and urgent and important, because it is. It's all those things. Please don't call it a committee. Committees are boring and they never do anything. Call it a strike force, the A team, the voter access team. Call it something cool. And then put out the word, "This is what we need. We need three people, four people." You don't need a ton. Who can put this together. And then you meet with them once to give them their direction, tell them what you need. Have them listen to this episode. give them the links to where they need to go, and off they go. And then they're gonna distill. Then you may do some refining. If you have a designer you work with, maybe you're gonna pretty it up a little bit, make some posters, whatever. Again, you can tap your volunteer base for skills like that, 'cause most volunteer cohorts have somebody in there who knows how to do that too. Turn them loose. Let them be creative. Get them fired up about this and let them do it. Now the other thing is, and I would ask this volunteer team to do this too, is to ask around in your community and find out if another organization is also working on putting something like this together. Maybe they've already done it and created resources. But in my preliminary research, what I'm discovering is that there's not a lot yet that's been created. And I want you to be out front on this because given the nature of how you work and what your clients are dealing with, they may need more time, they may need more support and help to get themselves situated so that they are gonna absolutely be able to make their voice heard in the election. You'll probably be hearing about the National Voter Registration Day in September That's great. By all means, participate in that. But we need to be working on this much, much earlier. Right now is the time. So those are the three main things that you can be doing right now. Getting people registered and making sure those that are already registered have their registration completely in order. Making sure everyone knows all of the ways they may vote and what all of the rules are about that, including deadlines and qualifications and special hoops they have to jump through. And then making sure everybody has a valid ID that will allow their vote to be absolutely counted. We do not want any provisional ballots in this election cycle. And how provisional ballots happen is somebody who is registered shows up to vote, but maybe they forgot their ID, or maybe their address changed. Something is a little off. They're still the right person with the right registration. But if everything doesn't line up perfectly, what happens is typically they're allowed to cast a ballot, but it is marked provisional. And then it has to go through a separate proof process to make sure that they're actually legit to vote. A lot of provisional ballots get tossed in a normal year. In this year when the level of intent around voter suppression and holding onto power by any means possible. When that's abroad in the land, we don't want any provisional ballots. We want everybody who goes to vote to have everything so completely in order it is utterly unassailable. That's the goal. But to make that happen, we have to start right now. Thanks for listening, and I'll see you in the next episode right here on the Nonprofit Power Podcast.