Happy 250th, Fellow Americans!

Two hundred and fifty years ago, on July 4, 1776, the second Continental Congress adopted the Declaration of Independence. So began the journey of the United States of America, a fledgling nation interested in stepping out from under the yoke of the divine monarch and embarking on a grand experiment of democracy and self-governance. It was literally a revolutionary idea — the idea of a government which derives its authority based on the consent of the governed.

It took another 11 arduous years of crisis, near collapse, and gridlock before the Constitution was established as the law of the land, a way to solidify the ideals, principles, and rights promised in the Declaration and a structural blueprint for a functioning federal government with limited powers. In its preamble, the Founding Fathers laid out a vision of a nation striving towards a more perfect union, a country with more justice, welfare, and liberty for not only that generation of Americans but all posterity. It wasn’t a place the country had landed yet but rather a future promise, one that would require some significant elbow grease. Building that union, however, wasn’t just about lofty ideals; it required constructing the practical machinery of self-governance. At the center of that machinery lies the election—the primary tool through which we actually exercise that 'consent of the governed.'

Our Constitution(s)

First, it’s important to point out that the Constitution we operate under now is not the country’s first official Constitution. In fact, between 1781 to 1789, we had the Articles of Confederation, and under that document, we weren’t even one united country. We were a loose alliance of 13 completely independent and sovereign countries operating as a “firm league of friendship.” We weren’t the United States (singular) but rather a bunch of united states, more like the United Nations or the European Union. People didn’t identify as Americans but referred to themselves as citizens of Virginia or Massachusetts. There was no strong national government; there was no executive branch; and there was no judicial branch. There was a legislature with one chamber in which each state was represented by delegates appointed by state legislatures. The government could not collect taxes and had to beg the states for money. States printed their own money and had their own militias. They placed tariffs on each other and had separate foreign policies. This version of government proved far too weak to function since it couldn’t pay off debts, stop domestic rebellions, or enforce international treaties.

In May 1787, fearing our nascent country was about to collapse, 55 men from 12 states assembled for a Constitutional Convention in Philadelphia (Rhode Island boycotted). Shrouded in secrecy, they spent 116 days in deep debate, arguing through contentious points (like slavery) and trying to find places of compromise. Numerous delegates left the convention because they felt the new version of the national government was being given too many powers at the expense of the states. On September 17, 39 delegates signed the Constitution as we know it.

So how was the concept of the “consent of the governed” embodied in this version of the Constitution?

In the Preamble, the framers of the Constitution clearly lay out that “We the People…do ordain and establish this Constitution,” emphasizing that the government’s (and the Constitution’s) legitimacy originates from the collective consent of the population. Of course, the people themselves did not directly vote on the Constitution, but it’s the thought that counts here!

To further underline the point that this consent was not just a one-time deal to seal the idea of the Union but rather part of an ongoing process, the framers devised the idea of frequent and regular elections. Now the Framers had no plans to institute direct democracy where every citizens votes on every law; in fact, many of them feared the idea of mob rule if the uneducated majority had their way. They felt that the will of the people would be better filtered through elected leaders who would arrive upon more rational decisions. So they set up a system of representative democracy instead in which people choose their leaders who, in turn, develop policies and laws for the common good.

Article I set up our legislature, the Congress of the United States. The House of Representatives was the one entity at the national level whose members would be chosen directly by the people every two years. As a result, these elected representatives were expected to be highly responsive to the will of their constituents. On the other hand, Senators were originally chosen by state legislatures instead of through the popular vote. Rather than creating a single national election system, Article I (section 4 or the Elections Clause) leans into the idea of our federal republic and vests the authority to determine the “Times, Places and Manner of holding Elections for Senators and Representatives” in each state’s legislature, thereby allowing individual states to determine how to administer and regulate elections. This is why the 50 states, the District of Columbia, and all U.S. territories have their own election laws. However, the Article does clarify that Congress (but not the executive) has the ultimate power to regulate congressional elections. State-level and local elections are the primary jurisdiction of the states, provided they comply with federal constitutional protections.

Article II sets up the executive branch, vesting power in a President who holds office for four years along with a Vice President. The country’s leadership was also never intended to be a direct election but rather an election via selected electors; thus, our unique, often baffling, and frustrating Electoral College system is laid out in the same article. The creation of the Electoral College was viewed as a compromise between those who thought Congress should select the president and those who favored election by popular vote.

America’s First Elections as an Independent Nation

While the first democratic elections held on American soil were in the British colony of Jamestown in 1619, the first set of elections held as the newly independent United States of America took place between late 1788 and early 1789.

In the eleven years between the founding of the country and the drafting of the (second) Constitution which laid out our current system of elections, the country was governed by a body of delegates, the Continental and Confederation Congresses, which held no executive power. While there was a President of these Congresses, he was more of a chairman who had no ability to independently make any decisions or command the army. He also served in the position for a maximum of one year. In all, between 1776 and 1789, there were 14 such “presidents.”

The Election of our First (or 15th?) President

The modern office of the President was created once the U.S. Constitution was finally drafted.

Because there was no uniform national election day till 1845, the first presidential election took place over a four week period from December 15, 1788 to January 10, 1789. At this point, there were also no political parties and, therefore, no official nomination processes. No candidate “ran” for office. In fact, in the early part of our American history, actively seeking political power was considered a sign of being greedy, untrustworthy, and unfit for office. Public figures were expected to practice civic virtue and wait to be called upon by their fellow citizens to serve, rather than campaigning for votes, showing that they chose the public good over their personal ambitions. Reflecting on this in the modern era and contrasting it with our long campaign periods and the obscene amounts of money that pour into races today, this seems like an exceptionally refreshing concept that we’ve unfortunately left in the past.

Ten states participated in the first presidential election and chose their own systems to select electors. Four states — Connecticut, Georgia, New Jersey, and South Carolina) bypassed the popular vote; instead, state politicians (the governor, legislature, or a combination) selected who would serve as presidential electors. Four states — Delaware, Maryland, Pennsylvania, and Virginia — held a popular vote to choose theirs. And two states, Massachusetts and New Hampshire, used hybrid systems in which voters voted on electors, and legislatures appointed electors from amongst the top candidates. Three states did not participate in the elections: North Carolina and Rhode Island hadn’t yet ratified the Constitution, while legislative squabbling caused New York to miss the deadline to choose its electors.

And who made up the franchise for this first presidential election? Each state had different rules on who could participate in the election process. In most states, the right to vote was likely to be limited by age, gender, property ownership, and specific wealth or tax-paying requirements:

• At the time of the first election, three states (Georgia, South Carolina, and Virginia) explicitly used the word "white" to restrict voting rights in their state constitutions. Free black men could vote in four Northern states — New Jersey, Pennsylvania, New Hampshire, and Massachusetts, although these rights were later revoked in New Jersey and Pennsylvania. While voters did not pick electors for the first presidential election in New Jersey, some free black men did participate in the election in the other states.

• Every one of the original 13 states set the age of 21 as the age of voter qualification.

• In 12 states, women could not vote. Women could vote in New Jersey until 1807, although they had to be single or widowed and be worth at least 50 pounds. Married women couldn’t independently own any assets, and therefore did not meet the financial threshold. However, since New Jersey bypassed the popular vote for electors, women did not get to vote for the first president.

• In some states, like Maryland and South Carolina, people of certain faiths were out rightly banned from voting, while in states like Pennsylvania, Massachusetts and Connecticut, oaths of allegiance, taxes, tests, or other methods were used to favor certain religions and create structural barriers to prevent some religious groups from voting, including Jews, Roman Catholics, Quakers and atheists.

• Interestingly, because the country was new and didn’t have any central immigration laws, states dealt with immigrant voting rights in their own ways. In some states, newly arrived immigrants could apply to become naturalized in their new state of residence. For example, in Pennsylvania, any free man aged 21 and older was allowed to vote after living there for a year and paying some form of taxes; you didn’t need to be a landowner, another fairly novel idea for the time. In other cases, state constitutions (such as in New Jersey) simply granted the right to vote to all inhabitants who lived in the country for a year and met wealth requirements.

In the end, while the U.S. had a population of nearly 3.9 million people according to the 1790 census, only an estimated 33,460 (verifiable) ballots were cast in the first presidential election.

In all, 69 electors were chosen to form the first Electoral College. The Electoral College Vote took place on February 4, 1789, when electors met in their state capitals to cast their ballots. Each elector voted for two people. The two people with the most votes would become president or vice president. The electors signed and sealed their vote certificates which were then couriered by horseback to the new federal government in New York City, the temporary capital. Since the Constitution specified that the votes could only be opened in a joint session of the Senate and House of Representatives, the votes could not be legally opened or counted till there was a quorum. Because of bad weather and poor infrastructure, this didn’t happen till April 6, two months after the votes had been cast. After the votes were counted, twelve men had received electoral votes for president despite the fact that none of them actually formally campaigned. George Washington received 69 electoral votes, meaning every elector vote for him. It took more than another week for the news to reach him, and he reluctantly accepted the position. John Adams finished second with 34 electoral votes and became Vice President. Adams was inaugurated earlier since he lived closer and arrived in New York City first. Washington was sworn in nine days later on April 30th.

The First Congressional Elections

While Washington’s executive selection was a foregone conclusion, the concurrent race to seat the first House of Representatives and Senate was an absolute logistical circus. Just like the presidential vote, there was no single “Election Day.” Instead, the country held a messy, rolling series of congressional elections that stretched across six months, starting with South Carolina in November 1788 and finally wrapping up with New York in March 1789.

Governed by an experimental patchwork of state rules, states like Virginia and Massachusetts carved themselves into geographic districts, while Pennsylvania and New Jersey ran at-large elections, forcing voters to select a whole slate of statewide candidates for their Representatives. It was also intensely partisan. A fierce battle raged between the Federalist faction, which supported the new, stronger central government, and the Anti-Federalists who feared it. In Virginia’s February 1789 election, Patrick Henry (who fell in the latter camp) went so far as to gerrymander a district specifically to block the Constitution’s architect James Madison from winning a seat. An estimated 80,000 to 100,000 voters likely voted in these elections, which was approximately 21% of the eligible voting population of the time (based on the many criteria noted above that excluded large portions of the population).

Meanwhile, U.S. Senators weren’t chosen by the public at all, but by state legislatures behind closed doors. This insider method immediately ran into gridlock. In New York, the political infighting between Alexander Hamilton’s allies and Governor George Clinton’s faction was so toxic that the state legislature completely deadlocked. As a result, New York missed the election deadlines entirely, sending no Senators — and no presidential electors — to the opening of the new government in March 1789.

250 Years of Electoral Evolution

In the two and a half centuries since those first chaotic, localized ballots were cast, the American election framework has had its ups and downs. The system we operate under today has shifted from an elite franchise into a more formalized, mass democratic process and has undergone several key structural transformations:

• Dismantling the Property and Religious Barriers: By the mid-19th century, states systematically dropped the wealth, tax-paying, and religious requirements that had originally barred the vast majority of white men from voting.

• Expanding the Constitutional Franchise: The definition of “We the People” has expanded over the years as our Constitution evolved.

  • The 15th Amendment (1870) gave African American men the right to vote.

  • The 19th Amendment (1920) extended voting rights to women.

  • The 26th Amendment (1971) lowered the national voting age from 21 to 18.

• The Rise of Secret and Standardized Ballots: In 1789, voting was often done out loud (viva voce) or via colored tickets distributed by factions, effectively leaving no secrecy of the vote. By the 1890s, states universally adopted the “Australian ballot” — the standardized, government-printed, secret ballot we use today.

• Democratizing the U.S. Senate Elections: The back door deals to choose U.S. senators via state legislatures were ended by the 17th Amendment (1913), which stripped state politicians of their appointment power and handed the election of Senators directly over to a statewide popular vote.

• Introducing the Primary System: For over a century, presidential and congressional candidates were chosen by party bosses in private conventions with no public input. The modern primary system, first tested in Wisconsin in 1906, shifted the nominating power directly into the hands of voters, although primaries for presidential candidates didn’t take place till the 1972 election.

• Civil Rights: While the 15th Amendment promised the vote on paper, Jim Crow-era structural barriers like literacy tests and poll taxes functionally stripped Black Americans of that right. The 24th Amendment (1964) outlawed poll taxes, and the Voting Rights Act of 1965 (VRA) established federal oversight to protect the franchise from localized suppression. However, the enforcement power of the VRA faces erosion after the recent Louisiana v. Callais (2026) Supreme Court ruling.

Today, our election processes are facing new challenges as our political landscape is increasingly dominated by intense partisan discord over the mechanics of voting, who gets to make the rules, and the fundamental question of who our democracy is truly meant to serve. Democracy is, at its heart, a messy endeavor, and as long as it is operated by people, it naturally inherits all our human flaws. As I have learned from years of working in countries around the world, a nation’s democratic trajectory is rarely a straight line — sometimes it is two steps forward and one step back, and at other times, it might be two steps back and then one step forward. The United States is no different. Our democracy and its electoral processes continue to evolve, and it is unlikely that we will ever achieve a finished product, a moment where we can sit back and say: aha, perfection! In fact, if we do feel we have ever reached that point, it is likely that we have stopped aspiring towards greater heights.

The vision laid out in the Preamble was never a promise of an immediate, flawless state, but an invitation to continually strive toward a more perfect union. In moments of deep division, the path forward depends on our willingness to refine the machinery of self-governance—ensuring that our electoral institutions remain resilient, transparent, and unyielding in their protection of the rights of all Americans to share in our country’s self-governance and, thereby, its democracy. After all, it is an ideal we fought for at the start of our country, and if not through the vote, what other mechanism can possibly get us there?

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It’s May 2026, and we are in the thick of primary season. Around the neighborhood, candidate signs are blooming next to the tulips. While early-bird states like Texas and Illinois wrapped up their contests back in March—and heavyweights like Pennsylvania and Georgia just finished theirs—the gauntlet is far from over. Between now and the end of June, dozens of states from California to New Jersey will head to the polls to decide who actually gets a shot at the big time in November. And for some states, like Massachusetts and Delaware, the finish line won’t arrive until September. The busy season is officially here.

What’s on the ballot this year? Every single one of the 435 House seats is on the line, along with 35 Senate seats. Further down the ballot are the many local races that hit closer to home: 36 governorships, state legislatures, and those powerful (but often ignored) offices like Secretary of State or Attorney General that basically run the machinery of our democracy. Scattered across these ballots are also the measures that actually change voters’ daily lives. Depending on where you’re voting, you might be weighing in on whether to hike the minimum wage, overhaul teacher retirement funding, or tweak judicial bail rules.

It is a complex and often overlooked gateway, yet in the American system, the primary is a decisive filter. It is where the direction of the country is decided, often by a tiny fraction of the people who will eventually show up in November.

What Exactly is a Primary?

At its simplest, a primary is a pre-election. While the general election in November decides who actually gets the job, a primary determines which candidate will represent a specific political party on the November ballot. It basically functions as the qualifying heat before the championship race. Instead of one giant field of 20 candidates, the primary allows each team (the parties) to narrow their field down to a single champion.

On average, only about 20% of eligible American voters participate in primary elections nationwide compared to the general election which might see a 60% or 70% voter turnout. For example, in 2024, only 23% of registered voters cast a ballot in the primaries, while 65% voted in November.

This means that in many states, the candidates who move on to the final ballot are chosen by a tiny, highly motivated slice of the population. However, that 20% average hides some wild swings depending on the year and the local rules. When a major issue or a high-profile race hangs in the balance, people do show up. In 2022, Kansas saw a turnout of nearly 48% driven by a constitutional amendment, and Wyoming reached 63% during the historically competitive primary for its at-large Congressional seat. On the other hand, in many states, primary participation can crater into the single digits or low teens. For example, during the 2024 presidential primaries, New York saw a turnout of just 4.2% of registered voters for the presidential primary and 10.1% in the state primaries, while only 12.7% of Mississippi’s registered voters turned out during the primaries.

Because turnout is so low from the primaries, even a small shift in the rules, like how voters register, can change who wins.

What Does the Law Say about Primaries?

Primary elections are not mentioned in the U.S. Constitution. Because of this constitutional silence, the law regarding primaries is a constant tug-of-war between the rights of the political party and the authority of the state government.

On one side of the rope, political parties function as private clubs. The Supreme Court has ruled that parties have a First Amendment right to freedom of association, meaning they have the power to define the boundaries of their own group. In the landmark case Tashjian v. Republican Party of Connecticut, the Court ruled that a state couldn’t force a party to keep its primary closed if the party itself wanted to invite independent voters to participate. Essentially, the Court decided that the state cannot substitute its own judgment for the party’s decision on who is allowed to help pick its candidates.

On the other side of the rope, the state manages the primary process. Because we use public tax dollars, public buildings, and government poll workers to run these elections, state legislatures have the power to set the administrative rules. If a state wants to streamline the process or manage costs, it can mandate specific ballot types or set strict registration deadlines that the parties must follow.

A voter’s primary experience is the direct result of these two sides negotiating. In some states, the law leans toward protecting the autonomy of the party, ensuring that only committed members shape the ticket. In others, the state uses its authority to prioritize voter access, creating a system where any citizen can have a say in who makes it to the final ballot. This ongoing negotiation is exactly why the U.S. doesn’t have one single American primary system, but rather 50+ distinct versions.

The History of the Primaries

For most of American history, the idea that regular people should pick their party’s nominee would have sounded like a joke to the political elite. Throughout the 19th century, a voter’s choice really wasn’t his and was essentially made for him long before he ever reached the ballot box (“he” because only men were voters at this time of course). This was true for every position from the presidency to congressional seats down to local races like the county sheriff.

A voter in 1850 didn’t vote on a government-printed ballot. Instead, a local party worker, often a ward boss who knew exactly where the voter lived would hand him a party ticket. This was a pre-printed slip of paper listing the party’s hand-picked slate for every race. The voter simply dropped that slip into the ballot box. If a prospective candidate wanted to run for the House of Representatives and the local party boss didn’t like him, the candidate wouldn’t stand a chance of getting on the ticket. Candidates were chosen at District Conventions or neighborhood caucuses where delegates horse-traded favors and patronage behind closed doors. It was a closed loop: the party bosses picked the delegates, and the delegates picked the candidates.

The Senate was even more insulated from the public. Under the original Constitution, Americans didn’t vote for U.S. Senators at all, and state legislatures were responsible for picking them. This turned state capitals into hotbeds of deal-making. Candidates for the Senate lobbied state lawmakers in backrooms. It was a system that led to massive corruption and deadlocks during which a state would go months (or even four years as was once the case for Delaware) without a Senator because the legislature couldn’t agree on which insider to appoint.

The first real crack in this machine came from a fed-up Progressive named Robert “Fighting Bob” La Follette. At the turn of the 20th century, La Follette saw that as long as the party machines controlled the tickets, citizens had no real power. He argued that

the caucus, delegate and convention system is inherently bad. It invites to manipulation, scheming, trickery, corruption and fraud. Even if the caucus were fairly conducted, the plan of which it is a part removes the nomination too far from the voter.

In 1903, he pushed through Wisconsin’s first mandatory statewide primary in an attempt to drag the process into the light. This coincided with the rise of the secret ballot (also known as the Australian ballot), where the government, not the parties, finally started printing ballots. For the first time, the state could list multiple candidates from the same party and let the voters decide who made the cut for November.

While these reforms slowly trickled down to Congressional races and the Senate (thanks to the 17th Amendment in 1913), the Presidential process remained the final holdout. For decades, nominees were still picked in smoke-filled rooms, immune to the populist wave hitting lower offices. That finally broke for good during the 1968 Democratic National Convention in Chicago. After the party handed the nomination to Hubert Humphrey, who hadn’t won a single primary, the resulting riots forced a total overhaul of the rules. While the Democrats sparked that revolution, the Republicans were soon swept along as state legislatures across the country began codifying these new rules into law for both parties. By 1972, the primary became the law of the land, a move designed to give the public more power.

Types of Primaries

Because there is no federal law for how a primary must run, every state has developed its own set of primary rules. The U.S. Election Assistance Commission (EAC) generally groups these into a few key buckets:

• Closed Partisan Primaries: This is the “members only” model. Voters receive a ballot for the party with which they are affiliated and can only vote for candidates on their party’s ticket. This type of primary is designed to ensure a party’s nominee is chosen only by its most loyal supporters. Unfortunately for anyone listed as an Independent (or a third-party voter), they are unable to vote in these specific races.

• Open Partisan Primaries: In open partisan primaries, the voter’s registration doesn’t lock them in to voting for their affiliated party ticket. They can be a registered Republican, a Democrat, or a total Independent, but can choose which party’s ballot they want to vote on when they show up to vote. The catch? They can only pick one and cannot vote in the Republican Senate primary and the Democratic House primary on the same day. In some states you may need to publicly declare your choice of party ballot at the polling place; in other states, you can choose your party ballot privately in the voting booth.

• Semi/Partially Closed Primaries: In some states, if a voter is already registered with a party, the voter will vote for that party’s ballot, but if the voter is an independent, they are invited to pick which primary they want to participate in. In states like Maryland, unaffiliated voters can now use “same-day affiliation” during early voting to unlock a party ballot on the spot.

• Partially Closed & Partially Open Primaries: In Partially Closed systems, the party itself gets to decide if they’ll let Independents vote in their primaries (though not members of the other party.) In Partially Open systems, voters can vote for any party, but the act of doing so might change their official registration to that party on the spot.

• Multi-Party or Top-Two Primary Systems: States like California and Washington, have thrown out the partisan primary altogether. All candidates, regardless of party affiliation, are listed on one ballot. All voters get the same ballot. The two candidates (or four in states like Alaska) who get the most votes move on to November, even if they’re from the same party.

• Nonpartisan Primaries are used for nonpartisan local offices like judges or school boards. If one candidate gets more than 50% of the vote in the primary, they often win the seat outright; otherwise, the top two move to a general or runoff election.

Primaries Beyond the 50 States

While we often focus on the 50 states and the District of Columbia, the primary system also extends to millions of Americans living in five U.S. territories. In the 2026 cycle, residents in Puerto Rico, Guam, the U.S. Virgin Islands, American Samoa, and the Northern Mariana Islands will conduct primaries to narrow the field for local governors and their non-voting Delegates to the U.S. House.

While most territories follow a partisan model where voters must select a specific party ballot, the lack of a federal mandate allows for local variation. For instance, Guam historically utilizes a partisan primary where voters must stick to a single party on election day, whereas American Samoa often foregoes a traditional partisan primary for its Congressional delegate in favor of a nonpartisan general election that moves to a runoff if no candidate secures a majority. It is also worth noting that while these voters participate in the primary process to shape party platforms and choose nominees, they do not participate in the general election for President in November. This makes the primary season one of the most critical windows for territory residents to exert their political influence on the national stage.

The 2026 Primary Shakeup

If you feel like election rules are changing mid-game, you’re right. Three major developments are defining this primary cycle.

The Redistricting Ripple Effect

In several states, primary calendars have shifted as states navigate a chaotic redistricting landscape.

• Following the Supreme Court’s April 29, 2026 decision in Louisiana v. Callais, Louisiana suspended its planned May 16 House primaries in order to overhaul its congressional map, even though 42,000 absentee ballots had already been cast.

• Leveraging the Callais precedent to try and revert to its 2023 electoral maps, Alabama voided primary results for four major congressional districts which had been cast on May 19. The Governor called for new primaries to be held for those districts using the 2023 maps on August 11.

• Moving proactively to manage its own map volatility, Virginia delayed its traditional June primary slate to August 4, buying time to deal with its maps following an April statewide redistricting referendum, an issue that is still held up in the courts.

The Shift in Primary Types

We are witnessing a fascinating split as states further try to define who gets access to the primary ballot box:

• In a massive departure from its famous, wide-open Jungle Primary, Louisiana officially transitioned to a closed primary format for high-profile federal and judicial contests, explicitly blocking unaffiliated voters from participating.

• Conversely, New Mexico moved in the opposite direction for its June primaries, implementing a new semi-open system. The rule change allows an estimated 378,000 independent voters to participate in major party primaries without forcing them to permanently alter their voter registration.

• Washington, D.C.’s voters passed a ballot measure in 2024 to transition to a semi-open primary which would allow over 75,000 independent voters to participate in party contests. However, a D.C. Council budget standoff left the open primary portion unfunded for this cycle, meaning independent voters remain locked out for now.

New Voting Rules

Even where calendars and party access rules stayed intact, some state laws have introduced stringent new verification protocols that are fundamentally changing the voting experience for voters and poll workers:

• Following a series of legal challenges that previously complicated its rollout, North Carolina’s permanent elimination of its mail-in ballot grace period is in effect. Absentee ballots must be physically in the hands of election officials by 7:30 PM on primary night to count, regardless of when they were postmarked, narrowing the delivery window for mail-in voters.

• Operating under a state law that permanently eliminates some voter identity alternatives (like utility bills or bank statements), Ohio now requires strict photo identification at the check-in table. Anyone without a specific state-approved photo ID must vote a provisional ballot

• A new 2026 citizenship verification law has introduced “federal-only” ballots for South Dakota’s June 2 primary for any voters listing P.O. boxes or mail-forwarding addresses. This two-tiered system requires poll workers to navigate different eligibility standards for state and federal contests at the same time.

Do Other Countries Hold Primaries?

Outside of the United States, the primary as Americans know it is a global anomaly. While the U.S. relies heavily on state-funded, open public voting to pick party nominees, the rest of the world approaches candidate selection through a variety of different models, with only Latin America approaching a model similar to ours.

Europe & Canada

In these parliamentary systems, candidate selection is for dues-paying members, not a state-funded public right.

• The United Kingdom: To run for Parliament, candidates are vetted and approved by a small committee of party insiders or local party members, though each party has its own process.

• Canada: Parties host internal leadership conventions and local district nomination contests. For example, the NDP’s leadership selection relies entirely on an internal ranked ballot system managed by the party apparatus.

• France: Instead of holding primaries, France uses a two-round election system and puts every candidate on a single ballot for the initial race. While anyone who meets basic filing rules can legally run, centralized party bosses tightly control candidate funding and brand endorsements to prevent internal competition. To move on to the decisive runoff election just one week later, a candidate must win votes from at least 12.5% of all registered voters in that district.

• Voluntary Experiments: Some parties have voluntarily experimented with public outreach to boost civic engagement. Italy’s Democratic Party and various French coalitions have run independent, self-funded voting booths charging a €2 fee to let citizens select their national leaders or presidential candidates. Tech-forward parties like Spain’s Podemos and Austria’s NEOS utilize secured digital voting platforms where any resident can register online to rank candidate slates without paying formal party dues. However, these are entirely voluntary and easily scrapped if party funds run dry.

Asia

Asian democracies also don’t have a tradition of public primary elections.

• South Korea & Taiwan: In both countries, major political parties independently hire professional polling firms to conduct massive public telephone surveys in order to determine candidate popularity and who will be their nominees. These surveys are heavily regulated by national election authorities to ensure data integrity, mandate methodology disclosures, and prevent external manipulation.

• India: The world’s largest democracy bypasses public primaries. Candidate selection is tightly controlled by a tiny circle of national party elites, often referred to as the Central Election Committee. Voters only get to choose between these pre-selected party tickets on election day.

Africa

Across Africa, primary elections are almost never funded or operated by government electoral commissions. They are treated as strictly internal affairs—but in dominant-party systems, these internal votes carry massive weight.

• Ghana: The country’s major parties hold massive, highly organized internal primary voting days. Instead of an open public ballot, hundreds of thousands of dues-paying party delegates cast secret ballots simultaneously at polling stations nationwide to select their nominees.

• Nigeria: Under the strict mandates of the country’s Electoral Act, political parties must conduct highly formalized internal primaries via direct member voting, indirect delegate conventions, or written consensus.

Latin America

Latin America is the one region where public primaries do take place and look a bit more like ours.

• Argentina: The country utilizes the PASO system (Simultaneous and Mandatory Open Primaries where primaries are not just mandatory for political parties to hold, but voting in them is legally mandatory for every eligible citizen age 18 to 70, even if a party only has one candidate on its ticket. The government fully funds and runs the day, treating it as a massive, nationwide dress rehearsal for the general election. However, because it is highly expensive to run nationwide, President Javier Milei’s administration successfully passed a law suspending the PASO entirely for the 2025 mid-term legislative elections, forcing parties to use internal mechanisms instead. His government has been actively pushing a bill to permanently eliminate the system nationwide.

• Chile: The state manages a formalized, binding primary system, though participation remains structurally optional for political coalitions. When coalitions opt-in to field candidates, the national electoral service runs a unified election day where party members and independent voters can vote on candidates who will then move on to general election day. If parties choose not to hold primaries, they can choose their candidates through an internal selection process.

• Colombia: While political parties usually bypass public primaries for their own legislative lists, preferring internal negotiations, the state funds concurrent inter-party consultations that hand the high-stakes presidential selection over to the public. This system allows voters to determine which coalition presidential candidates will survive to the first-round ballot. However, while all citizens can participate, they must choose just one coalition’s ballot to cast.

The Primary Matters

From La Follette’s Wisconsin to the jungle primaries of Louisiana, the American primary has never been a tidy or uniform institution. It is the product of constant negotiation: between parties and states, between access and control, between the ideal of popular participation and the practical reality that most people don’t show up.

But that messiness is also the point. Every quirk in the system — from the varying registration rules, the shifting calendars, the 50-odd variations on the same basic idea — reflects an ongoing argument about who democracy is actually for. Most countries never bothered having that argument in public. We still are, and that in itself is positive.

This primary season that argument is playing out and might be more important than ever. The rules are changing. The maps are in flux. And the outcome, as always, will be shaped by whoever decides to show up.

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Sixty years ago, the Voting Rights Act (VRA) broke Jim Crow’s back at the ballot box. Within months of its passage, a quarter million Black Americans were newly registered to vote. Within a few years, the first Black mayors of major American cities had been elected, and the first Black woman had been sent to Congress. The VRA ended up impacting not only who could vote but also who was elected.

On April 29, 2026, the Supreme Court dealt a major blow to what remained of it.

The 6-3 court ruling in Callais v. Landry is the culmination of a decade-long effort to dismantle the architecture that upheld the VRA, and its effects are reshaping the 2026 midterm elections in real time. Come November 2026, the United States may see the most consequential shift in American representation since the 1960s.

What is the Voting Rights Act?

On February 3, 1870, the 15th Amendment was ratified by 29 out of 37 states to become part of the U.S. Constitution. The amendment prohibited the federal government and states from denying a citizen the right to vote based on that citizen’s “race, color, or previous condition of servitude.” Yet, for the next 90 years, that promise remained largely unfulfilled. Across the South and beyond, African Americans were subjected to a litany of tactics such as literacy tests, poll taxes, and violence that effectively nullified their political power in practice.

The Voting Rights Act (VRA) was signed into law by President Lyndon B. Johnson in August, 1965. It was designed to enforce the fifteenth amendment and dismantle the Jim Crow-era barriers that prevented African Americans from voting. Its effects were almost immediate. By the end of that year alone, a quarter of a million new black voters registered to vote. The next few years also saw other momentous firsts for the African American community: the first black mayors elected in big cities, the first black senator elected since Reconstruction, and the first black woman, Shirley Chisholm, to be elected to Congress and run for president.

For decades, the law stood on two primary pillars:

• Section 2 applied nationwide and prohibited any voting practice that resulted in the denial or abridgment of the right to vote based on race.

• Section 5 required states with a history of discrimination to receive preclearance from the federal government before changing any voting laws.

Crucially, Section 2 operated under a results test. This meant that an electoral map or law could be challenged successfully even without proving that lawmakers intended to discriminate. If the actual effect of a map was to dilute the influence of minority voters through “cracking” (splitting a community into several districts so they have no influence) or “packing” (concentrating them into one district to minimize their influence in surrounding districts), the law provided a remedy.

Historically, Section 2 doctrine relied on the three-part Gingles test to require majority-minority districts when a minority community could show it was large, compact, politically cohesive, and consistently defeated by bloc voting. A majority-minority district is one where a racial or language minority group makes up more than 50% of the population, theoretically guaranteeing its voters the opportunity to elect their candidate of choice. This provided a stable, predictable framework for ensuring representation and, as of 2024, has resulted in 148 majority-minority districts, accounting for roughly one-third of the House. While often associated with the Black community, majority-minority districts have been essential for increasing representation of a wide variety of communities across the country including:

• Hispanic/Latinos: This is actually the largest community of majority-minority districts, including deep-rooted areas like Texas’s 16th District (El Paso) and Arizona’s 3rd District (Phoenix).

• Asian Americans: Specific districts have emerged to reflect demographic shifts in urban hubs, most notably California’s 17th District in Silicon Valley, which is 58% Asian, and newer districts in Queens, New York.

• Native Americans: The VRA has protected tribal voices by preventing reservations from being split across multiple districts. In Arizona and New Mexico, for example, Section 2 has been used to ensure the Navajo Nation remains a unified “community of interest,” allowing voters to elect representatives who understand their unique sovereign status and infrastructure needs.

The VRA’s Long Decline

Over more than a decade, the Supreme Court has issued a series of decisions that have steadily narrowed the VRA’s reach. The first major blow came in 2013 with Shelby County v. Holder which effectively neutralized Section 5 by striking down the preclearance formula used to determine which states required federal oversight for voting law changes. This shifted the entire burden of enforcement to Section 2.

In 2021, the Court’s decision in Brnovich v. Democratic National Committee limited Section 2 by making it harder to challenge voting rules that have a disparate impact on minority groups. More recently, in the 2024 case Alexander v. South Carolina NAACP, the Court established that when race and partisan affiliation are highly correlated, it is almost impossible for plaintiffs to prove racial gerrymandering without extraordinarily powerful evidence.

What is Callais v. Landry?

The legal standard reached a definitive turning point on April 29, 2026, with the Supreme Court’s 6-3 ruling in Callais v. Landry. The case involved Louisiana’s congressional map, which had been redrawn to include a second majority-Black district following the Supreme Court’s 2023 ruling in Allen v. Milligan (which actually focused on Alabama).

In Milligan, the Supreme Court upheld the Section 2 challenge and reaffirmed that if a map results in the dilution of minority voting power, it must be redrawn even if that requires a race-conscious remedy. This ruling sent a clear signal to other states with similar demographics, including Louisiana, that they were legally obligated to draw more representative maps. Following this mandate, Louisiana redrew its congressional boundaries to include a second majority-Black district.

However, in Callais, the Supreme Court pivoted. It ruled that Louisiana’s attempt to comply with the VRA was actually an unconstitutional racial gerrymander. The Court held that unless there is proof of contemporary, intentional discrimination, the VRA does not provide a “compelling interest” to use race as a factor in redistricting. By shifting the focus from the results of a map to the intent of the map-makers, the Court effectively ended the era of race-conscious redistricting as a standard practice.

The practical consequences of such a decision are easy to understate. When a majority-minority district is dismantled, the community it represents loses not only a seat but also a representative with a direct stake in its neighborhoods, its schools, and its funding priorities. Candidates who reflect the demographics of a community are less likely to appear on the ballot. Localized concerns get absorbed into larger districts and may not get the attention they need. And the community’s ability to build political leverage over time, including earmarks and sustained legislative attention, evaporates.

The Constitutional Collision

The legal consensus has moved decisively toward a colorblind interpretation of the 14th Amendment’s Equal Protection Clause. For decades, the VRA (grounded in the 15th Amendment) required states to consider race to ensure minority representation. However, the Callais ruling flipped the hierarchy: the Supreme Court now holds that the Equal Protection Clause actually prohibits the government from using race as the predominant factor in drawing district lines, even when a state says it is trying to comply with the VRA.

Proponents argue this shift ensures that redistricting remains a purely political process, free from racial engineering. Critics, however, contend that by removing these guardrails, the Court is allowing for the systematic dilution of minority voices under the guise of race-neutrality. A number of states are already testing this boundary, creating a landscape of cartographic chaos even as many voters head to the polls for their states’ primaries.

Callais Causes Chaos in the 2026 Primaries

The most striking aspect of the Callais decision is its immediate and disruptive effect on the current 2026 primary cycle. Following the April 29 ruling, Louisiana Governor Jeff Landry issued an emergency declaration to suspend the state’s primary elections for the U.S. House of Representatives, which were scheduled for May 16. This suspension occurred while the election was already in progress; absentee ballots had been mailed, and approximately 42,000 voters had already cast their votes. Early voting started two days later.

Crucially, while the Louisiana House races are suspended to allow for a legislative map redraw, all other contests, including the U.S. Senate primary and local judicial races, are proceeding. House candidates will still appear on the physical ballots, but any votes cast in those specific races will not be counted or certified. This has immediately triggered a wave of litigation. On May 4, a coalition including the American Civil Liberties Union and the League of Women Voters filed an emergency federal challenge, Bernard v. Landry. The plaintiffs argue that suspending only a portion of an ongoing election creates confusion and public mistrust and disenfranchises voters who may not realize their House votes are void. As of writing, the standoff remains unresolved, leaving election workers to manage a primary where only some of the ballot actually counts.

Beyond Louisiana, the Callais ruling has acted as a trigger for rapid-response redistricting across the South:

• Florida: The strategic fallout from the Callais decision was felt immediately in Florida, where Governor DeSantis signed a new congressional map on May 4, 2026, timing a special legislative session specifically to capitalize on the Supreme Court’s shift toward race-neutral redistricting. By leveraging this new colorblind standard to dismantle several of the state’s established majority-minority districts in urban hubs like Orlando and Miami, the redraw is projected to shift the state’s delegation from a 20-8 split to a 24-4 Republican supermajority.

• Alabama: On May 8, Governor Kay Ivey signed a legislative package, approved in a special session triggered by the Callais ruling, that seeks to dismantle the state’s second majority-Black district. Absentee voting for the May 19 primary is already underway. However, the new law authorizes the state to nullify votes already cast for House or Senate seats in affected districts and hold a supplemental primary under a previously rejected, race-neutral map, which the Supreme Court cleared the way for on May 11 by sending the litigation back down to the lower courts to consider in light of Callais.

• Tennessee and South Carolina: Between May 6 and May 7, both states took aggressive steps toward mid-cycle congressional redraws. In Tennessee, the legislature moved to “crack” the majority-Black city of Memphis into three separate Republican-leaning districts, a move intended to eliminate the state’s final Democratic-held seat. Meanwhile, South Carolina leadership cleared procedural hurdles to target its lone Democratic district, citing the Callais decision as proof that the state is no longer legally required to maintain a majority-minority seat.

• Mississippi: Mississippi is taking a slightly different approach and applying the Callais colorblind standard to its third branch of government. On May 1, Governor Tate Reeves called for a special session in late May specifically to redraw State Supreme Court districts. The state argues that under the new Supreme Court precedent, it is not constitutionally required to create a majority-Black judicial district despite a lower court’s recent finding that the state’s current judicial maps illegally dilute the power of Black voters who make up nearly 40% of the population.

Impact on the House Balance of Power

Beyond the immediate administrative confusion, the Callais decision has fundamentally altered the math for the 2026 midterm elections. In a closely divided U.S. House of Representatives, where the majority is decided by a handful of seats, the sudden ability to redraw maps mid-cycle has turned what were considered safe districts into battlegrounds overnight.

The Republican Strategic Advantage

Legal analysts and political scientists suggest that the weakening of Section 2 provides a distinct strategic advantage to the GOP in the short term. Because Black and Latino voters in the South historically lean Democratic, the majority-minority districts protected by the VRA have served as reliable blue anchors in otherwise red states. Of the 148 majority-minority districts noted earlier, approximately 122 are represented by Democrats and 26 by Republicans. The Callais ruling allows Republican-led legislatures to dismantle these anchors under the guise of partisan gerrymandering, which the Court has ruled is a political question beyond the reach of federal judges. Projections from non-partisan analysts suggest that 15 or more congressional seats in historically black districts could be redrawn to favor Republicans before November, potentially enough to secure the House majority regardless of the national popular vote. This does not include the number of seats that other communities like Hispanics and Native Americans could lose, nor does it include the number of seats that could be lost in state legislatures.

The Packing Paradox

The Republican map-making surge does carry a structural risk. Some scholars have argued that the VRA paradoxically benefited Republicans by concentrating Democratic voters into a handful of majority-minority districts, leaving the surrounding suburban seats safer for GOP incumbents. Unpacking those voters and spreading them across neighboring districts to eliminate majority-minority seats may inadvertently flip those surrounding seats from reliably red to genuinely competitive. In a strong Democratic year nationally, GOP incumbents who once held comfortable margins could suddenly find themselves in purple districts with no cushion.

The Road beyond Callais

The Callais decision is not the end of the story. Litigation is already moving fast and furious through the courts, although the legislative redraws are moving even faster. Republican-led legislatures across the South have acted with a speed that suggests they anticipated this moment, and the window for any court to intervene before November is narrowing by the week. In the meantime, voters in affected states are already facing confusion around the primaries and whether their votes will count at all. Election staff are bracing for multiple rounds of primaries, adding to their work in an already busy election year. And states (and their voters) are bearing costs of administering extra sets of elections that nobody budgeted for.

The consequences of what is happening now could last for decades to come. The Voting Rights was enacted precisely because the right to vote was never enough on its own. The VRA was designed to protect meaningful access to the ballot, and Section 2 ensured that minority communities could translate that access into actual representation. That representation is what is now being dismantled, one map at a time.

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There is a new rule in American politics: the map is never final.

Traditionally, electoral maps in the United States have been drawn once a decade. This long-standing norm is disintegrating. In its place, we are seeing the normalization of off-cycle revisions blatantly engineered by a state’s dominant party to secure a political advantage. It is a national redistricting arms race where one state’s actions are pushing equal and opposite reactions in other states. While both sides may argue they are protecting “communities of interest” or “correcting past inequities,” the result is a system where partisan map-makers, not voters, decide which interests matter most in any given cycle.

This month, that national tension arrives in Virginia. Just a few years ago, Virginians voted to curb partisan line-drawing by creating a bipartisan Redistricting Commission composed of eight citizens and eight legislators. But when that body deadlocked in 2021, the Supreme Court of Virginia stepped in to set the current lines, giving Democrats a 6-5 edge in the 2022 and 2024 elections. Now, after seeing Republican states like North Carolina and Texas redrawing their electoral boundaries to gain a mid-decade advantage, Virginia’s Democrats are eyeing a legislative override that could further solidify or expand their current majority.

On April 21, Virginians will vote on an amendment that would grant the General Assembly a one-time authority to redraw the state’s congressional lines for the 2026, 2028, and 2030 elections. While the Commission would officially resume its role in the next full cycle, the immediate effect is a bypass of the current independent process Virginians originally demanded.

The debate in Virginia is a microcosm of a larger American dilemma: should a state join the ‘tit-for-tat’ cycle of mid-decade redraws or hold the line on the principle of stability? What makes this vote matter beyond Virginia or any other individual state is what it says about the future of representation. When the rules of the game are constantly reopened for tactical gain, the voter’s true voice risks being engineered away.

To understand why this departure from a fixed schedule is creating such a contentious debate, we have to look at how redistricting actually works and how it shapes who represents the voter.

What is Redistricting?

In the U.S., redistricting is the process of redrawing electoral district boundaries—including for the House of Representatives and state legislatures—to reflect population changes documented by the decennial census. Typically, this has been done once a decade following the census.

Why it matters: district lines determine who votes for whom, and they shape control of the House.

While the process is critical, the legal rules are a patchwork of federal mandates and state-level choices. Federal law essentially sets the floor for all 50 states through the following requirements:

• The 14th Amendment: The "Equal Protection Clause" requires states to treat all voters equally, prohibiting maps that intentionally sort citizens into districts based on race or other discriminatory factors.

• “One Person, One Vote”: The U.S. Supreme Court requires districts to be drawn with roughly equal populations so that every vote carries equal weight.

• The Voting Rights Act: Federal law prohibits maps that dilute the voting power of racial and ethnic minorities.

Beyond those requirements, federal law is notably silent. It does not forbid states from redrawing maps mid-decade, nor does it provide a national standard for “fairness.” Instead, the specific criteria for how a map is drawn are left to the states. These criteria have generally included, amongst others:

• Contiguity and Compactness: Districts should be composed of unbroken territory that avoids irregular, finger-like extensions or excessive sprawl.

• Communities of Interest: Districts should be designed to keep groups with shared social, economic, or cultural interests together so their collective voice isn’t fractured.

• Political Subdivision Integrity: District maps should minimize the splitting of counties or cities across multiple districts.

Because the U.S. Constitution gives states the authority to choose their own redistricting methods, the “who does redistricting” is just as important as the “how.” Currently, state legislatures are in charge of congressional redistricting in 33 states. To curb partisan influence, nine states have moved to independent commissions while two use hybrid systems in which legislatures and commissions collaborate to redistrict. The remaining states have one congressional district and, therefore, do not require redistricting.

This lack of a uniform national standard is partly what has enabled the current arms race. When a dominant party decides to reopen a map mid-cycle, they are often applying subjective criteria to maximize their party’s advantage before the next election.

A Brief History of Gerrymandering

The instinct to draw district lines for political advantage is hardly new in the United States. The word “gerrymander” dates back to 1812, when Massachusetts Governor Elbridge Gerry approved a district map so contorted that one district was said to resemble a salamander. Gerry + Salamander became gerrymander. The joke stuck, and so did the practice.

For much of American history, electoral map-making was a manual, often haphazard process. That changed in the 1960s when the Supreme Court mandated “one person, one vote,” requiring districts to be roughly equal in population. While this brought a new level of mathematical fairness, it also turned the dark art of gerrymandering into a high-stakes engineering challenge.

The consequence has been a reversal of democratic logic: instead of voters choosing their representatives, politicians engineer maps to pick their voters. By using sophisticated algorithms to “pack and crack” populations—either cramming the opposition’s supporters into a single district or spreading them too thin to form a majority—parties can create safe seats with surgical precision.

This kills competition and erodes accountability; representatives who don’t fear a challenger have little incentive to be responsive to their constituents. Historically, this engineering was at least tempered by the ten-year census cycle, which provided a natural guardrail for stability. But as the tools for manipulation have become more powerful, that boundary is also fading.

Mid‑Decade Redistricting Everywhere All at Once

The shift toward mid-cycle revision is becoming the new normal. As of mid-April 2026, five states—Republican-led Texas, North Carolina, Missouri, and Ohio and Democrat-led California—have enacted new congressional maps.

Others are moving fast: Florida (R) is preparing for a special redistricting session beginning April 28 to finalize its own lines ahead of the 2026 midterms. Meanwhile, a similar Democratic push in Maryland just stalled as their legislative session ended last week, highlighting the deep intra-party debate over whether to fight “fire with fire” or hold the line on institutional norms, as Indiana’s Republican-led Senate did in late 2025. Three states—Louisiana, New York, and Wisconsin—remain locked in litigation that could force new maps before the midterms. And of course, Virginia will vote on this very issue in a referendum tomorrow.

The big question hanging over all of this is a pending U.S. Supreme Court case called Louisiana v. Callais. For decades, the Voting Rights Act (VRA) has acted as the ultimate guardrail. It required states to ensure that minority communities had a fair chance to elect their preferred candidates, preventing states from unfairly breaking up those communities to dilute their vote.

In Callais, the Supreme Court is deciding if those VRA requirements are still constitutional. If the Court rules that states no longer have to follow those specific rules, it removes the most significant legal hurdle to redrawing maps and opens the door to what some experts fear will be a new era of extreme, unregulated gerrymandering.

The Global Standard: Rules over Tactics

While the U.S. grapples with these challenges, much of the democratic world treats redistricting—often called boundary delimitation—as a strictly regulated, administrative task. In these systems, the goal is to provide both fairness and certainty, including by locking the process to a fixed schedule.

Canada redraws its “ridings” strictly once every 10 years after the census. Independent commissions handle the process, and once the map is set, it is locked.

Australia has arguably the most rules-bound system. Redistricting is managed by a Redistribution Committee (which includes election staff and technical experts). The process is triggered automatically every seven years or if a district’s population shifts by more than 10% from the national average.

New Zealand uses a Representation Commission that includes both government and opposition members but is chaired by a judge to ensure neutrality. While they currently follow a fixed 5-year cycle, they are moving to an annual census model in 2030. To prevent this from leading to constant map-chaos, New Zealand passed legislation in March 2026 to intentionally lock redistricting to every six years. They recognize that even with better data, a moving target erodes democratic stability.

South Korea draws its boundaries every four years using real-time resident registration data. The lines are drawn by an independent commission of nine technical experts, and membership is strictly forbidden for anyone who has belonged to a political party in the last 12 months. To prevent any last-minute partisan maneuvering, the law also requires that district boundaries be finalized at least one year before a general election, creating a buffer zone between map-making and campaigning.

On the other side are instructive examples for what happens when guardrails are weak or missing, allowing the party in power to treat electoral maps as a tactical tool.

In Hungary, following a major legal overhaul in 2011, what was once a time-bound and scheduled system was replaced by a model where district boundaries could be redrawn by parliament at any time with a simple supermajority. This incumbent power was used as recently as late 2024 to adjust lines 18 months before the April 2026 election. However, in a striking irony, the very system built to entrench the incumbent was overwhelmed by a record 80% voter turnout and a resounding victory for the opposition Tisza Party, proving that while gerrymandering can severely skew the results, it can still be toppled when voters reach a breaking point.

Malaysia is a long-term example of incumbent lock largely achieved through extreme gerrymandering, where a single coalition held power for six decades despite losing the popular vote in multiple cycles. Though Malaysia has a constitutional 8-year interval for redrawing its boundaries, it lacks a buffer zone to prevent last-minute changes. In 2018, a massive redrawing of the map was rushed through Parliament and signed into law just days before the election was called, creating an immediate tactical advantage for the ruling party.

In 2023, El Salvador’s government removed a ban on modifying the electoral system within a year of an election. This allowed the government to drastically reduce the number of legislative districts and eliminate seats in opposition strongholds just eight months before the 2024 election. By redrawing the entire national map so close to the vote, they fundamentally changed the field of play at a moment when opposition parties had already begun their candidate selection based on the old boundaries.

The fundamental takeaway is that resilient democratic systems prioritize predictability over political utility. While boundary changes are a necessary response to population shifts, they must occur within a “no-fly zone”—carried out openly, on a fixed timetable, and under technical rules that are locked in long before the first ballot is cast. When a system allows redistricting to be triggered at any moment for a tactical edge, it sacrifices the institutional stability that is the hallmark of a healthy democracy.

The True Costs of a Moving Target

The escalating trend toward U.S. mid-decade redistricting is one of many signals that the rules of the game are increasingly being manipulated for short-term partisan gain. This shift creates a growing cycle of instability carried from election cycle to election cycle, and it is the democratic process and voters, regardless of party affiliation, who pay a heavy price. Amongst the costs are:

• The Distortion of the Public Voice: Perhaps the most significant cost is the risk that voters lose a true voice in their representation. When lines are adjusted to maximize a specific outcome, the election can become a foregone conclusion rather than a genuine choice. Instead of candidates competing to win over a community, the process is reversed: the map is drawn to select a specific electorate, effectively decoupling the result from the actual will of the people. This distortion is further amplified by the surge of dark money into these off-cycle battles, a trend playing out on both sides of Virginia’s redistricting campaigns. As non-disclosed donors bankroll aggressive ad campaigns to influence both map-making and the resulting referendums, the redistricting process further shifts away from public transparency.

• Administrative and Fiscal Drain: While redistricting is generally an expensive process, constant litigation and mid-cycle redraws drain additional millions in taxpayer funds. For example, California’s November 2025 redistricting special election cost $282 million! Those are public resources that could be directed toward infrastructure, schools, or healthcare, but are instead swallowed by legal fees and the massive administrative costs of re-running redistricting processes.

• The Erosion of Trust: As voters face repeated confusion over shifting district lines and changing representatives, they begin to lose trust in the election process. In Texas, for example, the 2025 redraw left some Houston districts with only 25% of their original constituents, effectively severing long-standing community ties overnight. New precinct lines, finalized just months before the March 2026 primaries, also triggered widespread chaos when voters showed up at their traditional polling stations, only to be turned away. When the “where” and “who” of an election are constantly in flux, the fundamental link between a constituent and their representative is weakened. It creates a sense that the system is being managed for the benefit of the players rather than the people.

• The Governance Gap: Every month spent in a courtroom or a map-room is time that elected officials and election administrators aren’t spending on the business of governing. In Indiana, the December 2025 special session legally barred the legislature from addressing anything but redistricting. When amendments were introduced to repeal the 7% utility sales tax or address the 30,000-child waitlist for day care, they were ruled 'not germane.’ The state spent three weeks on a map that ultimately failed, while Hoosiers’ actual needs were procedurally silenced.

Ultimately, a healthy democracy requires a stable foundation. Whether off-cycle map-making happens in a blue, red, or purple state, the loss of predictability and a further weakening of our electoral guardrails will be most felt by American voters who are left to foot the bill, navigate the chaos, and face an erosion of their democratic rights.

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Mail-in voting is older than the country itself. The first American soldiers to cast absentee ballots did so before the Constitution was even written. Earlier this week, with the stroke of a pen, President Trump signed an Executive Order that could make it dramatically harder for millions of Americans to do the same. The White House once again cited the need to keep non-citizens from voting, noting that “lax verification and self-certification loopholes in some States have left gaps that undermine public confidence in election outcomes.” But by trying to regulate mail-in ballots—a power the Constitution traditionally reserves for the states—President Trump has set the stage for a legal firestorm. Is this a necessary safeguard for voter integrity, or is it, as critics claim, an unconstitutional power grab designed to reshape the 2026 midterms?

Today, we’re breaking down what the new Executive Order actually says, and why the battle over your mailbox is just beginning.

Decoding the Executive Order

The White House frames the March 31, 2026 “Ensuring Citizenship Verification and Integrity in Federal Elections” EO as necessary to build voter confidence in an electoral process rife with fraud. The order contains several directives:

• Creation of a State Citizenship List: The order directs the Social Security Administration and Department of Homeland Security (DHS) to compile and send to each state a State Citizenship List derived from “federal citizenship and naturalization records, SSA records, SAVE data and other relevant Federal databases.” Note that there is no unified citizenship database from which this information could be derived, meaning the potential for citizens to be left off a master list is a real possibility. Examples of this have already been seen in St. Louis County where 35% of voters initially flagged as non-citizens by the DHS SAVE database were actually naturalized citizens and in Texas where one county saw an error rate as high as 14%.

• The USPS’s New Mandate: The EO instructs the USPS to treat mail-in ballots as a distinct class of mail that requires a unique, federally-standardized Intelligent Mail barcode. The burden of this mandate falls on multiple shoulders. Experts like Tammy Patrick at the Election Center note that many election offices lack the resources needed to comply with such constraints, including high-speed printers or the specialized software required to generate the barcodes, let alone the budget to redesign ballot envelopes to meet these new standards in such a short amount of time. Furthermore, this mandate hits a Postal Service already under significant strain. In testimony before the House Committee on Oversight and Accountability on March 18, 2026, Postmaster General David Steiner warned that the USPS is on course to run out of cash in less than 12 months. By forcing a cash-strapped agency to retrain staff, overhaul mail-sorting infrastructure, and take on an entirely new role as elections gatekeeper, the order risks creating delays and confusion at odds with its voter confidence goals.

• 60-Day Rule for List Creation: The order requires states to provide their mail-in or absentee ballot participation lists to the USPS 60 days before the election. The USPS cannot transmit mail-in or absentee ballots to voters if they are not on the State-specific list. In essence, this means there could be no exemptions for last-minute health or travel emergencies. Organizations like the ACLU and Elias Law Group have already cited this 60-day rule in their initial filings against the EO, arguing it violates the Voting Rights Act by creating an undue burden on voters who experience emergency life changes.

• Crime and Punishment: The EO explicitly directs the Attorney General to “prioritize the investigation and, as appropriate, the prosecution” of state and local officials who issue ballots to anyone the federal government deems ineligible. Section 5 also asks the Attorney General to review whether federal funds can be withheld from noncompliant States and localities. This could create a powerful chilling effect on election administration across the country.

While the President noted in his Oval Office remarks that there would still be exceptions for who would be allowed to vote through the mail — for members of the military, those who are ill, travelers, and people with disabilities— the Executive Order does not actually carve out any special rules for these groups. Instead it applies a blanket requirement that the USPS only transmit ballots to individuals who appear on the State Participation List. Since the list must be finalized a minimum of 60 days before an election, it could very well create a barrier for the soldier deployed at the last minute or the senior who falls ill three weeks before the vote.

The Constitutional Tug-of-War: Who Actually Decides?

At the heart of the outcry over this Executive Order is a fundamental question of American law: Does the President have the authority to tell states how to run their elections? It’s a question that will affect every state: eight states plus D.C. currently use Universal Mail-In voting, where you receive a ballot automatically; twenty-eight states offer No-Excuse Absentee, where you have to ask but don’t need a reason; and fourteen states still require a formal excuse, like being out of town or having a medical condition.

The answer lies in two specific parts of the U.S. Constitution that are currently being cited by legal scholars and state Attorneys General:

1. The Elections Clause (Article I, Section 4)

The Constitution is specific about who holds the administer elections. It states: “The Times, Places and Manner of holding Elections for Senators and Representatives, shall be prescribed in each State by the Legislature thereof...”

For over two centuries, this clause has been interpreted to mean that States, not the Federal government, have the primary power to decide if you vote in person, by mail, or via a drop box. The Clause does allow Congress (the Legislative branch) to “make or alter” these regulations, but does not grant that power to the President (the Executive branch).

2. The 10th Amendment

The “reserved powers” amendment specifies that any power not explicitly granted to the federal government belongs to the States. Because administering elections isn’t a power explicitly given to the White House, many constitutional experts argue that an Executive Order trying to mandate citizenship lists or USPS barcodes related to elections is an unconstitutional reach.

The Administration’s Counterargument

The administration argues that under the Take Care Clause (Article II, Section 3), the President has a duty to ensure that federal laws—like those requiring voters to be citizens—are faithfully executed. Supporters emphasize this EO addresses real gaps: state verification systems vary widely; self-certification loopholes exist; and public confidence in federal elections has eroded. They argue standardized federal tools like the State Citizenship List close these inconsistencies without usurping state authority over election mechanics.

But can the President use an Executive Order to bypass Congress and force states to change their procedures? Most legal experts say no, which is why we are seeing immediate injunctions filed in federal courts. In cases like Youngstown Sheet & Tube Co. v. Sawyer, the Supreme Court ruled that the Take Care Clause does not give the President the power to be a lawmaker. He can only “execute” what Congress has already authorized. Since Congress hasn’t authorized any part of the EO, challengers will argue the President is “taking care” of laws that don’t exist. Given its direct conflict with state sovereignty, many legal observers anticipate the EO will be vacated entirely or struck down as unconstitutional before a single provision takes effect.

From the Battlefield to the Ballot Box: Absentee Voting is Part of Our Revolutionary Roots

But this legal dispute is about more than constitutional theory—absentee voting is woven into America's founding. In fact, the seeds were planted before the Constitution was even written and lie in our Revolutionary roots.

The most famous 18th-century example of absentee voting hails from Hollis, New Hampshire. In December 1775, a group of Continental Army soldiers was stationed away from home, fighting in the early stages of the American Revolution. They sent a formal letter to their town leaders asking if they could still have a say in the local election. The town held a meeting and made a landmark decision: they would count the soldiers’ votes “as if the men were present themselves.” It was a radical idea for the time—that a citizen’s voice wasn’t tethered to their physical body, but to their status as a member of the community. That decision set something in motion that would shape American democracy for the next 250 years:

• 1864 (The Civil War): With millions of men away from home, the Union faced a stark choice: let the soldiers vote or let the election fail. Ultimately, 150,000 Union soldiers cast their ballots from the field or by mail.

• 1944 (WWII): Congress passed the “Soldier Voting Act,” enabling the creation of the Official Federal War Ballot—a simplified, universal write-in ballot that could be printed and distributed en masse by the War Department. This allowed 3.4 million service members to cast absentee ballots in 1944, compared to just 28,000 who voted in the 1942 midterms.

• The 1980s-2000s: States began realizing that absentee voting helped more than just soldiers—it helped the elderly, the disabled, and rural workers. Oregon famously moved to an all-mail system in 2000, finding it saved money and increased turnout across the board.

2020: The Great Accelerator

In 2020, election administrators across the country faced an unprecedented challenge: how to keep the ballot accessible when showing up in person could cost you your life. Their solution shifted mail-in voting from a niche alternative to the primary method for roughly 43% of all voters, almost double the rate of 2016.

What started as an emergency measure became the new normal. States like Nevada, Vermont, and New Jersey saw the high voter participation rates and moved to permanent Universal Mail-In or expanded No-Excuse systems. The pandemic also popularized the secure drop box in many states, creating a hybrid model that combined the convenience of a mail ballot with the immediate security of a physical hand-off, bypassing potential postal delays.

However, for the first time in history, mail-in voting also became a deeply polarized issue. While it was once used at similar rates by Republicans and Democrats, the 2020 cycle saw a massive red-blue split in how people voted – in person or absentee. That partisan divide is what made voter fraud such a potent political charge — and it’s the claim at the center of the Executive Order.

The “Fraud” Question

“The cheating on mail-in voting is legendary. It’s horrible what’s going on. I think this will help a lot with elections.” President Trump at the EO’s signing.

The President’s claim has not been backed up by the data. The Heritage Foundation’s Election Fraud database, the Brennan Center’s review of the database, and other studies on systemic voter fraud in the U.S. show that voter fraud of any kind is exceedingly rare. From the Heritage Foundation database, I was able to pull up only 387 cases of fraudulent use of absentee ballots between 1982 and 2025, the majority of which were not non-citizens casting a fraudulent mail-in ballot. As election experts point out, the U.S. has built a robust set of security procedures for postal votes: every mail-in ballot is tracked by a serial number tied to a specific registered voter, with signature verification acting as an additional check. While isolated incidents have occurred, there has never been a documented case of mail-in fraud large enough to affect a statewide or national outcome. Most cases have turned out to be administrative errors — a voter who moved and didn’t update their address — rather than coordinated fraud.

The most telling data point may come from the White House itself. According to Palm Beach County records, President Trump, Melania Trump, and Barron Trump all cast their ballots by mail in the Florida State House special election on March 24, 2026. If the system is secure enough to protect the President's own vote, what problem does the EO actually solve?

The Global Perspective: Is the U.S. an Outlier?

A central theme of the administration’s rhetoric is that the U.S. is an international outlier when it comes to elections, whether on voter ID or postal voting. In a Truth Social post, the President stated, “We are now the only Country in the World that uses Mail-In Voting. All others gave it up because of the MASSIVE VOTER FRAUD ENCOUNTERED.”

However, the International Institute for Democracy and Electoral Assistance’s comparative global data shows that at least 32 countries allow postal voting, with 12 — including Canada, Korea and New Zealand — allowing all voters to use the mail without requiring an excuse. Far from giving it up, many countries expanded their postal voting infrastructure during the 2020s. In Switzerland, nearly 90% of voters now cast their ballots by mail. In Germany, roughly half the electorate voted by post in their most recent federal election. In India, the postal ballot is a critical lifeline for millions — from Armed Forces members stationed away from home to senior citizens and people with disabilities. Just this February, Bangladesh—a nation navigating a delicate democratic transition—introduced its first-ever universal postal system for over a million voters.

In almost every case, countries that make postal voting easier see higher and more consistent turnout — and the debate beyond our borders has largely shifted from ‘Is it legal?’ to ‘How do we make it more efficient and inclusive?’ For much of the 20th century, the U.S. led that push toward increased ballot accessibility, from the Soldier Voting Act to the expansion of no-excuse absentee balloting. Now, as other countries follow suit, the U.S. finds itself moving in the opposite direction.

The Bottom Line

While federal courts are expected to issue at least a temporary restraining order in the coming days, the 2026 midterms are a mere eight months away — and the legal battles over this EO could stretch well beyond them. That legal question matters because, in practice, the order would not just test constitutional boundaries in court — it would also reshape how states register voters, mail ballots, and process eligibility for millions of people. The stakes are not hypothetical.

Should the EO be implemented, the real impact won’t be stopping fraudulent votes; rather, it will be preventing legitimate ballots from ever being cast. Mail-in restrictions will hit seniors, rural voters, military families, and working Americans hardest — the very groups who rely on the flexibility of the mailbox. The citizenship list adds another layer of risk: databases built from incomplete federal records have already shown they can incorrectly flag naturalized citizens. Together, these two mechanisms don’t just tighten the rules — they concentrate the burden on specific groups of fully eligible American voters. The administration argues it is protecting the integrity of every vote. But security and accessibility are not, and should not be, opposing values. The countries that have made voting easier have not seen their elections undermined — instead they have seen more of their citizens participate in democracy, thereby making the elections more legitimate and the country more secure. America once led this expansion of ballot access. The question now is whether the U.S. will continue leading toward more secure, accessible democracy—or turn away from that path.

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As someone who has spent more than 25 years working in elections around the world, I often get the question from American friends and family: “What’s the big deal about voter ID? So many other countries use it—is it really such a bad idea here?”

It’s a fair question.

Many other countries do have voter ID, but often its tied to a larger infrastructure and national ID systems which are the backbone of everyday life. In these countries, a single card or digital credential unlocks everything from banking and land ownership to social benefits and voting. It is a service the state provides as a matter of course, not a hurdle that citizens are asked to clear on their own.

Take Argentina. A national identity card (Documento Nacional de Identidad, or DNI) is issued at birth and renewed at set intervals, and you need it for nearly every aspect of daily life, from opening a bank account to registering property. The same DNI number underpins voter registration, so you don’t “sign up” to vote in the way Americans think of it—you simply show the card you’ve used since childhood at your polling place.

In Estonia, every citizen receives a mandatory digital ID card with an embedded chip that serves as the login key for health records, taxes, banking, contracts, and more. Because nearly the entire population has this card and their data is in a central population registry, voter registration is automatic and “i‑voting” from home is possible by inserting the card, entering a PIN, and casting a ballot online.

In Germany, residents over 16 are required to have an identity card (Personalausweis), which they use to open bank accounts, pick up registered mail, and travel throughout much of Europe. The ID is tied to a mandatory local residency registration system, so when you update your address with the authorities, the voter roll updates in the background—registration is effectively a service the state performs, not a burden placed on each individual.

There are examples of similar ID systems in Mexico, India, Sweden, South Korea and other nations around the world. In all of these systems, the state takes responsibility for establishing identity, maintaining accurate records, and making sure eligible voters are on the rolls. The ID is not an extra hoop to jump through because it is already part of the infrastructure that makes participation possible.

How Does the U.S. Landscape Differ?

The international model doesn’t translate neatly to the United States because we are missing the underlying infrastructure. We have no national identification database and no single, universal ID document that every citizen carries as a matter of course.

On top of that, our federalist system produces a patchwork of rules about what counts as voter ID. Some states require strict, government‑issued photo ID to vote in person. Others accept a wider range of documents, or do not require ID at all for most voters. There is no federal ID standard, and there has been no federal mandate for documentary proof of citizenship to register.

In practice, that means the burden of proving identity and citizenship often falls entirely on the individual. To satisfy stricter voter ID rules, citizens may need to track down original birth certificates, navigate vital‑records offices, or pay for a passport that can cost over $130 when you include fees and photos. Instead of identity being a service the state provides, it becomes a test that voters must pass.

The New Federal Push

The current fight in Washington centers on three federal proposals—the SAVE Act, the SAVE America Act, and the MEGA Act—that all claim to crack down on supposed surges in non‑citizen voting and are framed as “election integrity” measures. In practice, they move the goalposts for registration and voting in ways that assume a national‑ID infrastructure the U.S. simply does not have.

• The SAVE Act would require voters to present documentary proof of citizenship, such as a passport, birth certificate, or naturalization certificate, in order to register. That would turn what has largely been a sworn‑statement process into one that hinges on specific documents that millions of eligible citizens may not have at hand.

• The SAVE America Act would take what is in SAVE, add a strict photo ID requirement at the polls nationwide and tighten rules around mail-in voting. It has already passed the House and is scheduled for debate and a vote in the Senate this week, with some Republicans talking about how to get around the filibuster rules to get it passed.

• The MEGA Act would go even further by mandating frequent, aggressive voter‑roll purges and sharply restricting or effectively banning universal mail‑in voting in federal elections.

Supporters present these bills as common sense safeguards that close loopholes and restore trust. They argue that our system relies too heavily on an honor system and that physical documents are the way to ensure only citizens register and vote. Critics counter that these bills disenfranchise millions of voters who lack access to the required documents.

President Trump has publicly labeled the SAVE America Act his “No. 1 priority” and is pressing Republicans to nationalize stricter ID and mail‑voting rules from Washington. Senate Republicans are staging a high‑profile floor fight this week to put Democrats on the record, even as many acknowledge the bill is unlikely to become law in its current form. It is also highly possible that, if not passed, many of the key pieces from these bills could be incorporated into an executive order.

At the same time, some states are not waiting for Congress and are jumping forward in the process to keep noncitizens from voting. Utah recently passed an omnibus law (H.B. 300) that tightens photo ID rules and expands officials’ authority to purge voter rolls. Ohio and New Hampshire have moved to integrate proof‑of‑citizenship requirements into their registration processes, effectively demanding a passport or birth certificate just to get on the rolls.

What Does the Data Actually Say About Non-citizen Voting?

If we are going to overhaul our voting system so dramatically, we should have clear evidence the problem exists at the scale claimed. If non‑citizen voting were happening widely, we would expect to see it in large‑scale audits of the voter rolls and recent elections. Instead, the most recent reviews in multiple states all point to the same conclusion: the problem is remarkably small.

Look at the sweeping citizenship audit conducted by Utah’s Lieutenant Governor’s office of its entire voter registration list in early 2026. Election officials spent months scrubbing the rolls of over 2 million voters to find non-citizens. The result? They identified only one confirmed non-citizen on the rolls—and that individual had never actually voted. State officials emphasized that more than 99.9% of registered voters were confirmed citizens, and many of the other initially flagged records turned out to be missing data or clerical errors, not fraud.

In Iowa, a high-profile 2025 audit began with a scare of 2,176 potential non-citizens on the voter rolls. After a manual review and federal database checks, that number was slashed by nearly 90%, revealing only 277 non-citizens on the rolls—and only 35 who actually cast a ballot. In a state of over 2 million voters, we are talking about a ‘fraud’ rate that is mathematically microscopic.

In Michigan, a comprehensive statewide audit following the 2024 election compared 7.2 million records and identified only 15 instances of potential non-citizens casting a ballot. That is 0.00028% of the more than 5.7 million votes cast.

In Louisiana, a 2025 investigation utilized federal databases to scrub voter rolls dating back to the 1980s. Out of 2.9 million current voters, they identified 390 non-citizens. Of those, only 79 had cast a ballot at any point in the last 40 years, and even those findings may have been based on errors. When you realize that over 74 million votes were cast in Louisiana during that same period, the ‘problem’ represents a microscopic fraction of the total.

Taken together, these audits show that non‑citizen voting is rare. A quick perusal of the Heritage Foundation’s Election Fraud database shows that even it found only 99 cases of non-citizen voting across the entire country between 1982 and 2025. Compared to the number of Americans who have cast their votes over the many U.S. elections held over those years, the numbers are statistically negligible. Our existing systems—citizenship checks, list maintenance, and post‑election audits—are already remarkably effective at preventing significant numbers of ineligible ballots from being cast.

The Barrier for Voters is Bigger Than You Think

When states shift the burden of proof entirely onto the voter, they create what a 2024 University of Maryland study finds are significant barriers to entry. According to the research, more than 21 million eligible U.S. citizens (about 9% of the voting-age population) do not have easy access to documents proving citizenship, such as a birth certificate or a valid passport.

The burden isn’t equally distributed. Those who might be hit the hardest will be:

• Naturalized Citizens: Because they often appear differently in various federal and state databases, they are more likely to be flagged by back‑end checks and forced to navigate extra paperwork to prove they are eligible voters.

• Rural Voters: In areas where the nearest DMV or vital‑records office is an hours‑long round trip, stricter ID and documentation rules effectively impose a travel and time tax on voting.

• Low-Income Individuals: When replacement birth certificates cost $20–$30 plus fees, and passports much more, documentation rules start to look like a poll tax.

• Students & Seniors: Student IDs are often explicitly excluded from strict ID laws, and many older voters no longer drive and may not have current licenses that meet new requirements.

In other words, the people most likely to be caught up in new documentation rules are not shadowy non‑citizen voters; they are citizens who already face higher barriers to participation.

Trust and Inclusion

If Voter ID is a conversation about building trust, it’s a conversation worth having. Trust is the basic currency of democracy. People need to believe that the system is fair, that the rules are clear, and that the outcomes reflect the will of the voters.

However, when we introduce laws that solve a non-existent problem but potentially disenfranchise millions of legitimate citizens, we aren’t creating a more secure, accurate or trustworthy electoral process—in fact quite the opposite: we’re creating one that is more costly, exclusive and less democratic.

If the U.S. wants to pursue a voter ID to “build trust,” then the burden should fall squarely on the government to ensure every eligible citizen receives that ID—free of charge, proactively, in a timely way, and without the bureaucratic maze that currently stands in the way.

Americans have traditionally been proud of how well our elections are run, and we are not wrong to feel that way: they are administered by election professionals who have built an accurate and resilient electoral system, decentralized by design and remarkably secure. The question we must ask is this: are we strengthening that system or trading its hard-won inclusivity for a solution that solves nothing for a problem that doesn’t exist while sidelining millions of eligible citizens? A democracy that demands more paperwork than participation is solving the wrong problem.

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