The American Civil Liberties Union is mobilizing a $50 million operation for the 2026 midterm election, deploying paid staff and volunteers across battleground states to monitor voting, ballot counting, and certification as the organization braces for what it sees as unprecedented threats to electoral integrity under the Trump administration.
The initiative, the largest election investment in ACLU history, assigns more than 100 paid staff members and over 3,000 volunteer leaders to coordinate thousands of additional volunteers focused on voter access, turnout, and election administration oversight. The organization has already trained 5,000 people on election work and plans to train another 5,000.
Seven battleground states will see the bulk of the investment: Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Nevada, North Carolina, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin. The monitoring of canvassing and certification processes represents a new operational focus for the organization.
Deidre Schifeling, the ACLU's chief political and advocacy officer, framed the scale of the effort as a response to what she characterized as systematic attacks on democracy. "We are in a really unprecedented situation here with this administration's abuses of power and concerted attempts to suppress voters, to gerrymander, to basically co-opt our democratic system," she said.
The ACLU is already moving. The organization is defending more than 80 lawsuits across two dozen states and Washington D.C. on voting rights, redistricting, and mail ballot restrictions. In Georgia's primary last month, local ACLU monitors observed voting and vote counting in seven counties, with plans to expand monitoring to 30 counties ahead of November elections.
Half of the $50 million budget targets down-ballot races and ballot measures, including state Supreme Court contests in Montana and North Carolina, secretary of state races in Arizona and Nevada, and state legislative contests in North Carolina, Montana, Georgia, and Michigan. The ACLU frames this as a "firewall for freedom strategy" designed to protect state-level institutions from federal interference.
The organization's concerns stem from Trump administration actions that election officials say challenge traditional state authority. In March, Trump signed an executive order to create federal voter lists and restrict mail delivery of certain ballots. The Justice Department has sued 30 states and Washington D.C. to obtain voter roll data, so far without success. The FBI seized election materials from Arizona and Georgia related to 2020 contests, demanded 2024 ballots from Wayne County, Michigan, and attempted to interview an election official in Milwaukee County, Wisconsin.
Trump stated in February that Republicans should "federalize" elections, calling on the party to take control of voting in multiple locations. "The Republicans should say: 'We want to take over. We should take over the voting in at least, many, 15 places.' The Republicans ought to nationalize the voting," he said.
Litigation has blocked some efforts. Election officials worry about federal agents at polling sites, though federal law prohibits deploying "troops or armed men" there. A senior Department of Homeland Security official confirmed in February that immigration agents will not appear at polling places this year.
Schifeling said the ACLU stands ready to respond through litigation, protests, or public information campaigns where the administration undermines electoral legitimacy. "Given all the signals that we've received from this administration, all of the totally unprecedented ways that they have acted to intervene in elections and to undermine mail-in voting and to insert DOJ in election processes in a way that is unprecedented and inappropriate, we would be foolish to not be prepared," she said. "So we are prepared, but we hope that we don't need to use this tool."
Author Sarah Mitchell: "The ACLU's $50 million bet on election monitoring is less about confidence in the system and more about fear that it's under genuine attack."
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