I spent my summer working on a campaign, doing community outreach and speaking with constituents from a range of backgrounds. One concern that repeatedly came up was voting. Following the widespread public discussion of the SAVE Act, many voters expressed uncertainty about their ability to vote safely and freely. Mail-in voters worried their ballots would not get counted, while others worried about harassment at the polls. With the 2026 midterm elections rapidly approaching, these concerns have been amplified as both parties compete for control of Congress. An AP-NORC poll found that about one-third of Americans said they were worried their right to vote was under a “major threat”. The right to free and fair elections is a pillar of American democracy, yet many Americans feel their right to vote is under threat, raising the question of how substantial that threat actually is. The 2026 election cycle raises an even larger question: how are free and fair elections being undermined, and what does this tell us about democratic erosion in the United States? 

One concern is the new efforts toward voter discrimination. Rustow argues in Transitions to Democracy: Toward a Dynamic Model, national unity is essential to the functionality of democracy, and the people must be under broad agreement on the boundaries of their political community. Lieberman, Mettler, Pepinsky, Roberts, and Valelly make a similar point in The Trump Presidency and American Democracy: A Historical and Comparative Analysis, claiming that the Trump-era has reignited American contestation over who is included in this. Race has long been an axis of political division, and President Trump has embraced it, taking up a “nativist and race-laden populism” approach. These divisions have resulted in it being harder for people of color to participate in free and fair elections. A notable example of this, reported by Sozan and Olinsky with the Center for American Progress, is the effort by Trump and allies to have federal agents at polls, including ICE Agents, to intimidate voters to stay away. Although it is against the law, the threat may be enough to scare people away. The Brennan Center also reported that stricter voter-ID laws in certain states repress Black and Latina voters, who are less likely to possess the full documentation required by these laws.

In this cycle, mail-in voting has been a major area of concern. In Ozan Varol’s Stealth Authoritarianism, attacks on electoral institutions are listed as a key point. Barriers to voting can be disguised as politically legitimate, even beneficial. As Varol states, “These laws can be reconfigured for the seemingly legitimate and neutral purpose of eliminating electoral fraud or political stability to raise the costs of unseating the incumbents” (Varol 1701). President Trump framed his SAVE Act pitch as making voting more secure and trustworthy, which many Americans view positively, but the concern is that it could make voting disproportionately more difficult for his opponents’ supporters. According to polling by the States United Democracy Center, in 2024 about 1 in 4 registered democrats voted by mail, as opposed to 1 in 5 republicans. In 2022, the gap was even wider, with 1 in 3 Democrats and 1 in 6 Republicans mailing in their ballots. New federal laws, proposals, and actions that make it harder to reliably vote by mail may therefore disproportionately affect Democratic voters rather than “voter fraud,” as the president cites. Thus, even when changes happen through legal channels, they can still undermine free and fair elections. 

Another hot topic this election cycle is gerrymandering. A publication by Paul Massari with Harvard states that since the 2024 election, California, Florida, Texas, Missouri, North Carolina, Tennessee, and Ohio have redrawn their congressional districts in a way that gives the advantage to the current ruling party. Only two states had voluntarily redistricted between the decennial census in the past 50 years, so there has been a notable increase. In Levitsky and Ziblatt’s How Democracies Die, they discuss how mutual toleration and institutional forbearance between political parties are necessary for democracy to work. Mutual toleration is defined as the idea that as long as rivals both play by democratic rules, they will accept their legitimacy, and forbearance is defined as restraining from exercising legal power to the fullest extent in a way that pushes the limits of democracy. Gerrymandering can be a violation of both. The vast majority of the states that redrew district lines are red states seeking to preserve their partisan advantage. This may demonstrate that some Republican officials do not view Democratic opponents as legitimate competitors and are willing to stretch the limits of their institutional power to preserve their advantage. Institutional forbearance is also at play. Redistricting is legal, but the issue at hand is whether or not using legally available authority between censuses to maximize partisan advantage exemplifies how some incumbents are over-exercising their institutional power, forgoing forbearance, and demonstrating a lack of mutual toleration toward opponents. 

The 2026 election cycle demonstrates that the right to free and fair elections is at risk in the United States. In order to keep blue candidates out of office, some Republican officials have pushed the bounds of what is acceptable within a democracy. They have proposed laws and rules, and have made threats that aim to keep minority voters away from polls, they have attempted to manipulate voting institutions, such as attacking mail-in ballots, and they have thrown out mutual toleration and institutional forbearance, rejecting the legitimacy of opponents and pushing the limits of their power. The concerns around the 2026 election cycle raise a larger question of whether or not the electoral institutions in the United States remain legitimately accessible, competitive, and representative of the people.