Where Democracy Thrives or Dies

In January, President Donald Trump instigated a shocking escalation in his yearslong assault on our democracy when he sent Tulsi Gabbard, the director of national intelligence, and FBI agents on a raid of the Fulton County Elections Office to seek evidence to back his debunked claims about widespread voter fraud in the 2020 presidential election.

Despite multiple independent audits verifying the indisputable fact that former President Joe Biden legitimately won the state of Georgia in 2020, Trump has continued to deny the state’s election results, even bringing it up during speeches at the World Economic Forum in January and the National Prayer Breakfast in February. He has also repeatedly called for the elections to be nationalized.

Some people may say the Trump administration’s unprecedented conspiracy theories about voter fraud and the 2020 election results are an effective tactic to dilute the impact of any given piece of news. So I want to begin by stating two simple facts: Our democracy is under attack, and Georgia is on the front lines. As U.S. Sen. Jon Ossoff said shortly after the raid occurred, “From Minnesota to Georgia, on display to the whole world is a president spiraling out of control, wielding federal law enforcement as an unaccountable instrument of personal power and revenge.”

There have always been people in power determined to maintain their grip by keeping people away from the polls, but at every turn, we the people won.

In 2020, when Trump first told Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger to “find” 11,780 votes, which was the exact number needed to swing the election his way, we were lucky enough to have at least a few people in power in this state whose loyalties lay more with the people of Georgia than with Trump. In addition to Raffensperger, Gov. Brian Kemp and a handful of others refused to indulge his request, and Trump has not forgiven them since.

Next time, we might not be so lucky. Most of the conservative candidates running for statewide and federal office this year have made loyalty to Trump one of the key pillars of their platform, and those who haven’t are trailing in the polls.

While none of those candidates will be sworn into office until after the 2026 midterms, some state legislators are already feeling emboldened by Trump’s actions. Despite the fact that the FBI’s affidavit for the raid contained recycled conspiracy theories, some GOP leaders have suggested that the state should take over Fulton County elections until the county proves it is capable of running elections in Georgia.

Instead of standing up to Trump and fighting for the foundational democratic ideals that have empowered our country for the last 250 years, some Republicans are seizing on his deception to try to protect their own power in this state at any cost. Some are also working to disenfranchise the voters that they can’t be bothered to persuade anymore.

But even now, I believe that our democracy and people who power it are stronger than those who would try to take it away from us. For many people in this country, our democratic rights did not come easily.

At the founding of this country, only about one in four people had the right to vote, and it took around 130 years for everyone to win that right under the law, plus another 46 years to be able to put that right widely in practice.

There have always been people in power determined to maintain their grip by keeping people away from the polls, but at every turn, we the people won. We marched, we protested, we bled and we died for our rights, and we must not bow to those whose ideal of America is rooted in the 1780s.

We are already hearing from former Trump adviser Steve Bannon that Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents could be deployed at key voting locations this year, although the Department of Homeland Security said it wouldn’t happen. Either way, we must not be deterred.

There are so many more of us than there are of them, and if these tactics can intimidate us out of doing our civic duty, the ones who want to keep us from voting win. If they realize they can dictate our actions via threat of force, then they will do it again and again until the right to vote freely and fairly is a distant dream. So if you believe in the same America that I do, one where the people, not the politicians, are in charge of our elections, then I’ll see you at the polls on May 19.