Threats to Elected Officials
- Intimidation of State and Local Officeholders: Report documents the increased intimidation and abuse of state and local officeholders and proposes solutions.
- Hostility and Abuse Threaten to Undermine Gains in Representative Democracy: Details how threats to underrepresented groups impede fair representation.
Election Security
- A State Agenda for Election Security and Resiliency: Highlights innovative state approaches to election security and recommends steps that state leaders can take to fill the gaps left by federal cuts.
- Local Election Officials Survey 2025: Finds that local election officials want state and local governments to make up for the loss of federal support for election security.
- Mitigating Election Disruption — Bomb Threats and Hoaxes: Highlights recent trends in election-related bomb threats and hoaxes and offers strategies for proactive planning and response by law enforcement and election officials.
Artificial Intelligence
- Strengthening U.S. Democracy in the Age of AI: Explores how state policymakers can mitigate AI risks to elections and governance.
Public Campaign Financing
- Small Donor Public Financing Explained: Details the benefits, popularity, and features of successful small donor public financing programs.
- New York State’s Public Campaign Financing Program Empowers Constituent Small Donors: Report shows how New York State’s matching program expanded legislative candidates’ reliance on constituent small donors.
- Guide: New York State’s Small Donor Public Financing System: Guide outlines New York State’s small donor public financing system.
Money in Politics
- Fifteen Years Later, Citizens United Defined the 2024 Election: Analyzes how the Supreme Court’s decision shaped the 2024 election and proposes campaign finance reforms.
- Money in Politics Toolkit: Provides resources for advocates and policymakers to develop reforms in six key areas, including public financing, disclosure, and online advertising.
Liberty and National Security
- The Little-Known Federal Agency That’s Primed to Crack Down on Dissent: Encourages political leaders to strengthen safeguards against overreach and abuse by a homeland security agency.
- Federal Efforts to Punish Sanctuary Cities Are Unconstitutional: Examines the federal government’s attempts to force states and cities to enforce federal immigration policy.
- Inside the Federal Protective Service, Homeland Security’s Domestic Police Force: Explains how a DHS agency’s broad mandate and few rules foster abuse and facilitate crackdowns.
- Ending Fusion Center Abuses: Recommends stronger oversight and guardrails for information-sharing agencies called fusion centers, which share sensitive information with federal agencies.
- San Francisco Sets an Example of How to Resist Surveillance in Trump Era: Explains how states can withdraw from counterterrorism task forces with a track record of targeting constituents based on politics, religion, and ethnicity.
- The President’s Power to Call Out the National Guard Is Not a Blank Check: Discusses federal weaponization of state National Guards and strategies for pushing back.
- The Immigration Court System, Explained: Details how immigration courts operate and the legal rights available to individuals navigating the system.
- Principles for Social Media Use by Law Enforcement: Outlines common-sense guardrails states can impose on social media use by law enforcement agencies to protect privacy, civil rights, and civil liberties.
Criminal Justice Reform
- Federal Agenda to Promote Safety and Justice: Proposes targeted federal measures to prevent crime, reduce incarceration and recidivism, and save money.
- Revenue Over Public Safety: Report explores financial incentives throughout the criminal justice system that encourage punitive enforcement and sustain mass incarceration.
- Conviction, Imprisonment, and Lost Earnings: How Involvement with the Criminal Justice System Deepens Inequality: Report examines the long-term economic effects of conviction and imprisonment.
State Courts and Constitutions
- State Court Report: Online publication dedicated to covering legal news, trends, and cutting-edge scholarship, offering insights and commentary from a nationwide network of academics, journalists, judges, and practitioners with diverse perspectives and expertise.
- Sign up for the State Court Report newsletter.
State Voting Laws and Voting Patterns
- Voting Laws Roundup: Regular roundups track changes in state voting laws and identify trends.
- Guns and Voting: Urges states to keep elections peaceful by banning guns at places where votes are cast and counted and enacting stronger anti-intimidation laws.
- State Bills Would Require Passport or Birth Certificate to Register to Vote: Tracks the states pushing restrictive show-your-papers requirements for voter registration and compares them with the federal SAVE Act.
Pro-Democracy Reforms
- How States Can Prevent Election Subversion in 2024 and Beyond: Proposes measures that state legislators, local administrators, and advocates should implement to protect free and fair elections.
- Election Certification: Lays out the steps that state legislatures can take to protect against certification refusals.
Redistricting
- Split Counties in Legislative Redistricting: Study finds that guidelines to preserve counties during redistricting work best when they’re mandated by law.
Attacks on Voting
- The President’s Executive Order on Elections: Explains the illegal executive order that risks preventing millions of eligible American citizens from voting.
- SAVE Act Would Undermine Voter Registration for All Americans: Urges Congress to reject the antidemocratic and ill-conceived SAVE Act.
- Homeland Security’s SAVE Program Exacerbates Risks to Voters: Describes how bad data and a politicized overhaul of a federal tool could spread election fraud lies and disenfranchise voters.
