Episode Details
Back to Episodes“What are the highest-leverage tactics for US election protection in 2026?” by Samy Sekar 🔸
Description
Summary
Power for Democracies (P4Dem) is trying to develop donor recommendations to most effectively counter 2026 US election integrity threats. To do so, we searched for (and believe we found) all the main categories of threats, identified a fairly comprehensive list of counter-tactics, and then evaluated those tactics based on evidence, a theory of change analysis, and expert interviews.
Per our analyses, the following tactics are most promising to address the high-severity threats:
- Volunteers, lawyers & independent poll monitors deployed to contested districts
- Proactive communication by election officials or other trusted local officials about technical security measures
- Prebunking & trusted local media fact-checking campaigns — inoculate voters before they encounter disinformation and build coalitions for real-time correction
- Deploying trusted community intermediaries as "safety ambassadors" to reduce support for political violence
What we did
We set out to identify which threats to the 2026 midterm elections are most severe and which counter-tactics are best supported by evidence — and then to narrow those down to a short list of interventions where philanthropy can add the most value.
The work involved two parallel tracks: a threat severity assessment and a tactic prioritisation process. [...]
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First published:
April 22nd, 2026
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Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.
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