Election Defense Scenarios

“Election Defense Scenarios” provides citizens with 18 crisis blueprints, blending history and law to support actionable responses, ensuring preparedness against voter suppression.

Contents

Introduction

Election Defense Scenarios is a field guide for protecting democracy. This resource walks readers through eighteen detailed scenarios — from voter roll purges and redistricting attacks to armed intimidation at polling places and post-election certification battles — giving organizers, poll workers, community leaders, and everyday citizens the knowledge they need before a crisis hits.

Each scenario draws on real historical examples from Georgia to Belarus to Tuskegee, showing not just how threats unfold, but how ordinary people have successfully pushed back.

What makes this guide indispensable is its refusal to inspire helplessness. Rather than cataloguing threats for their own sake, every scenario pairs clear-eyed analysis with concrete, actionable responses grounded in law, history, and proven organizing strategy constantly asking “What would you do?” Because the best time to prepare is now.

Using the Scenarios
The People’s Election Playbook

(scenarios roughly ordered by timing)

BEFORE ELECTION DAY
Scenario 1: Redistricting to Erase Representation
Scenario 2: The Voter Roll Purge
Scenario 3: ID Requirements Close to Election Day
Scenario 4: Mail-In Ballot Deadline Changes
Scenario 5: Drop Box Sabotoge/Bomb Threats
Scenario 6: DOJ Election Fraud Investigations

ELECTION DAY
Scenario 7: Last-Minute Voting Location Chaos
Scenario 8: Mass Voter Challenge Campaign
Scenario 9: Disinformation Flood: Place, Time, Day
Scenario 10: Armed Civilians at Polling Places
Scenario 11: Federal Agents at Polling Places

AFTER ELECTION DAY
Scenario 12: Recounts and Ballot Curing
Scenario 13: SCOTUS Overturns Counting
Scenario 14: Canvassers Refuses to Certify
Scenario 15: Federal Seizure of Ballots
Scenario 16: Congress Refuses to Seat Winners

SPECIAL SCENARIOS
Scenario 17: DC: Override of Home Rule Election
Scenario 18: Puerto Rico: Federal Interference

Bonus: 1-day Scenario Planning Agenda

Download Resource

Election Defense Scenarios PDF

Webinar

Online recording of 101 noncooperation webinar – a 2 hour virtual training on civil resistance and noncooperation. It covers the authoritarian threat and how to defeat it. It focuses on countering the all-out assault on our elections and concrete steps for taking action.