Steve Bannon suggests president deployed ICE officers to airports as a ‘test run’ for upcoming elections: “We can use this as a test run, as a test case, to really perfect ICE’s involvement in the 2026 midterms.”
From nationalizing voter suppression to flooding the streets with federal agents, the president and his allies are using all the tricks in the authoritarian playbook to tilt the midterms in their favor.
Stop Thief 2026!
No ICE at poll sites
Preserve our right to hand marked paper ballots
Prevent long lines due to frivolous voter challenges
Candidates must pledge not to concede if results are questionable or voters are blocked from voting
New York must pass legislation to protect votes and voters in 2026
WHAT YOU CAN DO:
Insist that candidates be ready to refuse to concede and be ready with lawyers and volunteers to fight for your vote.
Volunteer as a poll worker or observer for a candidate
Sign up for CVIVoter newsletter to get timely updates. cvivoterny@gmail.com
Spread the word that the 2026 midterms will be a war and we all need to be ready
Call legislators to strengthen our election laws
Legislation to protect voters and prevent 2026 Congressional elections being decided by the US House of Representatives:
VIVA NY A6287 (Cunningham)/ S7116 (Cleare), Voting Integrity and Verification Act of NY. Establishes voter right in all polling places to mark a paper ballot by hand or accessible BMD. . A Let NY Vote Coalition priority. Endorsed by NAACP NYS Conference.
A09314 (Pretlow), S10126 (Jamaal Bailey). Prohibits local boards of elections from purchasing direct recording electronic (DRE) voting machines; like VIVA NY, establishes voter right to hand-mark a paper ballot. (ES&S, worried courts might rule its ExpressVote XL’s bar-code-encoded ballots unverifiable, is rewriting XL software to obtain certification under a GOP-imposed 2005 loophole in NYS Election Law allowing counties to purchase DREs.)
CEVA NY A4307 (Dinowitz) S417 (Gianaris), Count Every Vote Act of NY. Clarifies definition of “margin of error” trigger for recounts, including when districts span county or county/borough boundaries. Passed senate 60:2 on 3/11/26; forwarded to Assembly Election Law Committee
ECAA A347A (Paulin) - Election Commissioner Authorization Act. Empowers a single election commissioner, upon a finding of unexplained discrepancies, to order escalation of audit above 3% of voting machines and/or an audit count of a particular contest. Endorsed by NAACP NYS Conference. No senate same as. The Rensselaer County scandal of a vast miscount and mistakenly “defeated” library bond issue, and election commissioners’ initial unwillingness to allow a recount, but eventual voluntary concession, underlines the need for this bill. There is no automatic hand recount when margins of victory exceed 0.5% in NYS election law, and any partisan election commissioner can veto an audit escalation even when discrepancies occur
A6354 (Walker) / nearly identical S3233A (Kavanaugh). Deter Frivolous Challenges to Voter Qualifications: Requires persons who challenge the validity of a voter’s right to vote to provide an affidavit for each challenge. (Students at Stonybrook, Vassar and Bard were all confronted with arbitrary challenges in 2024.) A Let NY Vote Coalition priority
A5846A - AM (Gibbs)/ S4602A (Gounardes). Extends time to vote in event of polling place disruptions longer than 15 minutes. (Courts failed to order a time extension after an e-pollbook failure in Orange County in 2023 shut Saturday voting. Bomb threats were common in swing states in the presidential election in 2024, and in eight NJ counties during their election for governor in 2025. A Let NY Vote Coalition priority.
A7450 (Levenberg)/S2541 (Myrie) Ballot image transparency bill. Requires digital images of ballots and cast vote records (how each ballot was counted) to be made available to the public upon request within one week of elections. (The Democratic Party supported FOIL access to ballot images but the 2017 lawsuit Kosmider v Whitney, 2017, decided to deny FOIL access.)
A1918 (Paulin). Requires audits by hand recount of voter verifiable audit records. (Current law allows automated audits.) NO SAME AS. A Citizens for Voting Integrity NY priority.
Find your New York State legislators
New York State Assembly
https://www.nyassembly.gov/mem/search/
New York State Senate
https://www.nysenate.gov/registration/nojs/form/start/find-my-senatorPARTICIPATE IN ELECTIONS.
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