This article was originally published by The Chronicle of Philanthropy
By Alex Daniels
With concerns about election interference running high, many nonprofits are positioning their staff and volunteers to be the eyes and ears at polling places during the November midterm elections.
While election experts stress that the vast majority of Americans will be able to vote without any sort of interference, rising threats against poll workers has pro-democracy groups on guard, ready to document any disturbances, report problems to the proper authorities, and de-escalate any clashes before they become serious.
Nonprofits have often played this role in the past, but they have focused on individual troublemakers and people tied to extremist groups making direct threats to poll workers or intimidating voters. This year there is a new wrinkle: the possible placement of federal agents at polling sites.
The possibility that the federal government may, in some circumstances, send ICE officers to polling places has nonprofit leaders like Daryl Lobban, senior vice president of external affairs at Common Cause, worried that federal agents will scare away voters or threaten their safety.
“These are not democratic vibes,” he said, explaining why the group has expanded its voter protection from 14 states to 23.”Our elections historically have been safe and secure, and we now have an administration that is trying to undermine that.”
While the Trump administration has said that it does not have plans to mobilize ICE units at polling places, it has not ruled out sending agents in specific cases.
The League of Women Voters is ramping up its efforts, too. It plans to have 20,000 volunteers at polling sites across the country.
“The goal for us is to create confidence,” said Celina Stewart, the organization’s CEO. ”Every voter should be able to cast their ballot freely, and every poll worker should be able to serve safely. And that has come into question in the last couple of cycles.”
In 2024, foundation grants for election administration, which includes security, reached nearly $200 million, according to data collected with the assistance of AI by the U.S. Democracy Hub. That was a huge increase from the $125 million spent in advance of the 2022 midterms but well short of the nearly $1 billion in foundation grants made in 2020, a year in which support for election administration soared to handle voting during the pandemic.
Because of the lag in public reporting on grant making, it is impossible to say whether philanthropy is chipping in more for election security this year. But nonprofits are reporting a burst of activity in advance of the November 3 ballot. Alliances of hundreds of national and state nonprofits, including the Election Protection coalition, to which the League of Women Voters belongs, and the Committee for Safe and Secure Elections, have worked to provide a nationwide bulwark against threats to secure elections.
The nonprofits have prepared attorneys and other election experts to handle calls at hotlines. They’ve trained local police departments how to respond to threats at polling sites and readied an army of volunteer observers to keep their eyes peeled for problems.
Nonprofits filling the gap left by government
Such a muscular approach is needed, in part because of the “bloodbath” at the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency, the federal department created to protect against both technological and physical threats on U.S. elections, said Lawrence Norden, vice president of the Brennan Center for Justice’s elections and government program.
In 2025, President Trump ordered an investigation into then director of CISA, Christopher Krebs, whom he called a “bad faith actor” because he did not investigate unfounded claims of voting impropriety during the 2020 elections. Since Trump took office, the agency has lost about a third of its more than 3,000 employees through early retirements and downsizing.
In 2023 and 2024, CISA provided a total of 1,300 physical security assessments, which evaluate how prepared local jurisdictions and election offices are for bombings, intruders, and assailants. Much of that effort, Norden said, had fallen by the wayside.
“What’s different this year is that we no longer have a strong federal partner,” Norden said.”CISA didn’t just have all the expertise but it also had strong relationships with the law enforcement and election official community to be trusted to provide those trainings.”
To respond, the Brennan Center has beefed up its election administration budget, which includes preparing for security breaches and disruptions. In 2024, the nonprofit spent just under $11 million on such efforts. This year, its budget is $14.5 million.
The Brennan Center and other democracy nonprofits have attempted to replicate some of the training CISA provided. It is one of the founding groups in the Committee for Safe and Secure Elections. In addition to the Brennan Center, the coalition is led by Protect Democracy, the R Street Institute, and Ready for Tuesday, a consulting firm led by former election officials. The MacArthur Foundation has provided $1 million in support of the effort.
Leading up to the 2024 elections, the group hosted nearly 70 training events to prepare members of law enforcement and election officials for various scenarios that could present dangers on Election Day. This year it has more than doubled that number, holding sessions with the Major County Sheriffs of America and police departments in Austin, Tex., Sacramento, and other jurisdictions.
The committee has distributed more than 100,000 pocket handbooks for police officers to use on Election Day to help remind them what behavior is permissible at polling stations. A big problem, said Tina Barton, a vice president at Ready for Tuesday, is that most officers have little or no experience covering elections and have no idea what their role should be if problems arise.
Barton said law enforcement groups have embraced the effort because the committee studiously avoids anything political in its presentations.
“We do not talk politics,” she said. “We specifically stick to the issues and how they can physically and securely respond in those situations and keep anything political out of it.”
Helping report problems and prepare to file suits
The Election Protection Coalition is also preparing. The effort consists of more than 300 nonprofits that have set up a hotline, 1-866-OUR-VOTE, for observers to report things like long lines and confrontations or even just an unsettling feeling they have about someone’s behavior.
The calls will be handled by one of the more than 1,000 attorneys trained by the Lawyers Committee for Civil Rights Under Law. The lawyers will help determine whether the situation calls for notifying local officials or law enforcement.
“It’s not an inquiry or an assessment that any voter should have to make alone,” said Shaylyn Cochran, the committee’s deputy executive director.
Legal monitors will in some cases complement the thousands of volunteer poll watchers sent out by the coalition to take witness statements, declarations, and any other material that the lawyers may need to draft emergency court pleadings in the event of alleged voter interference.
n addition to readying for legal fights, nonprofits are preparing to help defray tensions. That’s one of the goals of the Democracy Security Project, a nonprofit created in 2024 with funding from the Sixteen Thirty Fund, a progressive social advocacy group, the Open Society Policy Center, and Contina Impact, which processes individual donations to nonprofit causes.
It has trained more than 20,000 nonprofit leaders since its inception for a variety of security concerns, including protecting canvassers, providing event security, and maintaining peace at the polls.
One of the most important things for poll watchers to remember in November is to remain calm if a situation seems to be spiraling out of control, said the project’s co-founder, Maju Varghese.
“If you’re escalating in response to a disruption, it robs you of your ability to think clearly,” he said.
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