Editor’s Note: This story discusses work conducted by three separate entities: 1) the ACLU Foundation, a 501(c)(3), which engages in litigation, public education, messaging research, and administrative advocacy programming; 2) the ACLU, a 501 (c)(4), which engages in lobbying, ballot work, and voter mobilization programming, and 3) the ACLU Voter Education Fund (the fund), a 527 nonpartisan, independent-expenditure-only political action committee, which conducts voter education on candidates in select races.
The future of American civil liberties isn't housed in the halls of Congress and White House, we are building it in our own backyards. As federal legislation has stalled, the real power to define the future of civil rights and civil liberties, including voting access and reproductive freedom, lives in local statehouses, secretary of state offices, and lower profile judicial races.
That’s why the ACLU is executing a bold, multi-entity and multi-state electoral strategy to drive progress where it matters most. We launched our largest-ever investment — $25.5M for our voter education electoral program. We are proactively working to preserve our constitutional rights, ensuring that voters can make informed decisions about key civil liberties issues and where candidates land on them.
Voting Rights
Protecting Rights Up and Down The Ballot
Our electoral spending in nine priority states will educate and mobilize voters on the issues at stake in critical down-ballot races and on ballot measures affecting abortion access, LGBTQ rights, voting rights, fair courts, and democracy protections.
The ACLU has an unmatched, 54-strong affiliate network with a permanent political, legal, and advocacy presence across every single state in the union. We have the institutional knowledge, the deep local roots, and the muscle memory to navigate complex state laws because we help write them. And, we sue when politicians break those laws.
State and local officials don’t just form the firewall against federal abuses of power, they support the will of voters across the country. We’ve already seen this model succeed. In the year and half since President Donald Trump returned to office, we worked with governors, state legislatures, and attorneys generals to pass over 135 pieces of legislation and executive orders to protect rights. This included passing state-level bills to protect patient privacy rights for people accessing reproductive and gender affirming health care. It also included laws to increase accountability for federal officials who violate peoples’ rights as well as several statewide 287(g) bans that prevent local law enforcement from coordinating with ICE.
The ACLU Fills Critical Gaps in 2026 Midterms as a Trusted Nonpartisan Source
Too often, voters are flooded with political ads but left without clear information about how candidates and ballot measures could affect their daily lives. We have and will continue to change that. The ACLU’s structure and history allows us to act as a trusted, nonpartisan source of objective information for voters. We do not endorse or oppose individual candidates. Instead, we use our massive national platform and millions of supporters to run a robust voter contact program in partnership with our state affiliates. This work fills a critical information vacuum in lower profile, down-ballot races that have important consequences for daily life, despite a lack of information about candidates’ policy positions.
Consider state supreme courts: These benches are now often the ultimate judges of abortion access, voting rights including fair districts, and racial justice, yet many voters heading to the ballot box have never heard of their state judicial candidates. The ACLU and our Super PAC, the ACLU Voter Education Fund, are uniquely positioned to educate voters on exactly where these candidates stand on civil liberties. We provide the transparency that allows a candidate’s record to speak for itself, leaving the final decision where it belongs: with an informed electorate.
ACLU Midterms Program Builds on Successful Voting and Abortion Rights Campaigns
This cycle’s program builds on years of proven impact. In Wisconsin, the ACLU, ACLU Voter Education Fund, and ACLU of Wisconsin spent more than $3.2 million in state Supreme Court races over the last three years. As a result, our work helped shape a new court majority that has since struck down a 150-year-old abortion ban, rejected gerrymandered legislative maps, and strengthened access to the ballot.
In Ohio, the ACLU, ACLU Foundation, and ACLU of Ohio helped defeat a 2023 ballot measure designed to make it harder for voters to amend the state constitution just 12 weeks before Ohioans were set to vote on abortion rights. The ACLU then played a leading role in the successful campaign to enshrine reproductive freedom in the Ohio Constitution.
Starting in June, patients were able to get medication abortion from health care providers in Missouri for the first time since 2018, due to litigation following a ballot measure that the ACLU and ACLU of Missouri played a key role in passing. This follows successful litigation we brought to strike down the state’s total abortion ban in 2025.
The ACLU’s focus is never on specific candidates or political parties; it is on building the enduring infrastructure needed to turn voter power into clear constitutional protections. We stay in the community long after the polls close, ensuring that the people’s will at the ballot box is translated into tangible policy outcomes.
Washington D.C. may be gridlocked at the moment, but the ACLU and the American people are not. The frontlines of freedom are now in the states, and we are using every tool at our disposal to lead this fight. We have strategy and infrastructure, but the defense of our freedom relies on people power: Check your voter registration, show up at the polls, and train with us as a volunteer. The best way to protect our freedom is to act free. Join us.