As the election nears, a poisonous tide of disinformation and misinformation rises higher and higher around voters. But this year, groups battling for democracy are ready. “We’re in the streets doing the work to inform our communities of suppressive tactics and misinformation because our people matter,” said Cliff Albright, co-founder and executive director of DFF grantee partner Black Voters Matter, in launching the “We Fight Back” campaign this fall. “We will fight back against racism, injustice and all attempts to take us back.”

A Growing Threat to Democracy

Disinformation has many sources this election season. Foreign governments like Iran and Russia are trying to influence the outcome for their own political purposes. But the origin of much of the disinformation and misinformation is often closer to home. For example, election officials from Michigan, Minnesota, New Mexico, Pennsylvania and Washington sent a letter in August to X CEO Elon Musk charging that the platform’s AI chatbot, Grok, produced false information about state ballot deadlines that were confusing to voters.

The disinformation and misinformation efforts have a common goal: to breed confusion among voters and ultimately to sow doubt about the legitimacy of the election outcome. Eroding trust in participatory democratic systems has long been a tactic of authoritarianism, and it must be countered swiftly and effectively. Accurate, available information is one of the requirements of a multi-racial democracy. The good news is that the problem is increasingly being spotted, called out and tackled in real time, and the communities it is aimed at have the tools and tactics to take it on effectively and immediately.

But as the election nears, and in the post-election period, efforts to distort the truth and confuse and agitate voters can be expected to grow even more virulent.

Communities of Color Are Targeted – and Taking Action

As the election nears, efforts are intensifying to focus disinformation and misinformation efforts on familiar targets of authoritarian movements: immigrant communities and communities of color. We saw this clearly in the racist attacks by former President Trump and Senator JD Vance on Haitian immigrants living in Springfield, Ohio. The targeting of Americans of color is not surprising, but this year these communities’ readiness to respond and take action is remarkable and inspiring.

MSNBC reported in June that the Black community is being targeted through a sophisticated effort to channel information through popular, ostensibly Black outlets and influencers. The report cited also includes ways to counter these misleading efforts. DFF grantee partner State Voices provides an in-depth “Anti-Disinformation Voter Guide.” And the Southern Poverty Law Center has published a guide telling voters “how to spot election disinformation” and how to take action when you see it.

In the Latinx community, right-wing groups are spreading lies about non-citizens voting in the upcoming election. The Heritage Foundation (echoed by Elon Musk) recently circulated a video that repeats this falsehood. For their part, Latinx voters are very familiar with a host of false claims that are now circulating online, according to a national survey released in June by the Digital Democracy Institute of America (DDIA). As part of this proactive effort, DDIA is keeping track of rumors, misleading narratives and viral falsehoods on social media and on public WhatsApp channels.

The disinformation effort – and the response – also spans the Asian American and Muslim American communities, along with all communities of color. “A lot of strategies being used on the right happen to use a lot of fear mongering, a lot of scapegoating,” according to Jaime Longoria, manager of research and training for the Disinfo Defense League, which brings together multiracial advocates to respond to targeted disinformation.

The stakes for our democracy could not be higher. In a recent interview with NPR, Black Voters Matter co-Founder LaTosha Brown put it clearly: “I think what’s frightening is the scope and the intensity of misinformation and disinformation. You know, on social media I’ve seen AI images. I’m seeing these despairing things about VP Harris that I know that are untrue or are false related to her race or identity. I’m seeing those things pop up on my timeline, right? And so that frightens me, because I think — in the absence of having truthful information — sometimes people will gravitate towards those things that are sensational, and they believe because of the way that it’s presented sometimes.”

Much Bigger than the Election

The right’s racist strategy of disinformation transcends the election cycle – it has become the core of attacks on Black studies, critical race theory, intersectionality, and queer studies. In a powerful statement calling out anti-Black disinformation, the Movement for Black Lives said: “We will not cave to the attempts to censor and muzzle ideas and knowledge that are key to our work. Nor will we be silent in the face of authoritarian efforts at thought control designed to undermine our movements for freedom and justice.”

The good news is that the warnings of Black leaders – backed up by strategy – have been heard in every community across America. Frontline groups are prepared as never before, and they are taking action.

In the ongoing struggle for voting rights amidst one of the most dynamic and consequential political moments in a generation, we are in a game-changing time. We are confronting an unprecedented threat to democracy itself, in the form of authoritarianism. Grassroots movements and community organizers are working hard to engage voters in a context of harsh crackdowns and criminalization of protest and a receding tide of support from philanthropy for racial justice and more particularly, Black-led power building organizations. All of these factors raise the stakes for our voting rights organizing, and call on us to be nimble, resourceful and relentless in our focus.

Far from the one-off organizing efforts around election cycles, the fight for democracy must be always on. We, State Voices with our funding partner Democracy Frontlines Fund, are writing from the frontlines of this effort, with a message of tenacity and hope. We are taking note here of several trends worth sharing, since understanding the moment we are in will be essential to our long-term success. And we are asking philanthropy to look at this bigger picture and come to a better understanding of its role in history. We see voting and voting rights as vital requirements of building a multi-racial democracy that will ensure the dignity of all people.

A Focus on Issues and Values

The 2024 voting rights strategy is rooted in the issues citizens care about and the values they cherish. Folks are asking themselves: what is a democracy, and what does it mean to me?  They are activated when they see their rights being removed – as recently happened with the Dobbs decision and the subsequent, rapid rollback of reproductive rights. At the center of every election now and into the future will be personal issues like access to abortion and women’s healthcare. That’s exactly why the new State Voices “Vote for Something” campaign counters voter apathy by engaging each person in identifying issues that matter most to them.

The issue of voting rights shouldn’t just be defined defensively, but the threats are glaring and undeniable. In Louisiana alone, four laws have been passed that erode access to voting – for example, preventing people from helping others to complete their ballot submission, which would have a disproportionate impact on elderly and disabled voters who rely on caretakers to help them participate in elections. In Tennessee, a new law prohibits any person previously convicted of a felony from registering voters. We need an affirmative strategy to protect our rights and our democracy. In addition to fighting efforts to dilute voting rights, we need to be moving the battle forward with efforts to advance universal voting, including for the currently and formerly incarcerated. We need to stay active in the policy arena, using our radical imagination to bring to life the vision of a vibrant multi-racial democracy. We need to raise up a new generation of leaders who can inspire and do the work in our communities.

Most importantly, we are working to position this election as part of the long term struggle for liberation for all people. We know that voting alone doesn’t bring liberation – but it is a crucial litmus test. And, as we have learned, we cannot take this right for granted.

Ready for What’s Coming

Let’s not mince words – after recent elections, we know what threats we face in the voting process, and we are ready.  There will be efforts to intimidate voters, and threaten the safety of election officials. There will be massive campaigns of disinformation stoked by social media. These trends are disturbing but no longer surprising when you work in this arena, so we’re ready to take them head-on. Preparation is the best way to foil the enemies of democracy.

On the safety front, we’ve put in place protocols and protections for election workers before, during, and after the voting takes place. We have a program in place to “inoculate” voters with accurate information, including our “BallotReady” guides that focus on the issues voters care about. We’ll keep the information streaming with “Dispatch,” our texting platform that allows us to share factual updates directly with voters throughout the process. And we are out in the streets with tried and true relational organizing on our community’s doorsteps.

The turmoil around politics and candidates cannot be allowed to overshadow the vital importance of issues and the survival of democracy. We believe early voting is the key to gearing up the momentum, so we are working with Black Voters Matter on a series of events this summer focused on catalyzing early voting in our community. A burst of early voting in battleground states will build excitement about participating in this election, and send the vital message that showing up at the polls is part of something bigger.

Following a Longer Arc

We see voting as just one element of a much broader scope of civic participation and a thriving multi-racial democracy. This year our focus may be about the election, but the work continues in what used to be called the “off-years” – a term we don’t use any more because our struggle is always on. This means our communities’ demanding accountability for the officials we elect – and our ongoing engagement in the process and in public policy. For organizing groups, it means building the organizational capacity to sustain this engagement over time – and investing in it now.

This calls the question for philanthropy at large: will you show up for our community in this long-term effort? Too many Black-led groups are getting caught in a huge disinvestment in the last two years, a rollback following a brief “moment” of concern and support during the racial reckoning of 2020. While some funding restarted because of 2022’s Dobbs decision gutting reproductive rights, this uneven, crisis mode of funding fails to match up well with the long-term arc of this work.

There’s a better path. Now is the time to double down on building the healthy democratic ecosystem we need to fight back against authoritarian threats by investing more, and more steadily, in Black-led organizing. Voting is one strategy in our longer goal – liberation. Come November, we’ll be moving on to sustain our progress and follow that longer arc of justice.

Alexis Anderson-Reed is the CEO of State Voices. Daniel Lau is the Initiative Officer of Democracy Frontlines Fund.

With democracy under threat here and around the world, this election year poses the question: what are the requirements of a multi-racial democracy?  What must be in place to ensure that our right to participate survives for all of our children? There are many elements, of course, and at the Democracy Frontlines Fund we support power building organizations that protect and enhance our right to vote, as well as groups that are creating community-led strategies to keep us all safe and designing solutions to the climate crisis.

To have a functioning democracy, we need to ensure that people, and in particular Black people who are closest to injustice, are safe and thriving.  With this pivotal election year, our DFF blog series  will focus on our civic engagement pillar and three aspects within: vibrant and well-resourced community organizing, free and fair access to voting, and addressing disinformation.

We’ll start with organizing in this inaugural blog, because that is where the hard, often unsung work of democracy begins. We can’t fully exercise our democratic rights unless groups in our communities have first laid the groundwork by tilling and sowing the ground – that’s like trying to grow a garden without any soil.  True organizers don’t just show up and try to harvest votes in an election year – they are at their work in the winter, in the fallow times, and as we write this they are seeding this fall’s successes in the spring.

Organizing is the diametric opposite of despair —the belief that no one cares and nothing can be done about the threats to our democracy. Organizing at its best can stoke our precious sense of hope, and help us imagine coming back together as vibrant, whole and well – while steering us from this fragile moment to that destination. This is because organizing leaves people feeling connected to their neighbors, part of a network in their community. It can also help overcome toxic divisiveness.

People’s Action gets this, and that’s why their “Organizing Revival” takes us beyond transactional spurts of organizing that fall conveniently in election years. Their goal is a much more longterm “strategic alignment and shared movement infrastructure that will help independent as well as networked organizations build and wield power more effectively across issues, geographies, and constituencies.” They’re bringing poor and working people back into a process from which they’ve too often been sidelined or excluded.

Our grantee partners in the Democracy Frontlines Fund know better than most that organizing is a long-term investment that builds deeper relationships over time. No one understands the deep and lasting role of organizing better than Black Voters Matter, working to increase power in marginalized, predominantly Black communities. “This isn’t about one election, this isn’t about one person winning or one party being in power,” LaTosha Brown reminds us. “I have the audacity to believe that there are far, far more of us that want an inclusive, representative democracy than those who seek to undermine and destroy it.” Amen.

In preparation for this year’s consequential election, Black Futures Lab is leading a five-state electoral organizing strategy to engage Black voters through deep canvassing, relationship-building, and voter education. Alicia Garza shares, “Every election cycle, there’s a lot of hand-wringing about whether or not Black voters are going to show up. We know that our communities show up when we invest consistently and with curiosity – when we listen to, rather than talk at our folks.” Black voters have made a significant difference in every election, and this cycle will be no different.

There are so many more amazing folks out organizing our frontline communities, too many to mention by name here, and their compelling work at the grassroots desperately needs resources. So it’s shameful to see many funders scale back their racial justice work in this critical moment. This is a time for funders to follow the bold lead of DFF and move their money to organizing – now.  After completing our first round of multi-year investments of $39 million in Black power building from 2020-2023, our funder community came back to the table with starting commitments of $35.5 million through 2026. In election years, organizers need the money early to engage and inform their communities.

We are proud to sign on to the All By April campaign, joining nearly 200 pro-democracy funders and donors in accelerating our 2024 giving to frontline civic engagement partners. We thank our funder community who, through our swift and collective efforts, make possible the accelerated awards of $11.5 million to our 11 grantee partners building power in Black communities across the nation six months ahead of our normal grantmaking timeline. We must have the vision and the bias to action to get the resources to the grassroots.  As we’ll discuss in future blogs, this is not the sole requirement of our democracy. But organizing is the beginning, the core element that makes it all possible.