By Rep. David J. Preece, NH State House, Hillsborough, 17

Democracy in America is rarely destroyed in one dramatic stroke. It is weakened quietly—through procedural changes, administrative barriers, data grabs, and the slow normalization of exclusion. What we are witnessing today, nationally and here in New Hampshire, is not a good-faith debate about election integrity. It is a coordinated effort to make voting harder, participation narrower, and power more insulated from the will of the people.

Under Donald Trump and his allies, the right to vote is being eroded through a familiar playbook: restrict access, sow distrust, and centralize control. Wrapped in the language of “integrity,” these measures disproportionately target the very voters democracy depends on—working people, students, seniors, people with disabilities, renters, and those new to civic participation.

At the national level, executive actions and Republican-backed legislation seek to impose documentary proof-of-citizenship requirements, restrict mail voting, and pressure states into compliance with federal dictates the Constitution explicitly reserves to them. Courts have already blocked some of these efforts, recognizing what is obvious: presidents do not get to rewrite election law by fiat. But the campaign continues, now embedded in legislation like the SAVE Act and in policy blueprints such as Project 2025.

Project 2025 is not theoretical. It is a roadmap. It calls for weakening federal voting-rights enforcement, politicizing the Department of Justice, and using federal power to intimidate election officials and voter-assistance organizations. In plain terms, it envisions an America where fewer people vote, oversight is selective, and power flows upward—not outward.

This agenda does not stop at state borders.

In New Hampshire, Republican lawmakers have already enacted laws that make voting harder, particularly for absentee voters. New requirements now force voters to produce photo identification just to request an absentee ballot. First-time voters using absentee registration must mail in proof of citizenship—a burden that falls hardest on seniors, divorced women, people with disabilities, students, and anyone without ready access to documents. These are not hypothetical harms. They are barriers already in effect.

At the same time, transparency itself is under attack. Changes to House rules have reduced public notice around committee votes, making it harder for citizens to know when decisions are being made. Legislative seats have been left vacant rather than filled through special elections—because when elections are inconvenient, they are delayed. When participation is unpredictable, it is discouraged.

Add to this the aggressive push for access to voter data—seen in federal demands for expansive voter files and the seizure of election materials in places like Fulton County—and a pattern emerges. Election administrators are being intimidated. Citizen trust is being undermined. The goal is not confidence in democracy, but control over it.

We have seen where this road leads—and we failed to imagine how far it could go.

In the weeks before January 6, 2021, many understood that Trump’s lies were dangerous. Few predicted that a mob would storm the Capitol or that 147 Republicans would vote to overturn a certified presidential election. We underestimated how many people in power were willing to abandon democracy when it no longer served them.

We must not make that mistake again.

It is only February, and the November elections are already in peril—not because ballots are being miscounted, but because voters are being deterred. Immigration enforcement has expanded dramatically in Democratic-leaning cities. American citizens and lawful residents alike have been swept into detention dragnets. Despite court orders, federal officers continue to operate with impunity.

The effect is chilling but predictable. Rumors of ICE activity spread near polling places. Nonwhite citizens avoid public spaces. Eligible voters decide that voting is not worth the risk.

Meanwhile, reports multiply of voters discovering they have been purged from the rolls—disproportionately those with Latin-, African-, or Asian-sounding names. Lawmakers in red states move to take over election administration in blue cities, citing federal raids as justification. The president amplifies conspiracy theories and calls for the arrest of political opponents, governors, and even former President Barack Obama.

This is not election security. It is election intimidation.

An election does not need to be overtly rigged to be stolen. If enough people are frightened away from the polls, the outcome is engineered long before a single ballot is counted.

Let’s be clear: voter fraud in the United States is vanishingly rare. Our elections are already secure. What is not secure is the willingness of those in power to accept outcomes they don’t like. When politicians choose their voters instead of voters choosing their leaders, democracy becomes theater.

New Hampshire prides itself on being the cradle of American democracy. Those values mean nothing if we allow them to be hollowed out—quietly, procedurally, and piece by piece.

Democracy does not defend itself.

If we remain silent, these “small” changes will become permanent. If we act together, we can stop them.

The right to vote is the foundation of every other right we claim. Lose that, and everything else is negotiable.

The question before us is simple: Will we defend democracy while we still can?

David Preece