It’s never a bad idea to double-check your voter registration status before an election. Americans interested in verifying theirs ahead of the U.S. midterms may have seen ads for an innocuously presented informational website called VoteSafe.org where they can confirm they’re registered, request an absentee ballot or sign up for election reminders.
“VoteSafe” suggests a politically neutral voter education resource. There’s only one problem: The website isn’t run by a government agency, a nonpartisan voting rights organization, or even a community group. It’s run by America PAC, the personal political action committee of billionaire Elon Musk, the largest individual donor to U.S. President Donald Trump and the Republican party in the 2024 election cycle.
Investigative reporter Judd Legum takes note of the copious personal and digital data collected by VoteSafe, which is then transmitted to a host of private tech companies, along with America PAC and other Trump allies for use in Republican get-out-the-vote operations.
“The slick voter registration website, currently being promoted to millions of people, is a digital surveillance machine,” Legum wrote in breaking the story on Popular Information last week.
America PAC spent over $180,000 in one week alone to promote VoteSafe.org on Meta platforms like Facebook and Instagram, Legum reported. Multiple outlets have since picked up the story, including Snopes, which verified VoteSafe’s collection and sharing of users’ personal information as factual.
Beyond the topline message of “don’t use this website,” it’s important to remember the U.S. electorate still has access to impartial election information.
U.S. voters can find accurate registration information through their local elections official. Although Trump has deliberately stripped the bipartisan Election Assistance Commission of leadership, the commission’s Vote.gov website still provides convenient state-by-state election information and links to local offices.
Beyond their connections to misinformation, the Trump administration has taken steps that watchdogs warn could undermine free and fair elections ahead of the midterms. Election integrity advocates are fighting back.
As seeds of distrust threaten to bear fruit, election integrity advocates are fighting back
After Donald Trump lost the 2020 presidential election to Joe Biden by over 7 million votes, Trump’s followers launched dozens of federal lawsuits challenging the outcome. Though all the suits failed, they fed election conspiracy theories that culminated in a deadly attempt to overthrow the U.S. government on January 6, 2021, with Trump himself egging on the mob.
Trump then spent the next four years complaining of widespread voter fraud without providing any evidence, setting the stage for another round of interference with the peaceful transfer of power. He returned to office in 2025 armed with new tools, deploying his political and executive power to spread suspicion and fear over the integrity of the elections process, particularly in regards to the virtually non-existent issue of illegal immigrants voting in U.S. elections.
Trump’s administration backed the gutting of the Voting Rights Act earlier this year and has since taken new steps that have sown confusion and doubt ahead of the midterms.
That includes demanding voter rolls from more than 30 states and threatening to prosecute election officials who refuse to comply, telling federal immigration agents to deploy at polling stations, and ordering the U.S. Postal Service to interfere with absentee ballots.
But concerned voters and election integrity advocates are pushing back against these brazen measures in the court of law and the court of public opinion.
In the most recent example, a three-judge panel of the First Circuit Court of Appeals blocked the U.S. Postal Service from interfering with mail-in ballots, stating that the new USPS rules would “likely result in the disenfranchisement of millions of voters across the country while providing minimal — if any — gains in combating voter fraud.” The city of Denver and civil rights groups also sued to block immigration officials from polling places, citing the longstanding “troops at polls” law.
In addition, new grassroots organizations have organized to advocate for voter engagement, with the No Kings organization being a particularly interesting example. When it emerged last year, No Kings initially focused on staging nationwide “day of action” consumer boycotts. Unlike the online-only #GrabYourWallet and Sleeping Giants boycott campaigns of the first Trump administration, No Kings also organized in-person rallies, which then became a springboard for organizing permanent, hyper-local advocacy groups that forge tight bonds with their communities.
Since the first day of action on February 17, 2025, the No Kings movement has steadily attracted more participants with each of its following rallies. However, No Kings has been quiet for the past six months. They did not organize a day of action over the summer. The last one gathered in March when local groups held block parties, fairs, marches, and other community engagement events in every congressional district across all 50 states, sending a strong message about the power of civic engagement.
But the quiet period is over. The No Kings coalition including labor unions, civil rights groups, and advocacy organizations like Voto Latino, Indivisible, and Public Citizen are gearing up to rally voters to turn out in massive numbers during the early voting period this year.
Organizers are training volunteers on how to resist attempts at voter intimidation at local polling places and encouraging local groups to stage get-out-the-vote events on Saturday, October 17.
“The time for sending a message is over,” Indivisible co-founder Ezra Levin told USA Today last week. “Now we are headed into an important point in a democracy, which is whether the people stand up and refuse to allow an authoritarian to consolidate power. And the way to do that in a democracy is by exercising your right to vote and by exercising your right to organize to prevent any sabotage in that election.”
Notably, platforms like No Kings offer grassroots voting rights advocates an alternative to corporate-sponsored voter engagement organizations like Civic Alliance, which counts the global oil and gas producer BP, the beleaguered retailer Target, and the Facebook and Instagram branches of Meta among its partners.
If anything, the message this year is for voters to trust themselves, not corporate brands or billionaire executives, when the peaceful transfer of power is at stake.
Feature image credit: Getty Images/Unsplash
