September 20, 2025

Loyal readers of Democracy Docket know that I often point out the organization was founded in 2020. The other day, someone at Democracy Docket asked me why I always add that clarification. It was a good question — one that made me pause.

Did I include the year as a kind of verbal crutch, filling a gap in the story of how the organization grew so quickly and reached so many? Was it simply a habit I picked up along the way? Or did it carry some broader meaning — for me, for our subscribers and for our members?

Looking back, I realize it’s because 2020 was unlike any other year.

The year began with optimism about the large field of Democratic candidates vying to take on Donald Trump. Joe Biden entered 2020 with less than one-third of Democrats supporting his candidacy. Within a month, he had slipped to third place, behind Bernie Sanders and a surging Michael Bloomberg. Yet, after the votes were counted in South Carolina, it seemed the race was over — and Biden had won.

Then, in March, COVID-19 hit the United States and the world. Almost overnight, we went from business as usual to total shutdown. Every sector of society was affected — schools, businesses, government.

Campaigns and elections were no exception. A business that typically relied on in-person events and communication had to move online. Voting, once overwhelmingly in-person, shifted rapidly to mail-in ballots.

Even before the pandemic, Donald Trump had made clear his hostility toward free and fair elections. Despite winning in 2016, he falsely claimed widespread fraud had cost him the popular vote. In 2017, he launched a commission to investigate nonexistent voter fraud. It was disbanded the following year in disgrace — having found nothing.

When I worked to ensure all lawful ballots were counted in Florida’s close 2018 Senate election, Trump attacked me by name, calling me the Democratic Party’s “best election-stealing lawyer.”

By the time we entered the 2020 election cycle, Trump had already transformed the GOP into a voter suppression machine. In fact, the very first piece I wrote after launching Democracy Docket was titled “GOP’s Bigger, Better Voter Suppression Program,” which described the Republican National Committee’s $20 million investment in voter suppression.

Two weeks later, I wrote what may have been the most influential opinion piece I have ever written: “Four Pillars to Safeguard Vote by Mail.” It outlined the minimum safeguards needed to scale mail-in voting to the level required to ensure free and fair elections during COVID.

The piece became a blueprint for dozens of voting rights lawsuits — as well as a target for GOP litigation. My law firm and I became the most active, though not the only, proponents of this strategy.

It was widely praised by Democrats and voting rights organizations, and just as widely demonized by Trump and his supporters. In many ways, it foreshadowed the legal battles that erupted after the election. GOP opposition to my recommendations continues to shape Trump’s anti-voting agenda today.

As the election heated up, Democracy Docket became the central repository of court pleadings and judicial opinions related to voting rights and election litigation. Designed for non-lawyers, our case pages allowed ordinary citizens to follow along with the ups and downs of these hotly contested legal battles.