Writing in the very first of the Federalist Papers, Alexander Hamilton laid out a premise that was as radical then as it is vital today. He observed that it had been “reserved to the people of this country, by their conduct and example, to decide the important question, whether societies of men are really capable or not of establishing good government from reflection and choice.”
Hamilton’s vision was clear: a republic does not sustain itself on autopilot. It demands the active, intelligent participation of its citizens. Yet, over the last few decades, American voters have increasingly outsourced the mechanics of their democracy to a class of administrative bureaucrats. We cast our ballots, cross our fingers, and trust that the vast, unseen machinery of the state will tally them with perfect accuracy.
But what happens when the numbers no longer make sense? What happens when the underlying data raises profound questions that our elected officials either cannot or will not answer?
To understand the necessity of citizen oversight, we have to look objectively at recent history. The 2020 presidential election saw a voter turnout of 67 percent—the highest in recent history—resulting in an unprecedented 156 million ballots cast. A higher turnout is naturally expected to yield higher vote totals, but the underlying voter registration data from that era reveals anomalies that demand rigorous public scrutiny.
Consider the state of Michigan. Between the 2018 and 2020 federal elections, the state reported an astonishing increase of 600,000 voter registrations. This surge occurred in a state where the 2020 census indicated a total population growth of just 200,000 over the entire preceding decade. The math becomes even more perplexing when looking at the subsequent cycle. Between 2020 and 2022, Michigan inexplicably lost 800,000 voter registrations. Similar volatile fluctuations appeared in states like Florida, which gained a million registrations leading up to 2020, only to drop 750,000 by 2022. When election officials are asked to explain these massive, rapid shifts in the voter rolls, the answers are frequently evasive, or worse, non-existent.
This disconnect exposes a fundamental misunderstanding of the relationship between the government and the governed. Election officials are not the exclusive owners of our electoral data. They are merely its custodians. The information they collect, manage, and report is public information. The chain of custody that secures a ballot from a voter’s hand to the final tally is a public process, and it must remain entirely visible to the people whose futures depend on it.
When the administrative state operates in the shadows, or when it dismisses the valid inquiries of the public, a republic begins the slow, dangerous descent toward authoritarianism. Totalitarian and despotic regimes thrive precisely because the public is barred from inspecting the mechanisms of power. If we want to ensure our elections are free, fair, and above reproach, we cannot rely solely on the government to police itself. The responsibility to inspect, validate, and audit the system falls squarely on the shoulders of the citizenry.
Many Americans recognize this duty but falsely believe they lack the authority to enforce it. We are conditioned to think that challenging an election procedure requires a law degree, an official title, or an invitation from the state. The law says otherwise.
Federal legislation explicitly grants everyday citizens the standing to take action. The National Voter Registration Act (NVRA) of 1993 contains a specific provision—Section 11—which guarantees a private right of action. If a citizen identifies a violation of the Act and the state’s chief election official fails to cure it, that citizen has the right to bring a civil action in court. Similarly, the Help America Vote Act (HAVA) of 2002 allows any person who believes a violation has occurred, or is about to occur, to file a formal complaint.
These laws were not written for politicians; they were written for you. Paired with the First Amendment rights to peaceably assemble and petition the government for a redress of grievances, citizens are fully equipped with the legal armor necessary to demand transparency. The barrier to entry isn’t a lack of legal standing—it is simply the willingness to overcome our own imagined limitations.
Securing our elections is not a task that can be accomplished in a single afternoon, nor is it a problem that can be voted away in the next cycle. It requires citizens who are willing to sacrifice their time and treasure to scrutinize voter rolls, monitor the processing of vote-by-mail ballots, and hold canvassing boards to the letter of the law.
When Benjamin Franklin emerged from the final session of the Constitutional Convention, a woman famously asked him what kind of government the delegates had created. He replied, “A Republic, if you can keep it.” Keeping it means inspecting it. The time for blind trust has passed. The era of the citizen auditor must begin.