A Republic, If You Can Keep It

Benjamin Franklin’s warning has echoed across nearly 250 years of American history. Asked what kind of government the Constitutional Convention created, he famously replied, “A republic, if you can keep it.”

Not everyone today wants to maintain those constitutional arrangements. Our organization just released a comprehensive 64-page report exposing a well-funded political machine working to manipulate nearly every stage of our republic’s democratic machinery, from voter registration and the census to redistricting and the Electoral College.

The evidence reveals a coordinated campaign funded by left-wing foundations, labor unions, activist organizations, and “dark money” networks. Their objective is not simply to persuade voters. It is to rewrite the rules, reshape the electorate, and restructure our institutions until Democrats enjoy a permanent political advantage.

Consider Georgia; when the state enacted election-integrity reforms in 2021, President Joe Biden condemned the law as “Jim Crow 2.0.” Progressive groups predicted widespread voter suppression and raced to the courthouse to stop it.

The suppression never happened.

Research released by the left-leaning Voter Participation Center found that turnout among so-called “underrepresented” constituencies actually increased in Georgia during the 2024 election. Participation among African Americans, Latinos, Asians, voters under 35, and unmarried women increased by nearly 200,000 votes, or 6.8 percent.

The very organization that warned election safeguards would suppress voters produced research showing the opposite. Are we shocked? 

Yet the Voter Participation Center has now turned its fire on the federal SAVE Act, which would require proof of citizenship before an individual can register to vote in federal elections. Once again, activists insist that a basic election safeguard will “disenfranchise” minority voters.

Americans have heard this script before. The Georgia results prove it false.

Requiring proof of citizenship is not voter suppression. It is the bare minimum for preserving the integrity of American elections. Only American citizens should choose America’s leaders. That principle should not be controversial. Our founders had a term for it: self-government.

But voter registration is only one part of this political operation. Left-wing donors have also poured enormous sums into influencing the census, which determines congressional representation, federal funding, and Electoral College votes.

The Funders Committee for Civic Participation and its Funders Census Initiative reportedly spent an estimated $33 million around the 2010 census. The operation expanded to more than $117 million for the 2020 census, when FCI-supported litigation helped block the Trump administration's effort to add a citizenship question to the form — a question the Supreme Court ultimately rejected in Department of Commerce v. New York (2019). The consequences were significant. The Census Bureau's own post-enumeration survey found statistically significant overcounts in eight states and undercounts in six. Election-law expert Hans von Spakovsky reported that the errors cost Florida two congressional seats and Texas one, while allowing Minnesota and Rhode Island to retain seats they should have lost and handing Colorado a seat it should not have gained.

If private political interests can influence who is counted, where they are counted, and how congressional seats are distributed, they can affect American political power for an entire decade. That is gerrymandering on a national scale.

Virginia offers another warning. More than $66 million reportedly flowed into an effort to redraw the commonwealth’s congressional districts before the 2026 midterms. Committees connected to George Soros, the Service Employees International Union, and the nonprofit network formerly operated by Arabella Advisors helped fund a proposal that could have transformed a narrow 6-5 Democratic advantage into an overwhelming 10-1 majority.

Virginia voters approved the measure during an April 2026 special election, but the Virginia Supreme Court invalidated the new map weeks later because of procedural violations.

Those “procedures” are called the rule of law.

The same forces are targeting the Electoral College through the National Popular Vote Compact. Under that arrangement, participating states would award their electoral votes to the winner of the national popular vote, even if those states’ actual voters chose someone else.

It is a deliberate attempt to circumvent the Constitution without formally amending it.

The Electoral College ensures presidential candidates must build geographically broad coalitions, instead of running up enormous margins in a handful of population centers. It protects federalism and prevents smaller states from political erasure. That is precisely why the Left wants it gone.

Then there is ranked-choice voting, a confusing system of elimination rounds and redistributed preferences that replace a straightforward election with an opaque tabulation process. Voters understand the danger. In 2024, ballot measures advancing ranked-choice voting were rejected in at least five states. Nineteen states have now prohibited it.

Americans do not need elections that take weeks to explain and even longer to count. They need one citizen, one lawful ballot, and one Election Day governed by transparent rules.

The battle over election integrity is not about denying anyone the right to vote. It is about ensuring that every lawful vote carries equal weight. Citizenship verification, accurate census counts, constitutional apportionment, and understandable elections are foundations of self-government.

The American system has produced the freest, strongest, and most prosperous nation in human history. It does not need to be “reimagined” by partisan billionaires, “dark money” networks, and professional political activists.

Franklin understood that a republic could not survive on constitutional language alone. It requires citizens willing to defend its institutions against those who would manipulate them for power.

We still have a republic. The question is whether we have the courage to keep it and to finally root out this left-wing corruption once and for all. 

Scott Waller is the President of the Capital Research Center. Learn more at https://capitalresearch.org/

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