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Project 2025 is a 920-page plan spearheaded by the powerful and extreme far-right Heritage Foundation. More than 100 organizations support this blueprint for autocracy. Their stated goal is to create an “ideal” America that would see women, LGBTQ+ people, immigrants, people of color, and others deprived of their hard-won constitutional rights and the erosion of environmental and education protections. It also advocates for a frightening centralization of power in the executive branch. Rooted in hate and Christian Nationalism, the plan promises to “rescue the country.” Read GPAHE’s full analysis of Project 2025 and the groups behind it.
GPAHE tracks the activities of those behind Project 2025, and their plans for an authoritarian and Christian Nationalist America, no matter who is president, and the groups in this extremist movement are relentlessly implementing initiatives at local, state, and federal levels.
This week we look at Project 2025 organizations’ efforts to delegitimize election results, the architect of Project 2025’s plan for voter suppression, how it would reshape the Federal Election Commission, the Heritage Foundation’s Oversight Project’s election scenarios and the Family Research Council’s guide for voters.
Project 2025 Playbook: Inside the Campaign to Undermine Election Integrity
As America barrels toward the 2024 presidential election, a well-funded coalition of organizations is laying the groundwork to potentially challenge electoral outcomes through a combination of voter suppression tactics and pre-emptive delegitimization of results, Media Matters reports. At the center of this effort is the Heritage Foundation’s Project 2025.
The initiative’s public face focuses on personnel and policy preparations for “the next conservative administration.” But beneath the surface, an orchestrated campaign is brewing that would restrict voting access and sow doubt about election integrity, particularly in communities of color and immigrant neighborhoods.
The Heritage Foundation, which spearheads Project 2025, has deep ties to election denial movements. Its senior legal fellow Hans von Spakovsky, who authored parts of the project’s policy book, has spent decades promoting voter fraud myths. Heritage’s Oversight Project executive director Mike Howell has already declared “there’s a zero percent chance of a free and fair election” in 2024.
A key strategy emerging from Project 2025’s network is the targeting of immigrant communities through what they call “election integrity” measures. The Only Citizens Vote Coalition, which includes Heritage Action and several Project 2025 partners, focuses on the virtually non-existent issue of non-citizen voting — already illegal under federal law — as a pretext for voter suppression. Heritage’s own database contains fewer than 70 cases of non-citizen voters going back some 40 years.
The Conservative Partnership Institute (CPI), another central player in Project 2025, serves as an incubator for election denial groups. Led by former Heritage Foundation president Jim DeMint and Trump’s final Chief of Staff Mark Meadows, CPI launched the Election Integrity Network under Cleta Mitchell, who gained notoriety for her role in Trump’s attempt to overturn Georgia’s 2020 results and is a Project 2025 contributing author.
These organizations are pursuing a multi-pronged strategy:
- Legal warfare: Groups like America First Legal, (a former Project 2025 advisor) and the Public Interest Legal Foundation file lawsuits aimed at purging voter rolls and restricting access to voting, particularly in Democratic-leaning jurisdictions.
- Administrative interference: Through the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC), they push model legislation requiring aggressive verification of citizenship status – measures that voting rights experts warn could intimidate eligible voters from immigrant communities.
- Grassroots mobilization: Tea Party Patriots and Turning Point USA (TPUSA) are training poll watchers and building “election integrity task forces” in battleground states while spreading unsubstantiated claims about election fraud. TPUSA claims to be funding this effort to the tune of $100 million.
- Institutional sabotage: Project 2025’s policy recommendations include dismantling the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency, which plays a crucial role in protecting election infrastructure.
The Center for Renewing America, a Project 2025 partner founded by former Trump budget director Russ Vought, frames these initiatives in stark ideological terms, claiming they’re necessary “to prevent widespread fraud and abuse from undermining the constitutional order.”
Perhaps most troubling is the coalition’s explicit targeting of specific communities. In September, The New York Times reported activists on Election Integrity Network calls discussing plans to scrutinize neighborhoods with “ethnic names” and hang intimidating signs in “ethnic” areas warning about voter eligibility.
This network of organizations is poised to challenge results they don’t like, particularly in close races. Their infrastructure of trained poll watchers, lawyers, and activists stands ready to cry fraud and file lawsuits, integrating lessons learned from the 2020 election.
The success of Project 2025’s election strategy doesn’t necessarily require proving widespread fraud — which remains exceedingly rare — but rather creating enough doubt and confusion to undermine faith in results they oppose. By building a parallel infrastructure of election administration and oversight, they’re positioning themselves to potentially influence outcomes in ways that could fundamentally challenge democratic norms.
The Conservative Pipeline to Executive Power
The Heritage Foundation’s Hans von Spakovsky stands at the nexus of a sweeping initiative that could reshape the federal government’s relationship with voting rights and election administration. As the architect of Project 2025’s election policy chapter, von Spakovsky is positioned to influence how a potential “conservative” administration would approach voting rights enforcement, election oversight, and the role of federal agencies in electoral processes.
Project 2025 represents the most detailed roadmap yet for implementing right-wing priorities across federal agencies. Within this broader framework, von Spakovsky’s vision for election policy builds upon his contentious career as a voting rights enforcer and election law specialist.
During his tenure at the Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division under President George W. Bush, von Spakovsky championed voter ID requirements and aggressive voter roll purges, arguing they were necessary to combat fraud. Critics, including career DOJ attorneys, contended these measures disproportionately impacted minority voters and that fraud claims were overstated. This tension between election security and voting access has defined von Spakovsky’s career and now shapes Project 2025’s electoral agenda, The Guardian reports.
The project’s election proposals reflect von Spakovsky’s long-held positions: expanding voter ID requirements, increasing penalties for election law violations, limiting mail voting, and restructuring the Election Assistance Commission. More broadly, the initiative calls for redirecting Justice Department resources toward election fraud investigations and away from voting rights enforcement actions against states.
Von Spakovsky and his Heritage colleagues have essentially created a turnkey operation for rapidly transforming federal election oversight. Career civil servants in the Justice Department’s Voting Section and Civil Rights Division would face particular pressure under the project’s recommendations. The blueprint calls for replacing career attorneys with political appointees who share von Spakovsky’s viewpoint on election integrity measures. This would mark a significant departure from historical practice, where career staff have maintained substantial autonomy in voting rights enforcement.
The initiative’s influence extends beyond its specific policy proposals. Project 2025 has become a rallying point for far-right election lawyers and policy specialists, creating a ready pool of potential appointees aligned with von Spakovsky’s vision. This personnel pipeline could prove as significant as the project’s policy recommendations in reshaping federal election oversight.
Project 2025’s Plot to Weaken America’s Campaign Finance Watchdog
Project 2025’s blueprint for reshaping the Federal Election Commission reveals an aggressive plan to weaken campaign finance oversight under the guise of protecting political speech. Project 2025’s proposals for the FEC, authored by controversial former commissioner Hans von Spakovsky, would effectively neutralize the agency’s enforcement powers while opening the floodgates for money in politics.
The chapter’s seemingly technical recommendations mask a radical agenda. At its core, the plan aims to stack the commission with ideological hardliners who view virtually any campaign finance regulation as an infringement on First Amendment rights. It wraps this deregulatory agenda in the language of protecting “grassroots political activity” — even as its proposals would primarily benefit deep-pocketed donors and political organizations.
Most alarming is the blueprint’s push to hamstring the Department of Justice’s ability to prosecute campaign finance violations. Under the proposal, DOJ prosecutors would be barred from pursuing cases unless they first get what amounts to permission from the deadlocked FEC. Given that the commission rarely achieves the four-vote majority needed for action, this would effectively end criminal enforcement of campaign finance laws.
Project 2025 attempts to present the FEC’s notorious gridlock as a feature rather than a bug, arguing that the requirement for bipartisan agreement protects against partisan abuse. Yet this ignores how the current structure enables partisan obstruction, with commissioners routinely blocking investigation of serious violations. The blueprint’s vigorous defense of this system reveals its true aim: not preventing partisan enforcement, but ensuring partisan non-enforcement.
Even more troubling is the plan’s attack on one of the few remaining ways to break through FEC gridlock. Currently, when the commission fails to act on clear violations, watchdog groups can sue — and if commissioners refuse to defend the FEC’s inaction, courts can order enforcement. Project 2025 wants to eliminate this accountability mechanism by either forcing the DOJ to defend the FEC’s non-enforcement decisions or stripping the commission’s independent litigation authority entirely.
Project 2025’s call for higher contribution limits and looser coordination rules between parties and candidates would supercharge the big-money politics that already dominates our system. Its complaint that current limits “hamstring candidates and parties while serving no practical anti-corruption purpose” flies in the face of decades of evidence about money’s corrupting influence in politics.
The plan’s author knows this territory well. Von Spakovsky’s own failed nomination to the FEC during the Bush administration sparked fierce opposition over concerns that he would systematically undermine enforcement. Now he’s provided a roadmap for others to accomplish what he couldn’t.
Running throughout the document is a striking disconnect between its stated concerns and its proposed solutions. It claims to worry about small, volunteer-driven political activity while pushing changes that would primarily benefit large donors and professional political operations. It warns of partisan abuse while seeking to prevent enforcement against any party. It invokes democratic participation while advocating policies that would further amplify the voice of money in our politics.
Battle Ready: The Heritage Foundation’s Oversight Project
The Heritage Foundation’s 2024 Transition Integrity Project (TIP) reveals an exercise in fear-mongering that would do more to damage electoral confidence than protect it.
The exercises were part of Heritage’s Oversight Project, the organization’s investigative arm, and were conducted in June 2024 when around 50 participants roleplayed various election scenarios. But rather than strengthening democratic norms, the project’s framework seems designed to amplify existing tensions and legitimize potential interference in the electoral process.
Most concerning is the report’s persistent characterization of federal institutions, particularly the FBI and Department of Justice, as inherently biased against conservative voters. This portrayal not only undermines public trust in vital democratic institutions but also provides ready-made justifications for rejecting unfavorable election results.
The scenarios themselves read like outlandish political thrillers rather than serious policy planning exercises. One features Hamas terrorists entering through the southern border to take a Jewish celebrity hostage. Another involves Iran conducting a nuclear test as an “October surprise.” “The results of these disciplined scenarios indicated unequivocally that the 2024 election presents serious threats to the infrastructure of constitutional governance in America—threats of even greater magnitude than those faced in 2020,” the report found.
The project’s recommendations are equally troubling. While calling for “aggressive” challenges to “procedural anomalies,” the report offers little concrete guidance on distinguishing genuine irregularities from normal electoral processes. Instead, it repeatedly suggests that traditional media outlets and social platforms cannot be trusted to provide accurate election information — a stance that could encourage the spread of misinformation.
Perhaps most dangerous is the report’s implicit endorsement of what it calls “unprecedented actions” to challenge election results. While wrapped in language about protecting electoral integrity, these recommendations could easily serve as a blueprint for disrupting legitimate election processes.
The exercise’s treatment of law enforcement is particularly revealing. While warning about potential federal overreach, the report simultaneously encourages local sheriffs to take a more active role in election monitoring — a contradiction that seems to endorse law enforcement intervention only when it aligns with particular political interests.
Even more concerning is the report’s casual discussion of “public pressure” to influence court decisions about election disputes. This thinly veiled reference to street demonstrations risks normalizing the idea that judicial decisions should be swayed by crowd action rather than legal merit.
At a time when American democracy needs careful stewardship and renewed faith in institutions, the 2024 Transition Integrity Project offers neither. Instead, it provides a roadmap for undermining electoral confidence under the guise of protecting it. That may be an interesting academic exercise, but it’s a dangerous game to play with the foundations of democratic governance.
The Prayer and Politics Playbook: Inside The Family Research Council’s Voter Guide
The question “What would Jesus do on Election Day?” might seem unusual to some, but for Christian Nationalists working to mobilize voters, it’s a powerful motivator. A detailed voter mobilization guide from the Family Research Council (FRC) offers a revealing glimpse into how the organization seeks to transform religious convictions into electoral participation.
“Remember, how you vote today impacts tomorrow!” declares the guide repeatedly, weaving biblical references with practical political organizing tactics. The manual lays out a four-part strategy: voter registration, peer mobilization, values-based voting, and prayer. Lots of prayer.
The guide’s approach is methodical. For voter registration drives, it provides detailed checklists: secure pastoral approval, train volunteers, collect forms properly, and maintain careful records for follow-up. There are specific instructions for everything from setting up registration tables to coordinating transportation to the polls.
Legal compliance receives particular attention. The manual includes charts distinguishing between permitted and prohibited activities for churches and clergy. Churches can distribute candidate surveys but not endorse candidates. They can host candidate forums but must invite all candidates. They can conduct voter registration drives but must remain nonpartisan.
The guide frames political participation as a religious duty, citing biblical passages and religious leaders. It presents voting as an extension of religious practice rather than a separate democratic activity. “If Jesus were in America preparing for Election Day,” the guide suggests, “it would be safe to say that He would register to vote, encourage others to do the same, and then vote for the candidates who most closely represent His values.”
Statistical evidence features prominently. The guide cites historical examples of elections decided by single votes and tracks evangelical voter turnout percentages across multiple elections. In 2012, it notes, self-identified evangelicals comprised 27% of the electorate, with 58.6% of eligible evangelical voters casting ballots.
The manual’s treatment of issues reveals careful messaging. Rather than explicit partisan appeals, it encourages voters to evaluate candidates through the lens of “biblical values” on topics like abortion, gambling and the “homosexual agenda.”
Practical organizing tools abound. The guide recommends obtaining voter histories to target outreach, establishing phone banks for reminder calls, and coordinating Election Day logistics like transportation and childcare. It even provides instructions for becoming a poll worker.
Former Southern Baptist Convention leader Adrian Rogers is quoted saying, “When the government condones what God condemns, we must obey God rather than men.” This sentiment underlies the guide’s fundamental Christian Nationalism as it does throughout Project 2025.
