No Kings coalition plans 3,000+ early-vote events ahead of midterms

Organizers prepare rapid-response network to defend November results

The No Kings coalition and its partner organizations will hold more than 3,000 events across all 50 states and Washington DC on Saturday to encourage early voting in the 3 November midterm elections, organizers said Friday. Organizers said they hope Saturday will be the largest single day of early voting in US history, and they said early voting can ease burdens on election workers, build confidence in voters, and help them avoid long lines and potential election threats.

The day of action marks a strategic shift for a coalition that organized nationwide street protests beginning in the summer of 2025, channeling that infrastructure into ballot access and poll monitoring ahead of races that will determine control of Congress.

“Saturday will be an anti-election sabotage effort,” said Ezra Levin, co-founder of the progressive group Indivisible, part of the No Kings coalition. “The single best thing you can do to push back against sabotage is to massively increase the vote and do it early.”

No Kings began as a protest movement during President Donald Trump’s second term, organizing three days of nationwide protests beginning in the summer of 2025 that brought people out to protest a government shutdown, federal layoffs, immigration enforcement, foreign wars, fatal ICE shootings, and military deployments in US cities, among other issues. Organizers said those protests did what they were built to do — show that Americans would not quietly surrender their rights — and now, ahead of the midterms, they plan to direct that energy into casting ballots.

“No Kings needs to be more than just getting people together every couple of months on a Saturday and marching,” said Hunter Dunn, an organizer with 50501, a decentralized anti-fascist protest network that is part of the coalition. “The goal of it isn’t just to demonstrate people power. It’s to channel people power into something useful.”

Organizers said a large early vote turnout gives voters time to fix problems with registration and narrows the window for interference. They cited concerns that fears of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), Customs and Border Protection (CBP), the FBI, or armed militants at the polls could intimidate voters or force them to stay home. They want to make the results “simply too big to rig,” Dunn said.

Leah Greenberg, an Indivisible co-founder, said the authoritarian playbook relies on creating “fear and uncertainty and confusion and chaos around the process of voting,” partly to manufacture grounds for contesting results later. Voting early interrupts that and “ensures that voting is a season rather than a single day,” she said.

At the heart of the thousands of events scheduled for Saturday is a goal to make voting a communal activity. That is why the formats of Saturday’s events vary widely, from big-city rallies and concerts to festivals and block parties, voter registration tables, and people lining long stretches of highway.

In states where early voting will already be under way on Saturday — about half the US — Levin said local groups will hold get-out-the-vote kick-offs and knock on doors. Where early voting has yet to begin, some organizers are throwing superhero-themed parties built around the message that voting is a superpower. Others have registered “paws to the polls” events, walking dogs to vote together. In New Hampshire, Alabama, and Mississippi — the handful of states without in-person early voting — Greenberg said participants will focus on helping people make a plan for election day.

Sarah Parker, a 50501 organizer in Florida, said small gatherings matter even in conservative places such as Sarasota, where rallies will be paired with virtual events and “education rallies” on why voting matters and how to become a poll monitor. “Even if you’re one or two people, you’re still creating change,” she said, noting that a passing driver might pull over and join.

Poll walks, in which neighbors head to vote together, also serve a practical purpose amid what organizers describe as rising threats at polling places. “Going as a group helps people be a lot more safe than going alone,” Dunn said.

Saturday’s flagship event, to be held in Atlanta, will highlight the effect of redistricting across the South. The day is also a response to the fallout from the Supreme Court’s April ruling on the Voting Rights Act. Soon after the decision, organizers said, several Republican-led states moved to redraw congressional maps to favor the party and, in the process, dilute Black voting power.

“Black voters are under attack,” said LaTosha Brown, co-founder of Black Voters Matter Fund, the organization hosting the flagship event, in a press briefing. She pointed to the FBI’s removal of about 650 boxes of 2020 election records from Fulton County, Georgia, in January, and a Justice Department push to obtain the names and home addresses of nearly 3,000 poll workers. “There is a full-fledged effort under way to steal this election,” Brown said.

Damon Hewitt, president of the Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights Under Law, said his group is watching for last-minute voter purges, attempts to seize ballots or equipment after the election, and intimidation at polling places. Last month, the Lawyers’ Committee was part of a lawsuit that stopped a Trump executive order that would have restricted delivery of mail-in ballots, he said. In Atlanta, local 50501 organizers expect to train more than 400 poll monitors and election defenders to ensure smooth voting and counting processes for voters and local election officials.

Saturday’s organizers are also recruiting election defenders — volunteers trained to respond if results are challenged. Greenberg said the coalition is preparing people “to mass-mobilize on a rapid-response basis, if necessary, to respond to election sabotage.”

Levin pointed to Hungary, where he said Viktor Orbán lost power this spring after thousands of local groups drove turnout to record levels. “The thing you can do about it is ensure that the margins are just so big that it’s impossible to rig,” he said.

Saturday will be judged on a single measure, Levin said. “Did we boost the early vote to the highest level it’s ever been in a midterm? Full stop. That is the question.”