A progressive network that organizes sitting elected officials is circulating a midterm preparation package telling local governments to speed up permits for election-related demonstrations, set aside assembly areas near polling places, and adopt a political vocabulary that brands opponents as “election traitors.”

The documents are public. What is not yet established is how many jurisdictions have acted on the permitting and assembly-area recommendations, or which employers have actually agreed to the business pledge the bulletin promotes.

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Excerpt from Substack:

Faster protest permits. Assembly areas near polls. A messaging guide that labels opponents “election traitors.”

The network wants government officials preparing the ground for election demonstrations, with its older guidance offering a roadmap for limiting the police response.

One messaging guide recommended in the bulletin tells readers to replace “Election deniers” with “Election traitors.” The explanation: the former sounds too benign and morally neutral; the latter conveys malicious intent and casts the speakers as patriots.

The material comes from Local Progress Impact Lab, and the audience matters. Local Progress organizes people who already hold office, meaning the officials who approve permits, oversee local agencies, and vote to change municipal law. The August 2026 election bulletin instructs them to create an expedited permitting process for election-related demonstrations and to pre-designate and publicize assembly areas near civic buildings and polling locations. It also calls for tabletop exercises involving mayors’ offices, police chiefs, prosecutors, election administrators, school superintendents, and community leaders. The group’s separate protest guidance, updated in November 2025, recommends repealing local nuisance laws such as loitering, disturbing the peace, and resisting arrest, banning tear gas and rubber bullets, limiting police dispersal orders, and promptly releasing people arrested at public assemblies.

The messaging guidance extends the same preparation into language. Along with the shift from election deniers to election traitors, the guide recommends renaming the SAVE Act the Voter Elimination Act and warns that calling for secure elections increases support for what it calls anti-voter policies. It draws on focus groups and survey research involving David Binder Research and Defending Democracy Together Institute. The source article notes that Local Progress recommends this document but that its authorship by the organization has not been established.

The bulletin also assigns a role to private employers. It urges officials to press larger businesses to sign a Business for Democracy pledge, modeled on a Minnesota version, under which signers would oppose voting restrictions and, if vote counting is obstructed or duly elected candidates are blocked from taking office, commit to closing their businesses. The pledge does not name a shutdown date or identify which employers have signed.

In Michigan, Local Progress is promoting a concrete example. Ypsilanti councilmembers Amber Fellows and Desirae Simmons submitted an April resolution directing city officials to coordinate with immigration advocacy organizations and the ACLU of Michigan on rights education and polling-place planning. It makes city spaces available free for related training and authorizes up to $10,000 from the general fund for printing, translation, mailing, staffing, and polling operations. Local reporting confirmed it passed unanimously, and Local Progress’s Michigan newsletter identifies both sponsors as members and promotes the resolution. The organization is not small: its legal entity, Local Progress Policy Institute, reported $9.59 million in 2024 revenue per Form 990 data. Its board includes Milwaukee County Board Chairwoman Marcelia Nicholson-Bovell and Detroit Councilmember Gabriela Santiago-Romero, with Movement Voter Project’s Jillian Johnson as chair and SEIU’s Ashley Dwire as secretary and treasurer. A members-only election-messaging webinar is scheduled for Sept. 23 at 7 p.m. Eastern.

Exodus 23:1-2 speaks directly to what this playbook is asking officials to do: “You shall not spread a false report. You shall not join hands with a wicked man to be a malicious witness. You shall not fall in with the many to do evil” (ESV). God is not only forbidding outright lies here. He is forbidding the kind of speech that corrupts a community’s ability to judge fairly, the rumor passed along, the testimony offered in service of a cause, the pressure of a crowd that makes dissent costly. The command sits in a chapter about courts and judges, and it closes with a warning against perverting justice by siding with the majority. That is what a vocabulary like “election traitor” is designed to do. It does not argue a case and let voters weigh it. It assigns malice in advance to anyone who wants a secure ballot, and it tells officeholders to rename a bill requiring photo ID and proof of citizenship the Voter Elimination Act. Scripture calls that a false report, and it commands God’s people not to join hands with it even when the crowd is loud. So pray that the council members, mayors, and county officials being handed this material would weigh it against their oath rather than their party, and that the church would answer false accusation with truth plainly spoken instead of borrowing the same tactics.

Let’s pray for clarity in our speech, integrity in our officials, and a November election conducted with honesty and peace.

How are you praying about this issue? Share your prayers and scriptures in the comments below.

(Excerpt from Natalie Winters on Substack. Photo Credit: zimmytws from Getty Images).