Russia Is Interfering Again. Here's What Democracy Actually Needs to Survive It.

What Happened

Russian intelligence is running online influence campaigns designed to shake confidence in American democracy before the November 2026 midterms, according to U.S. officials cited in reporting by the New York Times. The Kremlin's stated objective is to inject chaos, amplify divisions, and convince Americans that their elections aren't legitimate.

Russia conducted similar operations in 2016 and 2020. Analysts expect the pattern to continue through 2028. The difference now lies in what public reporting has revealed, and in how little has changed in response.

What It Means for You

Foreign interference only works if it finds fertile ground. Russia can spend millions on Facebook ads, but those ads move votes only if Americans already doubt the system itself.

A 2024 Pew Research survey found that 63% of Americans expressed doubt that elections in the United States are secure. This number has climbed steadily since 2020. Russia didn't create that doubt, but it exploits it.

In practical terms: you see a post on social media claiming voting machines are rigged. You don't know if it came from a teenager in Moscow or someone in your own town. You can't distinguish a real news story from a sophisticated fake. So you begin to wonder whether your vote actually counted, whether this election is legitimate.

This isn't paranoia. It's a rational response to a system that hasn't given you good reasons to trust it. When millions of people stop believing their vote matters, democracy stops working. An election can be technically fair and still fail functionally if people don't believe in it.

The Bigger Picture

Russia's interference campaign is real, but it's not the root problem, it's a symptom.

Americans distrust elections for concrete reasons. Gerrymandering means most districts are decided before a vote is cast. Voter ID laws make it harder for eligible people to participate. Polling places have closed in neighborhoods where long lines are already the norm. Money floods into campaigns from sources voters never see. These are documented facts that shape who gets to participate and whose vote gets counted.

When a foreign adversary wants to undermine democracy, the work is simple. They amplify what's already broken.

The Kremlin's invasion of Ukraine, an illegal war of aggression that violated a sovereign nation's right to self-determination, shows what Russia wants for other democracies: weakness, division, and control. Election interference is one tool in that strategy. But the solution isn't just better cybersecurity or more counter-disinformation work. Those matter, though they're band-aids on a fracture.

The real fix is making democracy so obviously fair that foreign interference can't find a foothold. That means you can vote without a three-hour wait. It means you know who's funding ads aimed at you. It means your vote counts even if you live in a district where one party has rigged the maps. It means the people running elections answer to voters, not donors.

Where This Goes

The Common Good Party exists because we believe democracy is the foundation everything else is built on. You can't have a fair economy, real healthcare, or actual climate action if the machinery that enables those things has been stripped down and sold off.

That machinery is currently broken. Foreign adversaries aren't breaking it, they're kicking at it. Americans are doing most of the damage ourselves by accepting a system where money talks louder than votes, where your zip code or party registration can predict your outcome before the polls open, and where you can't see who's trying to influence you.

The Common Good Party's approach is to fix that system. Eliminate money from politics entirely: no corporate donations, no PACs, no dark money. We fund our own campaigns this way and would demand it of everyone else. Restore voting rights to everyone eligible. End gerrymandering with independent redistricting. Require transparency about who's behind political ads. Make elections clean enough that disinformation loses its power because people actually trust what they see.

Russia will continue these efforts. But if Americans know their votes count, if they can see who's trying to manipulate them, if the system is visibly fair, then interference becomes background noise rather than a threat to democracy itself.

Defending democracy and fixing it require different strategies. We need both.