In recent years, efforts to restrict voting access and undermine nonpartisan election administration have accelerated at the federal and state levels. This study examines two states where robust organizing infrastructure helped advance comprehensive election reforms: New Mexico and Minnesota.

In both states, groups used multi-entity structures to build organized constituencies capable of influencing policy outcomes, advance reforms that strengthened democratic participation, and sustain engagement through implementation to ensure those reforms delivered on their promise.

The successful democracy reform campaigns in New Mexico and Minnesota were distinguished by two key features. First, they were grounded in strategic coordination across a full ecology of participants: policy groups, grassroots organizers, legislators, and funders, with basebuilding organizations at the center.

Prior to 2020, democracy reform ecosystems in both states were anchored largely by policy and legal organizations. As base-building groups grew their power, strategic capacity, and constituent membership, reform coalitions shifted to put organizing at the center. That shift, and the organized constituent bases it produced, enabled both states to drive durable legislative outcomes.

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