All Voting is Local

Hannah Fried, a Democratic political operative who worked on the presidential campaigns of Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton, is a co-founder and as of 2026 was the CEO of AVL. ²

AVL’s sister group is All Voting is Local Action, an independent political advocacy nonprofit that is primarily focused on opposing election integrity laws that allegedly disproportionately affect racial minority voters. ³

Founding and History

All Voting is Local was founded in 2018 as a project of left-of-center organizations including the Leadership Conference Education Fund, the American Civil Liberties Union, the American Constitution Society, the Campaign Legal Center, and the Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights Under Law. The group claimed that over one million people who desired to vote in 2016 were unable to do so due to poll wait times, registration issues, and voter identification laws. AVL has claimed that it worked to make voting more accessible to everyone, although it has done this by promoting controversial methods, including resisting the purging of voter rolls, opposing voter identification laws, and promoting mail-in voting. ⁴

Policies and Metrics

All Voting is Local’s policy priorities are aimed at increasing the accessibility of voting while maximizing voter turnout. AVL has argued that there should be a mandated, 30-minute maximum wait time for in-person voting. ⁵ AVL has supported controversial policies on voting, arguing that convicted felons should be permitted to vote while in jail. ⁶

AVL maintains that voting should be made as easy as possible and has condemned election security measures, such as voter roll maintenance that removes ineligible or inactive voters. ⁷ AVL has also argued that the 2013 Supreme Court decision in Shelby v. Holder “gutted” the Voting Rights Act by allowing local and state jurisdictions that had previously been subject to federal oversight to have control over their voting rules and regulations. ⁸

During the 2020 election, AVL worked to encourage African-American voters to vote by mail, convincing them that the system was safe and could be trusted. ⁹ AVL was very active in 2020, claiming that its work led to 71 early voting sites being added and 875 additional ballot-drop boxes being deployed across the country. The group also held 176 voter education events and reached out to 4.6 million people to encourage voting. Of this 4.6 million, AVL claimed that 1.9 million had been affected by voter registration roll maintenance. ¹⁰

AVL facilitates individuals becoming poll workers or to become active in “Election Protection,” volunteer networks that protect voter integrity by monitoring voting on election day or providing pro-bono legal services. ¹¹

In February 2026, AVL joined the Wisconsin Democracy Campaign, the League of Women Voters of Wisconsin, Common Cause Wisconsin, the ACLU of Wisconsin, and the All in Wisconsin Fund in writing an open letter to the City of Madison challenging its legal argument that the city should not be financially liable for 193 uncounted ballots in the 2024 election on the grounds that state law considers absentee voting to be a privilege rather than a right. The letter describes the legal argument as “dangerous” and an attempt to avoid responsibility for disenfranchising voters. ¹²

Pro-Voter Agenda

In 2025, All Voting is Local launched the Pro-Voter Agenda, a policy road map for its electoral policy agenda. The Agenda is targeted at state and local election officials to support or oppose laws to support voting access for racial minorities. ¹³

The Agenda’s high-level policy goals are to make voter registration easier, make the voting process easier by increasing voting locations and their open hours, and to oppose allegedly partisan efforts to interfere in the electoral process. Specific policies supported by the Agenda include better voter-list maintenance, permitting same-day voter registration, developing voter registration and voting processes in more languages, enhanced legal protections for election workers, employing electronic voting machines, and developingregulations to protect voter access for racial minorities and other allegedly voter-suppressed minority groups. ¹³

Most Dangerous Election Deniers List

In 2026, All Voting is Local released its “America’s Top 10 Most Dangerous Election Deniers,” a list of 10 exclusively right-leaning individuals and institutions allegedly promoting voter suppression policies: ¹⁴

1. President Donald J. Trump
2. The U.S. Department of Justice
3. Then-U.S. Attorney General Pam Bondi
4. Deputy Assistant Secretary for Election Integrity Heather Honey at the U.S. Department of Homeland Security
5. Janice Johnston, Janelle King, Salleigh Grubbs, and James Mills of the Georgia State Election Board
6. Lancaster County Commissioner Josh Parsons
7. Wisconsin Elections Commissioner Bob Spindell
8. Storey County Clerk Jim Hindle
9. Maricopa County Recorder Justin Heap
10. Florida Governor Ron DeSantis (R) ¹⁴

State-Specific Priorities for 2020 Election

While All Voting is Local claims to be concerned about access to voting in general, during the 2020 election cycle, the organization focused its efforts in eight potential battleground states: Arizona, Georgia, Nevada, Pennsylvania, Florida, Michigan, Ohio, and Wisconsin. ¹⁵

Arizona

In Arizona, AVL focused on increasing early voting opportunities and expanding the number of polling places in locations with populations that are less likely to vote by mail. It also advocated for the state to increase the number of Arizona prisoners able to vote from jail. ¹⁶  AVL estimates that through its efforts, over 400,000 people gained access to online voter registration, and 50,000 Native American voters were encouraged to vote early. ¹

Georgia

In Georgia, AVL targeted voter roll maintenance, claiming that voters were being wrongfully removed from voter rolls. The organization contacted Georgians who had been removed from the registration rolls, working to  reduce the amount of mail-in and provisional ballots that would be rejected on election day. ¹⁷ AVL also advocated for increased numbers of ballot drop boxes, and the state added 160 boxes, including 26 in the primarily left-leaning counties it had targeted. ¹

Nevada

2020 was the first year that people with felony convictions were allowed to vote in Nevada, and AVL worked to mobilize former felons to vote and to make bilingual voting materials available to voters. ¹⁸ AVL and its local partners secured legislation that led to 1.8 million voters receiving mail-in ballot information in English, Spanish, and Tagalog. Working with the Nevada Native Vote Project, AVL secured four additional voting locations to promote voter turnout among Native Americans. ¹

Pennsylvania

In Pennsylvania, AVL fought against changes in polling locations and demanded that election officials provide more information to voters, while also assisting incarcerated felons in voting. ¹⁹ The state of Pennsylvania added 81 additional ballot drop boxes and 28 new early voting locations in five of AVL’s priority counties.  ¹

Florida

In Florida, AVL promoted increased early voting among students and people of color, aimed to make ballots and voting material available in foreign languages, and worked to reduce wait times on election day. ²⁰ The state added 60 new ballot drop boxes and 25 new early voting sites in AVL’s 13 target counties.  ¹

Michigan

In Michigan, AVL worked to ensure that left-of-center election policies, including same-day voter registration and no-excuse absentee voting, were enacted. ²¹ In Michigan, AVL noted that 466 ballot drop boxes were added between the August primary and the general election in November.  ¹

Ohio

AVL argued that thousands of voters were wrongfully purged from Ohio voter registration rolls, contacting nearly 500,000 inactive voters to inform them that they were scheduled to be removed from the rolls and advocating that the state implement automatic voter registration procedures. AVL also focused on promoting voter registration at historically black colleges and universities to reduce the number of provisional ballots cast by African-American voters. ²² AVL further worked to encourage incarcerated prisoners to vote, reporting that nine times as many prisoners in the Franklin County jail voted in 2020 as compared to 2016. The group also reported that its advertisements recruited 2,745 poll workers.  ¹

Wisconsin

AVL argued that Wisconsin’s voter identification laws were too stringent, and that election officials did not do enough to educate low-income and ethnic-minority voters on the requirements. AVL also argued against Wisconsin’s policy of not allowing former felons to vote until they have completed parole, probation, or extended supervision, claiming that the policy made  almost one in nine African Americans ineligible to vote. ²³ AVL reported that state DMV locations were open for an additional 268.5 hours, and that one temporary DMV location and 10 partial locations were opened to provide photo identification cards required for voting following its work in the state.  ¹

Leadership

As of June 2026, Hannah Fried was the chief executive officer of All Voting is Local. She was one of the group’s co-founders and; is an experienced Democratic operative who worked as the voter protection director on the Obama presidential reelection campaign and as the deputy general counsel for voter protection on the 2016 Hillary Clinton campaign. She previously worked at the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) and the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA). ²

As of June 2026, Jessica Herrera was the executive vice president for communications of AVL. From 2021 to 2025, Herrea worked at Supermajority, a lobbying and electoral advocacy group that promotes left-of-center positions on social issues, and finished at the group as the senior director of communications, creative, and digital. In 2020, Herrera worked for Voting Rights Lab, an electoral advocacy group opposed to election integrity laws, as a communications associate and director of communications. Earlier, Herrera worked in communications positions at the Center for Biological Diversity and the Sierra Club, and in organizer roles at Mi Familia Vota, the Border Action Network, and the Service Employees International Union (SEIU). ²⁴

As of June 2026, Cynthia Travieso (sometimes known as Cynthia Martinez) was the executive vice president for state campaigns and programs of AVL. From 2023 to January 2026, Travieso served as the director of power building strategies at Community Change, a left-of-center nonprofit that focuses on issues of poverty, race, housing policy, and the treatment of released prisoners. From 2021 to 2023, Travieso was the political director and then deputy director of Community Voices Heard, an advocacy group that promotes left-of-center policies such as rent control, greater government involvement in the private sector, and race-focused policies for housing. From 2019 to 2022, Travieso ran her own management consulting firm that focused on racial minorities and “Social Justice-Related strategies.” From 2015 to 2019, Travieso served as a national field director of the SEIU. ²⁵

As of June 2026, Melissa Adams was the director of people of AVL. Her bio on the group’s website at the time described her as specializing in developing “workplace cultures that prioritize diversity, equity, inclusion, & belonging (DEIB).” Earlier in her career, Adams worked at Organizing for Action, a now-defunct advocacy group that grew out of Barack Obama’s 2008 presidential campaign, on which she volunteered. ^{26 27}