Democrats have proposed a series of strategic moves that, taken together, would lock in Democratic control of the federal government: expanding the Supreme Court, eliminating the Senate filibuster, abolishing the Electoral College, admitting Washington, D.C., and Puerto Rico as states, extending voting rights to illegal aliens, and federalizing election rules.
The push to expand the Supreme Court began in earnest in April 2021, when Senator Ed Markey (D-Mass.) and Representatives Jerrold Nadler, Hank Johnson, and Mondaire Jones introduced the Judiciary Act. The bill would add four seats, creating a 13-justice Supreme Court. Democrats controlled both chambers of Congress, and Joe Biden was three months into his presidency. Passage would have given Biden four appointments, turning the Court’s 6–3 conservative majority into a 7–6 majority of Democratic appointees.
The legislation was reintroduced in May 2023, with support from Senator Tina Smith and Representatives Adam Schiff and Cori Bush. Speaking outside the Court in July 2024, Markey said, “We must expand the court.” Smith explicitly linked expansion to eliminating the filibuster, calling on Congress to “reform and expand the Court” and urging Democrats to abolish the filibuster so they could pass the legislation.
Support for expansion has widened in 2026. On a podcast released October 14, former Vice President Kamala Harris said, “I believe that we need to expand the Supreme Court,” as Newsweek reported.
House Minority Whip Jim Clyburn has endorsed adding four seats, while Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer has said Court reform will be a priority if Democrats win both chambers in the midterms. Representative Jamie Raskin, the likely Judiciary Committee chairman if Democrats retake the House, has also backed expansion.
On September 2, House Republicans forced a vote on a constitutional amendment that would fix the Court at nine justices. The measure received 212 votes in favor and 206 against, falling short of the two-thirds majority required for passage. All but one Democrat voted against it. Representative Don Davis of North Carolina was the only Democrat to vote with Republicans.
Ending the legislative filibuster would allow a simple Senate majority to pass ordinary legislation, including Court expansion and statehood bills.
In January 2022, President Joe Biden told an Atlanta audience that if voting bills remained blocked, Democrats had no option but to change Senate rules, “including getting rid of the filibuster for this,” as NPR reported. Days later, Senators Joe Manchin and Kyrsten Sinema joined Republicans to defeat the change, 52–48.
Other prominent Democrats have called for eliminating the filibuster or creating exceptions for specific legislation. In his 2020 eulogy for John Lewis, former President Barack Obama called the filibuster “another Jim Crow relic” and urged its elimination if necessary to pass his proposed voting reforms. He also voiced support for statehood for Puerto Rico and Washington, D.C.
As the 2024 Democratic nominee, Harris said, “I think we should eliminate the filibuster for Roe,” in a radio interview. Schumer likewise said Democrats would prioritize circumventing the filibuster to pass voting legislation if they controlled the White House and both chambers of Congress. Senator Angela Alsobrooks campaigned on the pledge, “I will vote to abolish the filibuster.”
Democrats have also sought to replace the Electoral College with direct election of the president. In 2019, Senators Brian Schatz, Dick Durbin, Dianne Feinstein, and Kirsten Gillibrand introduced an amendment to do so. “In an election, the person who gets the most votes should win,” Schatz said at the time.
Schatz, Durbin, and Senator Peter Welch reintroduced the proposal on December 12, 2024, weeks after Trump won both the popular vote and the Electoral College. Durbin described the Electoral College as “this 18th-century invention that disenfranchises millions of Americans,” according to his press release. In an October podcast interview, Harris said: “The popular vote has to matter.”
Because a constitutional amendment requires approval from two-thirds of both chambers of Congress and ratification by 38 states, Democratic-led states have pursued another route: the National Popular Vote Interstate Compact. Under the agreement, participating states would award their electoral votes to the nationwide popular-vote winner once jurisdictions holding at least 270 electoral votes have joined.
Virginia Governor Abigail Spanberger signed legislation adding her state in April 2026. That brought the compact to 19 jurisdictions holding 222 electoral votes, leaving it 48 short of taking effect.
Statehood for D.C. and Puerto Rico would add four senators, along with additional House seats and electoral votes. The Washington, D.C. Admission Act, H.R. 51, passed the House on April 22, 2021, but died in the Senate. Delegate Eleanor Holmes Norton reintroduced the bill on January 3, 2025, with House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries among its 207 cosponsors.
The House passed the Puerto Rico Status Act on December 15, 2022, by a 233–191 vote, with all 217 voting Democrats and 16 Republicans in favor. The bill called for a binding vote on Puerto Rico’s political status, including statehood as an option. Then-Speaker Nancy Pelosi said the House had voted “to tear down the vestiges of colonialism.”
Democratic strategist James Carville urged Democrats to act immediately if they regained the White House and both chambers of Congress: “on day one, they should make Puerto Rico [and] D.C. a state.” Harris also supported statehood for both if their residents wanted it.
The Democratic-controlled D.C. Council passed the Local Resident Voting Rights Amendment Act on November 21, 2022, allowing noncitizens, including those in the country illegally, to vote in local elections only. The law extends eligibility to residents aged 18 or older who have lived in the District for at least 30 days, regardless of immigration status. Democratic Mayor Muriel Bowser allowed it to become law without her signature. Councilmember Charles Allen, a cosponsor, said the council wanted to focus on “removing barriers to voting.”
The House voted to block the law in February 2023, but the Democratic-majority Senate never took up the resolution, allowing the law to take effect, according to the House committee report. On May 23, 2024, the House voted to repeal it, with 143 Democrats opposing repeal and 52 supporting it. The House passed another repeal bill, H.R. 884, on June 10, 2025, by a 266–148 vote.
In New York City, the City Council passed a law in late 2021 that would have allowed roughly 800,000 noncitizens with green cards or work authorization to vote in city elections, according to Malliotakis’s office. New York’s Court of Appeals struck down the law in a 6–1 ruling on March 20, 2025, finding that the state constitution limits voting to citizens.
The final element is federal control over election rules through the For the People Act. H.R. 1 passed the House in March 2021, with 220 Democrats supporting it and one Democrat joining 209 Republicans in opposition. Among other provisions, the bill would require states to offer same-day voter registration for federal elections. The 2019 House-passed version also contained extensive findings supporting D.C. statehood, linking federal election legislation to the push for new states.
This week’s midterms will determine whether Democrats gain the congressional power to advance these proposals, which could reshape the rules of political competition for years to come.
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