The column below reflects the views of the author, and these opinions are neither endorsed nor supported by WisOpinion.com.

President Trump and his allies are assaulting the shaky foundations of American democracy. In acts that reminded us of what he did after his loss in 2020, he called the recent California primary election “rigged,” and last week, his F.B.I. raided an Ohio voter registration group.

But there are things every one of us can do, right now, to ensure democracy’s survival — and even flourishing — in our country.

Wisconsin, where I was the chair of the state Democratic Party from 2019 to last year, experienced a miniature version of what our whole country is going through today. It went from what the journalist David Daley called a “democracy desert” to a competitive purple state that could turn fully blue this fall.

We can do the same for the entire United States. We can start working now to channel political anxiety into rebuilding the foundations of our democracy so that it offers free and fair elections for all candidates of every party. But we need a plan, and it will require the efforts of all Americans — Democrats, independents and Republicans — who are committed to rebuilding a more durable and just political democratic order. 

Persuading someone to change his or her mind about whether to vote, or whom to vote for, is hard. But the thing is, to save democracy, the number of people whose minds we have to change is extraordinarily small.

In 2024, just 7,309 votes across three of the most closely contested districts gave Republicans the House majority — and extended Mike Johnson’s disastrous speakership.

Similarly, in 2020, 401 more votes would have put the North Carolina State Supreme Court Chief Justice Cheri Beasley over the top in her re-election campaign. Had she remained on the bench, she would have prevented a chain of falling dominoes that led to the gerrymandering of her state’s congressional districts in 2023 and netted the G.O.P. enough seats to continue to hold the speaker’s gavel in 2024.

Suppose you pick a race to focus on. You want to use your time and money for maximum impact. What can you do?

In a letter to a Whig campaign committee in 1840, Abraham Lincoln laid out a political strategy that has been proved right time and again: “Keep a constant watch on the doubtful voters, and from time to time have them talked to by those in whom they have the most confidence.”

There’s a name for this approach today: “relational organizing.” It starts with the recognition that people will be more open to a new message if they trust the messenger. So if you want to build a movement, build trust.

Seek to do this outside of your own political bubble, because the people who are most apt to change their minds about politics are generally the people who are the least interested in it.

Your goal should be to join or build a group that engages voters who don’t live, sleep, eat and breathe politics — in a barbershop, at a fish fry or at a farmers’ market.

Start with listening, not lecturing. Be curious. You want to find common values, so you have a basis to do something together. You’ll discover that nearly everyone is infuriated by an economic and political system that seems to serve only those at the very top.

Join or build a group that does this on a regular basis, focus on local races and not just the highest-profile ones, and you’ll discover that, even in this era of political chaos, you’re not powerless after all.

There are a million things that campaigns and super PACs do to try to change election results. Legal defenders play a critical role in election court battles. But organizing is the thing that each of us can do.

Wisconsin offers a model for how to use relational organizing. We’ve built a permanent campaign.

Not long ago, Wisconsin still looked like a red state. From 2010 to 2017, Republicans had won two-thirds of the statewide races — similar to their share in neighboring Iowa — and they used their power to lock in even more power, with extreme partisan gerrymanders, attacks on unions and restrictions on voting rights.

Starting in 2017, Wisconsin Democrats and allied groups built up a permanent campaign infrastructure of the kind most states see only a few months out from an election.

I first volunteered on a Wisconsin political campaign when I was 11 years old. Years later, when I saw the permanent campaign in action as a volunteer in 2018, I was blown away. The next spring, I ran for state party chair, then spent the next six years building party infrastructure that could contest every race on the ballot.

We opened dozens of storefront offices on Main Streets in small towns and rural areas, as well as cities and suburbs.

We organized hundreds of “neighborhood action teams,” whose members — often working from coffee shops, bars and living rooms — took responsibility for talking to their neighbors, friend to friend and door to door.

We trained and supported thousands of volunteers as they communicated locally — on their neighborhood email lists, in group chats, via Facebook groups, radio call-in shows, roadside signs and weekly newspapers — where persuadable, largely apolitical voters might actually see the messages.

In short, we organized and communicated everywhere, year-round, in contests for mayorships and school boards, as well as fights for governor, the Senate and the presidency.

These efforts make a modest difference in presidential elections, when hundreds of millions of dollars can be spent in a single state. But in lower-profile races, the impact of every door knock and yard sign is much greater. Local Democratic Party machines that are built from the ground up, in this lonely era, can play an outsized role in community life.

Wisconsin Democrats didn’t win every race. But these days, we win far more than we lose. In demographically similar Iowa, Republicans have continued their dominance, while in Wisconsin, Democratic-endorsed candidates have won 17 out of 21 statewide elections since 2018. Today, our state legislative maps are fair, grass-roots enthusiasm is through the roof, and Democrats have a serious shot at winning a governing trifecta. 

To take this national, I’d propose a three-step plan. The first step is a massive push to win the midterms — and not just in federal races. We should certainly aim to check Mr. Trump’s power by winning House and Senate majorities, but there’s an equally urgent fight over the next two years at the state and local level. If people who believe in democracy — from all parties — win state and local office, they can strengthen the integrity of their electoral systems and expand rights and protections for voters.

In 2026, seven of the closest states in the last presidential election — Wisconsin, Michigan, Pennsylvania, Arizona, Nevada, New Hampshire and Minnesota — hold the potential to become Democratic trifectas. If they win, Democrats should prepare for 2028 by enacting reforms to forestall election subversion, approve the National Popular Vote Interstate Compact to defang the Electoral College and pass new House maps to neutralize the next wave of G.O.P. gerrymanders.

Additionally, voters in Alaska, Georgia, Iowa, North Carolina and many other states can prevent Republican trifectas or legislative supermajorities. Success would prevent new antidemocratic laws and, in some states, avert the erasure of Black and Hispanic representation in the House.

Voters will cast ballots for State Supreme Court justices in states including North Carolina, Michigan and Montana. Many battleground states will elect secretaries of state and attorneys general, and critical offices like local clerks and county recorders, who actually administer elections.

Federal laws shape election rules, but the federal government does not oversee elections. States do. We can protect the 2028 presidential election through our actions in 2026.

Step 2 is to win a federal governing trifecta, with Democrats controlling the House, Senate and White House in 2028. The grass-roots strength that we build through local organizing in 2026 and 2027 can help make that possible.

When a governing trifecta of Democrats (and independents who caucus with them) takes office in 2029, it can tackle structural democracy reform (which is Step 3).

A national gerrymandering ban — or, better yet, an expanded House with multimember districts and proportional representation — can give more Americans a real voice in the House. This would also be the time to make the District of Columbia a state and invite a referendum on statehood for Puerto Rico, reform the Supreme Court, enact new voting rights protections and take steps to curb corruption across government. And we can expand workers’ rights to form a union — the great engine of workplace democracy — as a counterweight to rapidly expanding corporate power. All of that will require nixing the filibuster.

Eighteen state governments and the District of Columbia have already passed the National Popular Vote Interstate Compact. If just a few more states do the same — say, Pennsylvania, Michigan and Arizona, plus at least one of Wisconsin, Nevada, or New Hampshire — then the states participating in the compact will have enough Electoral College votes to determine the winner of presidential elections. From then on, the winner of the popular vote will become president, rendering “swing states” a thing of the past, giving every voter an equal say, and transforming presidential campaigning.

Citizens organizing and communicating their way to a winning electoral coalition is the essence of the democratic project. And by escaping from our phones and finding one another in real life, we confront not just the political crisis of this moment but also the deeper spiritual crisis of disconnection and polarization that has pulled us apart. Saving our democracy might just save our civic souls.

Ben Wikler, the former chair of the Wisconsin Democratic Party, is the author of the forthcoming “This Is the Plan: How to End America’s Meltdown and Save Democracy.”

This column first appeared in the New York Times.