An anti-MAGA organizing group is promoting a plan for a “parallel vote counting infrastructure, separate from the government” as part of a broader strategy for contested elections. Seed the Vote organizing director Dylan Cooke says the group’s legal partners are exploring the proposed system to validate election results.

Cooke’s framework is organized around four stages: fight, win, prove and enforce. The plan calls for challenging election rules the group considers suppressive, turning out enough voters to win races by margins considered too large to dispute, independently validating results, and mobilizing protests and nationwide noncooperation.

Under the “prove” stage, the outside counting infrastructure would be used to check election results independently. Cooke points to Venezuela, Hungary, and Serbia as precedents for the approach.

The “enforce” stage calls for protests and nationwide noncooperation to defend those results, based on the argument that legal action alone would not be enough. The proposed vote count would therefore provide evidence for the mobilization that follows.

An anti-MAGA group says its legal partners are exploring a PARALLEL VOTE COUNT outside government.

Seed the Vote’s own words: “parallel vote counting infrastructure, separate from the government” It cites Venezuela, Hungary and Serbia as precedents. Here are the documents. — Natalie Winters (@nataliegwinters) October 29, 2026

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Cooke states the connection bluntly: “Gathering evidence matters only if it creates mass mobilization and mass outrage.” That declaration puts political pressure, not merely technical verification, at the heart of the plan.

Five months later, the proposal was still being circulated. In an October 23 memo, Movement Voter Project executive director Billy Wimsatt identifies Seed the Vote as a grantee and directs readers to Cooke’s plan while discussing preparations for the aftermath of November 3.

The connection between these documents is a donor memo.

On October 23, Movement Voter Project executive director Billy Wimsatt identified Seed the Vote as a grantee and promoted its plan. The SAME paragraph links the 18-scenario guide and says movement leaders have trained to escalate nonviolently. Both plans are being circulated together ahead of the midterms. — Natalie Winters (@nataliegwinters) October 29, 2026

Cooke credits his framework to Hardy Merriman, whose career includes international civil resistance training, democracy promotion organizations, and a USAID initiative. Merriman’s official biography says he served as a senior technical adviser to USAID’s Powered by the People program from 2023 to 2025.

Merriman also led the International Center on Nonviolent Conflict and served as a nonresident senior fellow at the Atlantic Council. The Powered by the People program announcement describes a five-year, $45 million USAID award to a consortium led by PartnersGlobal.

Consortium members included the International Center on Nonviolent Conflict and CANVAS, the Centre for Applied Nonviolent Action and Strategies. The initiative was designed to support activists and social movements internationally.

Merriman’s association with CANVAS predates the USAID award. His publication list identifies him as a coauthor of its 2007 civil resistance curriculum, published in Belgrade with Srdja Popovic, Slobodan Djinovic, Andrej Milivojevic and Ivan Marovic.

The USAID program Merriman advised carried a FIVE-YEAR, $45 MILLION award.

PartnersGlobal led the consortium. Members included the International Center on Nonviolent Conflict and CANVAS, the Centre for Applied Nonviolent Action and Strategies. The Serbia connection goes back years. Merriman coauthored CANVAS’s 2007 civil-resistance curriculum, published in BELGRADE, SERBIA. His coauthors included Srdja Popovic and Slobodan Djinovic. CANVAS later joined the USAID-funded consortium. — Natalie Winters (@nataliegwinters) October 29, 2026

His later work also discusses how such movements should be financed. A 2023 Atlantic Council report he coauthored recommends expanded government support for civil resistance, multiyear funding for activists and international strike funds.

Seed the Vote makes no mystery of its political target. Its website identifies defeating MAGA, advancing progressive candidates and changing the direction of the Democratic Party as central goals.

Movement Voter Project helps provide the wider organizing network. An October 14 volunteering guide lists Seed the Vote as its top recommendation and says most local organizations receiving its volunteers are also Movement Voter Project grantees.

Wimsatt’s later memo says movement leaders rehearsed 18 potential threat scenarios and trained to escalate nonviolently if necessary. The memo links to both Cooke’s Seed the Vote plan and a separate scenario guide from Freedom Trainers.

Here's what I can ADD.

This came STRAIGHT from Seed the Vote's own May 18 plan, "We Can't Let Them Steal It," WRITTEN by organizing director Dylan Cooke. Arizona is NAMED as a target. They PROMISE to "mobilize YOU to ensure we enforce the results." Who's BEHIND it? Seed the Vote Action is a project of the Center for Empowered Politics, an Oakland 501(c)(4). They TOLD us the plan. Believe them. — ShadowPatriot (@ShadowPatriotUS) October 29, 2026

Seed the Vote is a project of Everyday People PAC. The Federal Election Commission lists the committee as a super PAC and reports about $2.81 million in receipts and $3.46 million in disbursements from January 1, 2025, through October 14, 2026, with roughly $2.47 million remaining.

Those figures cover the committee’s total activity and do not establish a specific budget for the proposed outside count. Still, the contingency manual promoted by Wimsatt ventures well beyond technical questions about ballots.

For a scenario in which Congress refuses to seat election winners, printed page 66 recommends seeking recognition from international allies for incoming House and Senate members. The same page recommends opposition walkouts, sustained demonstrations, boycotts, and strikes.

Another instruction declares: “Organize daily rallies and strikes at the Capitol until the winners are seated.” The manual points readers toward May Day Strong, Sunrise Movement and Indivisible for rapid mobilization.

Daniel Hunter is named as the manual’s author. Its credits identify ASO Communications figures Anat Shenker-Osorio, Genevieve Arnold and Jay Marcellus as providing messaging guidance.

A separate Freedom Trainers handout calls for count support activities beginning November 4, followed by economic noncooperation if election results are not honored. It describes escalation as a last resort and cites Ukraine, Serbia and Brazil.

Independent verification can be used to check official election results, but it has limits. A Westminster Foundation for Democracy technical guide says conventional parallel vote tabulation uses a representative sample of polling stations to project results.

According to the guide, such tabulation cannot directly overturn official returns or reliably identify a winner when the margin falls within its statistical uncertainty. It also names partisan presentation, incomplete data, and premature publication as risks.

Those limits leave basic questions hanging over Seed the Vote’s plan. Who would collect and verify the data, which races would be covered, and whether findings confirming Republican victories would also be published?

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