Thousands of "No Kings" rallies swept across the United States on Saturday, October 17, 2026 — but this time the anti-Trump movement traded protest placards for ballot plans. Dubbed "No Kings: Vote Early," the fourth nationwide day of action since President Donald Trump returned to office focused on getting Americans to cast their ballots early ahead of the November 3 midterm elections, with organizers claiming more than 3,000 events in all 50 states and Washington, DC.
From protest marches to ballot marches
The No Kings movement first made its name with mass protest marches — in June 2025, October 2025, and March 2026. Saturday's events marked a deliberate pivot. Rather than marches against the administration, local organizers hosted block parties, group walks to early-voting sites, voter-registration checks, and marches to the polls, all billed as nonpartisan voter-participation events.
"It's a day of nonpartisan voter participation: we are bringing our community together to make a plan to vote early and ensuring every eligible voter understands their options," organizers said in a statement. Deirdre Schifeling, the ACLU's chief political and advocacy officer and one of the coalition partners, called it "thousands of joyful celebrations of our right to vote across the country."
Rallies from Washington to Phoenix
A band entertained a few hundred people in caps and coats at the Lincoln Memorial in Washington, DC, where signs reading "VOTE EARLY" and "HANDS OFF MY VOTE!" were held aloft despite chilly weather. In Atlanta, City Councilman Michael Julian Bond urged the crowd to vote ahead of the November 3 general election: "The Constitution gives you one power, right? That is the power to vote. Are you gonna use that power?"
In downtown Phoenix, US Senator Ruben Gallego and Representative Yassamin Ansari joined demonstrators who marched to the Maricopa County Tabulation and Election Center to drop off completed ballots. Arizona organizers reported 46 events across the state, 10 days into Arizona's early-voting period, where more than 80% of voters cast ballots by mail. About 200 people marched to the Indiana governor's residence in Indianapolis, while demonstrators lined an intersection and bridge in Orono, Maine.
Why it matters
Lisa Gilbert, co-president of Public Citizen, called the shift "a strategic move and a critical one to help people exercise the most tangible aspect of their power that counters all the abuses we've been seeing, which is voting." Sister demonstrations were also planned in the United Kingdom and Europe under the name "No Tyrants: Vote Early," inviting US citizens living or traveling abroad to take part.
The day unfolded as the Trump administration pressed its own voting agenda: on Thursday it sued California election officials, asking a judge to bar the state from counting mail-in ballots from people the federal government has identified as "likely" noncitizens. Trump spent the weekend at his Mar-a-Lago resort, where he spoke at a Republican fundraising event on October 16.
Music in this post's reel: Kevin MacLeod - Long Road Ahead B (incompetech.com), licensed under CC BY 3.0
Sources: USA Today, Al Jazeera, Arizona Republic, Associated Press