Across the nation, citizens are marching in support of voting rights.

According to the Brennan Center, 19 states have enacted 33 laws to make it harder for Americans to vote, and we can expect more. Many of these anti-voting laws are quite extreme, and all of them will disproportionately affect minorities and low-income people.

For example, Georgia residents may be charged with a crime for handing out water to voters waiting in long lines at the polls. In Texas, election administrators may face felony charges if they encourage voters to request mail-in ballots. And in Iowa and Kansas, people could be criminally prosecuted for helping voters deliver their ballots.

In other states, Republican legislatures have undermined the nonpartisan administration of elections by elevating the role of state lawmakers in overseeing election officials and even inserting themselves into the election count.

Saving our democracy from these attacks — and confronting the filibuster — will be the most crucial fight of 2022, and it is not at all clear if our democracy will survive.

Two essential legislative measures have been introduced in Congress that would overturn many state voting restrictions: the Freedom to Vote Act and the John Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act.

The Freedom to Vote Act would protect and expand vote-by-mail, enact automatic voter registration, simplify voter ID laws, make voting polls easily accessible, and mandate paper ballots, rein in secret political spending, and more. The Voting Rights Advancement Act would restore the Voting Rights Act of 1965, ensuring that no eligible citizen is denied the right to vote.

The U.S. House already passed the Freedom to Vote Act and the Voting Rights Advancement Act. In the Senate, they enjoy the support of a narrow majority, but so far have been blocked by a Republican filibuster.

Calls for modifying the filibuster rules to get these voting rights measures passed into law are mounting, with even President Joe Biden speaking out. This will be the decisive fight of 2022, with consequences that likely will reverberate for decades to come.

If election results are close, state-level Republicans will attempt to overturn those that don’t go their way using bogus claims of “election fraud” as the pretext.

Voter fraud conspiracy theories have been widely debunked by election officials, legislative hearings, academic scholars and the courts. Most recently, three Trump supporters from a Florida retirement community were charged with voting more than once. But the wild notion that voter fraud is pervasive and affected the 2020 election results is accurately known as the “Big Lie.”

Michigan is one of the key states where Republicans hope to seize control of the election process and decide it for themselves. Under pressure from Republican lawmakers, the state ultimately conducted three separate election audits and found nothing. Now, Republicans are running a Trump election fraud lawyer for state attorney general.

I see 2022 is the year that either will remake our democracy for the 21st century — leveling the playing field and ensuring that everyone can participate — or break it entirely. It’s up to all of us and our lawmakers to save it.

Craig Holman is the government affairs lobbyist for Public Citizen. He wrote this for InsideSources.com.