CAIR relaunches Muslim voter campaign targeting 12 priority states

The Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) on July 30 relaunched its Muslims.Vote campaign for the 2026 midterms. The site includes a 12-state plan that calls for 2 million net new Muslim voter registrations, mosque-based turnout operations, and trained Muslim poll observers across priority states.

Although CAIR’s July 30 announcement described the action as the “launch” of Muslims.Vote, the platform has operated for years. CAIR called it a longstanding “cornerstone” of its civic-engagement work when the group updated the site for the 2024 presidential election.

The site embeds TurboVote, allowing users to check their registration, register, find election dates and polling places, request absentee-ballot information, and sign up for reminders. The campaign’s strategic plan names Michigan, Pennsylvania, Ohio, Virginia, Georgia, North Carolina, Florida, Texas, Arizona, Nevada, Wisconsin, and Minnesota as priority states where competitive races overlap with concentrated Muslim communities.

The plan calls for registration drives at mosques after Friday prayers, campus organizing, multilingual voter guides, rides to the polls, and post-Friday-prayer caravans to the polls. It also calls for poll-watcher training and sets a goal of “100% priority-state precinct coverage” with at least one trained Muslim observer. Another goal is to rate all 535 members of Congress in a 2026 scorecard.

“Voting is more than a constitutional right—it is an amanah, a trust and responsibility,” CAIR Government Affairs Department Director Robert S. McCaw said. He described the platform as a way to put registration, polling-place, voting-rights, and planning tools in one place and urged American Muslims to make their voices count.

Immediate focus on Michigan

CAIR highlighted Michigan’s Aug. 4 primary, where the mandatory statewide early-voting period runs from July 25 through Aug. 2. Some communities are offering an additional day on Aug. 3. By the morning of July 28, 832,435 Michigan voters had already returned absentee ballots or voted early in person, according to the secretary of state.

A nationally watched Democratic contest pits Rep. Haley Stevens against Abdul El-Sayed for an open U.S. Senate seat. El-Sayed would become the first Muslim U.S. senator if he wins the primary and general election. As Zeale News previously reported, the race has been shaped by Democratic divisions over Gaza; the Associated Press reported that the American Israel Public Affairs Committee and its affiliates have spent nearly $30 million to support Stevens.

Muslims.Vote identifies itself as a nonpartisan CAIR 501(c)(3) program and says it does not endorse candidates. CAIR Action, the group’s legally distinct 501(c)(4) political affiliate, has endorsed El-Sayed and a slate of other candidates in Tuesday’s primary. Neither the Muslims.Vote site nor CAIR’s July 30 release names or endorses El-Sayed.

A recent peer-reviewed political-science analysis cited a 2024 Emgage Michigan estimate of 242,000 registered Muslim voters in the state. It is an estimate, not an official registration count.

CAIR’s national numbers do not match

CAIR’s release claimed that more than 8 million Muslims live in America and that more than 3 million are registered to vote. Neither figure can be checked against an official government count: the Census Bureau does not collect religious affiliation, and voter rolls do not ordinarily record a voter’s faith.

The new campaign materials also conflict with one another. The Muslims.Vote homepage repeats the claim of more than 3 million registered voters, while the site’s own 2026 strategic plan puts the number at more than 2.5 million. Thursday’s announcement provided no new methodology explaining the difference.

In CAIR’s most detailed public calculation, released in February 2024, the voter-data company Aristotle used Muslim first and last names, geography, and nationality to identify 2,203,984 likely registered Muslim voters. CAIR then added an estimate of more than 300,000 black, white, and Latino Muslim voters whom a name-based method could miss, producing its claim of more than 2.5 million.

Available independent estimates have been substantially lower than CAIR’s 8-million figure. Pew Research Center’s latest national Religious Landscape Study found that 1.2% of U.S. adults identify as Muslim. Pew’s last all-ages numerical estimate put the Muslim population at 3.45 million in 2017 and projected it would reach 8.1 million in 2050.

The newer study found that 55% of Muslim adults said they were registered to vote, a denominator that includes adults ineligible because they are not U.S. citizens. A 2025 Institute for Social Policy and Understanding poll estimated that 85% of eligible Muslim voters were registered.

Nonpartisan campaign, explicit policy agenda

The site repeatedly describes itself as nonpartisan, but its resource library is not policy-neutral. A candidate questionnaire asks, “Do you support Trump’s illegal War on Iran?” and directs candidates to answer whether Israel is committing genocide. It also asks whether candidates support ending state and local cooperation with federal immigration enforcement, expanding access to ethical, interest-free financial products for people of all faiths, closing public schools with significant Muslim populations for Muslim holidays, and opposing anti-Sharia legislation.

Federal tax law bars 501(c)(3) groups from supporting or opposing candidates, but it does not prohibit them from advocating positions on public-policy issues, according to the Internal Revenue Service. Strong issue advocacy is therefore not, by itself, evidence of partisan campaign intervention.

That questionnaire also erroneously says the U.S. provides Israel with “over 600 billion dollars in annual military assistance.” Under the current 10-year U.S.-Israel agreement, the baseline is $3.8 billion per year — $3.3 billion in Foreign Military Financing and $500 million for missile defense — apart from supplemental wartime appropriations.

Other advertised resources, including the 2026 congressional scorecard, a nonprofit-and-mosque guide, and a “Voting as a Muslim” guide, remained marked as “currently updating” on the live resource page as of July 31.

Michigan’s mandatory early-voting period ends Sunday, two days before the primary. The federal midterm election is scheduled for Tuesday, Nov. 3.