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A new website allows voters to document their experiences at polling locations.
Here is a last-minute tech solution to help you protect your ballot
Oct 22 2020
Baird is a corporate and political communications and policy consultant. He was chairman of two subcommittees of the Science and Technology Committee while a Democratic congressman representing southwestern Washington from 1999 through 2010 .
<p>With voters across the nation worried about whether their mail-in ballots will be counted or if they will face obstruction at the polls, two unique and easy-to-use new technology tools have emerged just in time to put unprecedented power in the hands of the electorate.</p><p>The first has been rolled out only in recent days — the result of a crash effort this fall by an astonishing team of high-tech and political experts.</p><p>We have dubbed it <a href="https://dfwmv.org/" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">DFWMV.org</a> — with a tagline explaining how the acronym stands for "Don't F*** with my vote," and helpfully including nine family-friendly options for what else could be in place of those asterisks.</p><p>It is a free, easy to use and mobile-optimized website. It lets voters use their smartphones or other devices to directly report and record when and where they voted (geolocated or entered by hand), describe any problems they encountered, and take a photo showing themselves mailing their ballot, outside the polls, or any problems they experienced. The whole process takes less than a minute.</p><p><p style="text-align: center;" id="sufn"><a style="font-weight: bold;margin:40px auto;font-size:2rem" href="https://thefulcrum.us/st/newsletters">Sign up for The Fulcrum newsletter </a></p></p><p>Until now, voters returning their absentee ballots using a drop box or the Postal Service have had no way of proving they voted if they find out that election officials have not recorded their votes. While most states have at least some tracking mechanisms to record when ballots reach the post office and the elections offices, such a service is not comprehensive or even universally available in several big states. </p><p>Knowing when a ballot reaches landmarks along its journey toward tabulation is valuable, but it doesn't tell when the ballot was actually mailed or dropped off to begin with. And trackers cannot reveal what may have happened to ballots that were sent or dropped off properly but never got recorded or counted. There has also been no way of knowing or getting in touch with voters who may have been tricked by fake ballot boxes, such as those being placed by the Republican Party in several purple parts of California in recent days. </p><p>The new website solves those problems and enables voters and election officials for the first time to do several things that are valuable for protecting our electoral democracy: </p><p><div class="x12"><div class="htlad-Desktop_Content_Banner"></div></div></p><ul class="ee-ul"><li>Track how long it takes to process remotely cast ballots. </li><li>Reveal if any of those ballots have not made it to the desired destination. </li><li>Identify and locate those who may have been tricked by bogus ballot boxes. </li><li>Rapidly contact voters directly if problems are identified. </li></ul><p>DFWMV can also enable in-person voters to report when and where they voted and make a record, including photos, of any obstructions or other problems. </p><p>Until now, voter protection efforts at the polls have relied on toll-free telephone hotlines — useful but somewhat cumbersome efforts dependent on teams of volunteers answering calls, taking down aggrieved voters' information, then passing that up the chain for further legal or other action. As important as such systems are, they can be overwhelmed by a large number of legitimate calls coming in simultaneously — such as when the polls close at 8 pm Eastern this Nov. 3 in all or parts of 21 states, including the battlegrounds of Pennsylvania, Michigan, Texas and much of Florida.</p><p>Volunteer operators can also be easily swamped by even a relatively small number of malevolent callers tying up the lines with fake cries for help in order to prevent legitimate complaints from getting through. Here, again, our new site solves those problems with the capacity to handle up to 10,000 data entries per second and with no need to wait on hold or go through operators on the phone.</p><p>I was privileged to lead the <a href="https://dfwmv.org/team/" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">team of volunteers</a> who worked practically round the clock to get this site launched in time, for the sole purpose of making sure this election is fair and every vote is counted. </p><p>For those who prefer to use text messaging instead of a website, an alternative is ResistBot. To access this a voter simply texts to 50409 and then enters the word Protect. A sequence of interactive texts collects their voting address and the date, time and location where they voted or tried to vote — then gives space to report problems. Voters are also encouraged to take photos on their own and to call the election protection hotline (866-Our-Vote) if they have an immediate problem.</p><p>More than 33 million Americans have already voted, but the vast majority of votes have still yet to be cast. So there is still time for voters, even those who have already cast ballots, to make a record of where and when they cast their ballots. </p><p>One can hope that taking such precautions will not prove necessary. But hope is not a very good protection for the most important election of our lifetimes. Evidence and data are far more effective legal resources. </p><div></div><p>With DFWMV and ResistBot, voters now have easy and rapid ways of creating such evidence in case it is needed. That should help voters sleep a little easier. And it just might make those who would steal or disrupt the election lose a little sleep.</p>
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Why election doomsday scenarios may not happen, after all
Oct 21 2020
MIT election expert Charles Stewart III breaks down for WBUR some of the most common election meltdown scenarios playing out in the media, and why they may be overblown. He lays out why it will be hard for the Trump campaign to organize wholesale challenges to votes cast by mail. It's also going to take a series of increasingly unlikely events to get GOP-controlled state legislatures to ignore the popular vote and select their own electors — even in strained, partisan swing states like Pennsylvania, Michigan and Wisconsin, Stewart says.
<p>Stewart is putting his faith in election administrators to do the jobs they know how to do, and for the public to get behind the idea of counting the votes no matter how long it takes. The courts have been tied up with pre-election litigation like never before in 2020, but there's every reason to believe they'll back states and counties that are trying to get a fair count after Election Day, he says.<br></p><p>"After 20 years of studying election administration up close, I have come to appreciate that the people who run elections — the state and local election administrators — are by-the-book types" Stewart writes. "These officials are often invisible. They are overshadowed by partisan officials — governors, secretaries of state and state legislators — who make sweeping announcements about how an election will be run. But, they don't count the votes. State and local administrators do."</p><p>Elsewhere, we see other signs of the election process working well. In Ohio, <a href="https://radio.wosu.org/post/ohio-voting-rights-groups-organizing-peacekeeping-teams-election-day#stream/0" target="_blank">the League of Women Voters and others</a> are organizing "peacekeeping teams" to de-escalate tension at voting places. And my colleague Bill Theobald at The Fulcrum unfurls the tale of <a href="https://thefulcrum.us/colorado-vote-by-mail" target="_self">how Colorado became the leader</a> in smooth, drama-free mail-in voting. </p><p><p style="text-align: center;" id="sufn"><a style="font-weight: bold;margin:40px auto;font-size:2rem" href="https://thefulcrum.us/st/newsletters">Sign up for The Fulcrum newsletter </a></p></p>
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The media needs to show patience on election night, writes Amherst's Austin Sarat.
Why the news media shouldn't declare a winner on election night
Oct 20 2020
Sarat is associate provost, associate dean of the faculty and a professor of jurisprudence and political science at Amherst College.
<p>The reporting done on election night 2018 offers a cautionary tale for the news media as we approach Nov. 3. </p><p>Because more than a quarter <a href="https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2018/11/19/18103110/2018-midterm-elections-turnout" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">of that year's 116 million votes </a>were mailed, initial projections of the midterm results turned out to be <a href="https://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2018/12/26/worst-predictions-of-2018-politics-223514" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">wildly inaccurate</a>. They showed Democrats making only modest gains in the House, far less than the historical average for the party not in the White House. As Jake Tapper <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T6FQmy-1Cfc" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">announced</a> on CNN that night, "This is not a blue wave." </p><p>Only when all the votes were counted, three weeks later, did Americans learn precisely how wrong that was. The Democrats <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2018/11/07/us/politics/how-democrats-took-the-house.html" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">prevailed</a> by unprecedented margins and picked up many more seats (40 of them) than usual for the out party.</p><p>Now, with some 80 million mail-in ballots <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2020/08/11/us/politics/vote-by-mail-us-states.html?smid=tw-nytimes&smtyp=cur" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">expected</a>, accurately predicting winners before the count is complete looks to be even more perilous than two years ago. This is because millions of those envelopes will not even have <a href="https://ballotpedia.org/When_states_can_begin_processing_and_counting_absentee/mail-in_ballots,_2020" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">been opened </a>— let alone the contents tabulated — when the news anchors sign off the morning after Election Day. </p><p><p style="text-align: center;" id="sufn"><a style="font-weight: bold;margin:40px auto;font-size:2rem" href="https://thefulcrum.us/st/newsletters">Sign up for The Fulcrum newsletter </a></p></p><p>Absent the sort of landslide that polling doesn't now foresee, it may be many days before enough votes have been counted to make clear whether the winner is President Trump or former Vice President Joe Biden.</p><p>As a result, we need <a href="https://static1.squarespace.com/static/5e70e52c7c72720ed714313f/t/5f693edf5dc7787d75d22b4e/1600732906159/Task+Force+Media+Guide.pdf" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">new norms</a> to govern what the media does two weeks from now. </p><p>All news media, especially cable and broadcast TV, must exercise restraint and avoid the customary scramble to be first to declare a victor. Such caution <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2012/12/23/public-editor/getting-it-first-or-getting-it-right.html" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">does not come naturally</a> to many journalists or the organizations where they work. And it runs against the grain of a culture increasingly <a href="http://blogs.reuters.com/jackshafer/2012/12/17/newtown-teaches-us-once-again-to-discount-early-reports/" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">attuned</a> to receiving instant information, even if it later turns out to be inaccurate. </p><p>Yet, for the country to have any chance of avoiding <a href="https://www.cnn.com/2020/07/20/politics/disputed-election-crisis-trump/index.html" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">post-election chaos</a>, it is crucial for the media to resist premature declarations. </p><p>The race to announce the result, and the dangers of doing so, are not new. In 1948, because of an impending printers' strike, The Chicago Tribune went <a href="https://www.chicagotribune.com/nation-world/chi-chicagodays-deweydefeats-story-story.html" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank"> to press before all the votes were in</a> to get out their morning edition. Editors relied on polls favoring Republican Gov. Thomas Dewey of New York over President Harry Truman and went with the infamous headline, "Dewey Beats Truman."</p><p><div class="x12"><div class="htlad-Desktop_Content_Banner"></div></div></p><p>Four years later TV coverage of election night <a href="https://www.boweryboyshistory.com/2012/11/election-night-live-on-tv-new-york-city.html" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">began</a> in earnest. Right from the start, ABC, CBS, and NBC competed to see which of them would be the first to project the winner.</p><p>Each network used new technology to produce what one commentator has <a href="https://digitalcommons.law.yale.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1048&context=ylpr" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">called</a> "the illusion of simultaneity," namely the sense that viewers were watching returns tallied in real time. </p><p>CBS anchor Walter Cronkite <a href="https://www.npr.org/transcripts/163951263" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">proudly informed</a> viewers that his network would rely on UNIVAC, one of the world's first commercial computers, to determine who won. And, early in the evening, with just over 3 million votes counted, the machine calculated that there was a 99 percent chance that Gen. Dwight Eisenhower would defeat Sen. Adlai Stevenson of Illinois. (It ended up a rout.)</p><p>During those early years, networks made such projections <a href="https://www.amazon.com/Air-Time-Inside-Story-News/dp/0060114770" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">based</a> on early returns from "key precincts." By 1980, they had come to <a href="https://www.jstor.org/stable/2748928?seq=1#metadata_info_tab_contents" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">rely</a> more on surveys of voters who had just cast ballots. While using key precincts meant projections could not be made until polls closed and some results were tabulated, exit polling could be <a href="https://qz.com/829710/how-do-networks-call-the-election-before-all-the-votes-are-counted/" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">completed</a> long before all the votes were in.</p>
<p>That year, in fact, the networks <a href="https://books.google.com/books?id=EFF4ZCnQEh0C&pg=PA1&lpg=PA1&dq=Early+Election+Returns+and+Projections+Affecting+the+Electoral+Process:+Hearings+Held+Jointly+Before+the+Committee+on+House+Administration+and+the+Subcommittee+on+Telecommunications,+Consumer+Protection,+and+Finance+of+the+House+Committee+on+Energy+and+Commerce,&source=bl&ots=LJ8qEsPiWy&sig=ACfU3U1KAgm_vKANcDIC05TnRUZ7vl3xow&hl=en&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwjQx8Piia3sAhViTd8KHZEoARUQ6AEwAHoECAoQAg#v=onepage&q=Early%20Election%20Returns%20and%20Projections%20Affecting%20the%20Electoral%20Process%3A%20Hearings%20Held%20Jointly%20Before%20the%20Committee%20on%20House%20Administration%20and%20the%20Subcommittee%20on%20Telecommunications%2C%20Consumer%2" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">knew</a> early on Election Day that Republican Ronald Reagan would win in a landslide. But NBC waited until 8:15 p.m. on the East Coast to announce the results. That was still rush hour on the West Coast, before millions cast their ballots for or against President Jimmy Carter. </p><p>One result was that, four years later, the networks <a href="https://us.sagepub.com/sites/default/files/upm-assets/47512_book_item_47512.pdf" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">agreed</a> to wait until polls closed before projecting a winner. And, since then, some states have tried <a href="https://www.rcfp.org/journals/the-news-media-and-the-law-winter-2001/states-enact-polling-laws-a/" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">to discourage</a> the use of exit polling by regulating where and when the necessary surveys could be conducted. </p><p><a href="https://slate.com/culture/2018/11/tv-election-coverage-technology-evolution.html" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">Reliance</a> on polls and computers has remained a staple of what is broadcast on election night. Even the notoriously <a href="http://edition.cnn.com/2001/ALLPOLITICS/stories/02/02/cnn.report/cnn.pdf" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">fumbling, error-filled coverage</a> on election night 2000 did little to change the media's approach. </p><p>And now, the night has been made more compelling by computer graphics which offer both a visually appealing spectacle and minute-by-minute updates on the results. </p><p>This year, surveys <a href="https://www.cnn.com/2020/10/06/politics/ballot-returns-early-voting-2020-election/index.html" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">suggest</a> that those preferring Trump are more likely to cast their votes on Election Day while Biden backers will cast their ballots by mail. And so 2020, like 2018, is likely to see a massive "<a href="https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2020/08/brace-blue-shift/615097/" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">blue switch</a>" as the mail gets opened.</p><p>Knowing this, news executives should marshal their self-discipline. They need to refrain from offering viewers the illusion of simultaneity, even if it means that they <a href="https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2016/09/slate-and-votecastr-why-were-breaking-the-election-day-information-embargo.html" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">do not project</a> a presidential victor on Nov. 3. At the very least, they <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2020/oct/07/us-media-election-night-apsa" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">should only declare a winner</a> of a state once there are fewer outstanding votes than the official margin separating Trump and Biden.</p><p>Such restraint, particularly after the mistakes of two years ago, might be warranted by simple prudence. But there is a political argument to be made here. Some commentators <a href="https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/elections/2020/10/13/election-2020-mail-voting-shouldnt-delay-results-several-key-states/3623320001/" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">suggest</a> election night projections will favor Biden. It is more likely that projections of state-by-state winners — if based too much on the in-person tallies — will play into Trump's hands. They will allow him <a href="https://www.vanityfair.com/news/2020/09/democrats-fear-trump-may-declare-victory-on-election-night-before-all-the-votes-are-counted" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">to prematurely claim victory</a> and insist that any further counting of ballots would be fraudulent and illegitimate. </p><p>American democracy will not be well served if the media does business as usual, which would make it complicit in a president's unprecedented effort to discredit the election. </p><p>As the Society of Professional Journalists Code of Ethics <a href="https://www.spj.org/ethicscode.asp" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">notes</a>, journalists in a democracy should never sacrifice accuracy for speed. They have a duty to "gather, update, and correct information throughout the life of a news story." That will never be more important, for our democracy, than in the weeks ahead.</p>
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Vote Smarter 2020: Can you vote on Election Day if you voted by mail?
Oct 19 2020
<p><em>Newsy's Vote Smarter 2020 series aims to answer your questions about the most unusual election in modern history. From early voting to counting ballots to staying safe at the polls, get all the information you need to successfully cast your ballot this year.</em><br></p><p><em><em>This video is being made available on The Fulcrum through our partnership with </em>Newsy — "delivering news with the why."</em></p>
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