WASHINGTON—With Donald Trump and his MAGA followers scheming every day for more ways to repress the vote, progressives, led by the organizers of No Kings, the ACLU, and Teachers/AFT President Randi Weingarten, are turning to a program to protect voters, their rights to vote and to have their votes counted fairly and reported fairly, before, during, and after the balloting.
Achieving that goal will take a lot of people, a lot of work, and activists have to be ready for the long haul and prepared in advance to quickly publicize repression—and if needed, hit the streets against it—they learned at an October 22 hour-long Zoom session.
Participants will receive a packet of prep materials, and the session will be posted online. And the Election Protection Coalition at https://866ourvote.org will provide training. Even more people are welcome, organizers of the Zoom session where the plans were rolled out said
As they met, Trump laid out yet another of his election-spoiling plans. Admitting that this is what he is doing, he announced last Thursday that he will sue to toss out the election in Alaska if the Republican candidate for the U.S. Senate loses the election.
“People get the stakes of this election,” said Weingarten, leading off at the nationwide Zoom session. “The best election protection is to have a decisive vote,” Trump and MAGA can’t legitimately contest. But they’ll try, organizers said. The outcome must be “too big to rig,” civics teacher Weingarten said. AFT is a top No Kings sponsor.
So far, Trump supporters haven’t scared people off, the two field organizers from the ACLU, who gave only their first names, Zac and Asha, told the session. The duo reported that where early voting has begun, voting by mail or in drop boxes is up 51% in No Kings areas compared to 2021-22.
Nevertheless, “We hear a lot of anxiety” nationwide, Asha said. “The Trump administration and election deniers have undertaken a coordinated campaign to undermine the election. So we have to be prepared to respond to rapid developments, harness collective outrage and build power” to handle “what comes next.” But both said to do so non-violently.
“We need a network of people who can be reached quickly and be active quickly,” Asha said, seeking signups and volunteers from viewers all during the Zoom session. Individuals flooded the chat box and response box during the session.
“And we need a broad base of people to understand what happened and what’s at stake,” even if it occurs in only one or a few jurisdictions. “And it has to be for the long haul.”
Protecting the voters and their votes can be split into five phases, the duo explained, and organizing has already begun. The first is “final preparation to protect the outcome” in each voting area, by ensuring the safety of voting booths, voting machines, ballot boxes, and their transport to counting sites.
That also includes “the critical role of poll watchers,” and they appealed for volunteers for that duty. Estimates show the U.S. needs some 800,000 poll watchers. And they’ll be the ones to blow the initial whistles by calling the national election hotline, 1-866-OUR-VOTE, if anything goes wrong. Workers at that same hotline also have voting information, state by state, on requirements, times, and aid.
The poll watchers will identify barriers to voting, document problems, and refer people to the hotline, which will have volunteer attorneys standing by to handle legal difficulties, Asha said. Anyone can call the hotline to report a barrier, an incident, or a problem, she added.
After training, the poll watchers will also have site-specific data on issues such as voter ID, boundaries around the polls to keep partisans—and maybe troops—away, and sites of drop boxes.
“The more people who are trained to understand voting rights, the stronger this [effort] will be,” she said. ‘This ecosystem drives our people-powered democracy.”
But after the votes are collected and transported to counting sites, there are more technical aspects to protecting the vote and more potential pitfalls, despite safeguards. One flashpoint is certifying the results, precinct by precinct, state by state and by deadlines, and that’s where interference can occur.
Zac, a Detroit resident, used his hometown and the 2020 presidential balloting there as an example of what could go wrong. While Zac did not go into detail, the four-person Wayne County (Detroit) board of elections initially split 2-2 on party lines over certifying the results from Michigan’s biggest—and most minority-heavy—county due to supposed technical irregularities. But activists there put together, on very short notice, a flash peaceful mobilization and publicity about the deadlock, and both Republicans changed their votes.
President Trump then personally lobbied the members to return to deadlock, thus nullifying all of the county’s ballots, and the two Republicans tried to recant, unsuccessfully. Without heavily Democratic Wayne County’s votes, Trump would have carried Michigan.
Even after canvassing and matching votes to tally sheets, there could still be recounts and challenges, the duo added, before certification. Trained monitor/activists—with the lawyers backing them up—must be alert all the way through. Activists can also use that time to organize and mobilize colleagues, family, friends, and neighbors to join them on the front lines, Zac and Asha said.
Certification “is a mandatory duty of the government actor,” such as that Wayne County board, Zac warned. “This is one time where a [political] party could attempt to change the outcome.” There must be “immediate and broad activation, regardless of geography,” to sound the alarm nationally.
“We have to have everyone stop, turn their heads” to see what is going on “and act” peacefully. “Refusal to certify is not an option,” said Asha. “But escalation” of public pressure on reluctant officials “is a big part.” It must be non-violent, though, Zac said. That’s “more effective,” too.
The duo did not discuss the technical ways Trump and MAGA could rig the election even after ballots are cast. Those include Trump sending troops into the polls to seize ballot boxes—though lawsuits could stop that—or having leaders of the outgoing Republican-run Congress refusing to seat any or all of the newly elected Democrats on January 3.
But Asha warned participants to be prepared. “There are many safeguards in place that produce [voting] results that are accurate and honest and not left up to the whims of politicians,” she said. The toll-free number 1-866-OUR-VOTE is one. There are also toll-free 888 numbers for Spanish speakers, Asian-Americans, and in Arabic.
But if all the safeguards fail or are overridden, “Take the pledge” to act, “so if we have to, we’ll see you out on the streets.”
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