Non-partisan. Independent. By Americans, across party lines.
America Counts is the flagship initiative of Democracy Counts, Inc., a 501(c)(3) non-profit, non-partisan organization dedicated to strengthening democracy through independent election auditing.
We build tools and lead projects that enable Americans to independently audit vote reporting in US elections.
Our primary tool is Actual Vote, a free smartphone app that lets anyone video-record poll tapes — the paper strips printed by tabulating machines showing local-level vote totals at each polling place. America Counts then compares those recorded totals against the officially reported results. When they match, we’ve independently confirmed that vote reporting was done correctly. When they don’t, we investigate.
All of our recordings are archived publicly at av.democracycounts.org, all of our analyses are published in full, and anyone can verify our work using the same public data we use. We don’t ask people to take our word for it — we ask them to check.
We’re also developing Wanna Vote, a system for documenting voter suppression — the barriers that prevent eligible Americans from registering or casting a ballot. Where Actual Vote catches problems after votes are counted, Wanna Vote catches problems that prevent votes from being counted at all. It collects encrypted, legally admissible evidence directly from affected voters so that lawyers can act on it. Wanna Vote is currently in development, with the same commitment to transparency, privacy, and non-partisanship that defines all of our work.
Vote reporting — the process of aggregating local vote totals into official county and statewide results — is vulnerable to error and fraud. This isn’t a partisan claim. It’s a documented fact supported by decades of real incidents across states, time periods, and both political parties.
Just as publicly traded companies undergo independent financial audits regardless of how trustworthy their accountants are, elections deserve independent auditing regardless of how trustworthy the people running them are.
Most election administrators are honest professionals doing difficult work under difficult conditions. The point isn’t suspicion — it’s that independent verification provides a kind of confidence that self-reporting alone never can.
Today, about half of US states have no meaningful audit requirements for vote reporting, and the other half have only weak ones. America Counts exists to help fill that gap — not by replacing official processes, but by adding a layer of independent verification on top of them.
Democracy Counts, Inc. has been developing technology for independent, people-powered election audits since 2016. The Actual Vote app and methodology have been refined over multiple election cycles, and the underlying approach — independent batch-comparison auditing of vote reporting, the same comparison check that risk-limiting audits perform on sampled batches — has been used in the academic and election administration world for more than a decade, with post-election auditing endorsed as best practice by the Election Assistance Commission, Verified Voting, and the Brennan Center.
1,037,636
individual votes independently audited
13
county-level audits across 3 states
0
true discrepancies that ever existed
To date, Actual Vote volunteers have independently audited 1,037,636 individual votes across 13 county-level election audits in Florida, Georgia, and North Carolina. Across 7,034 tape-to-official comparisons, every initial non-match that ever arose was either an AC process error or was explained by a mechanism the county itself identified — and zero true discrepancies have ever existed. These results are published in full and available for anyone to review.
We’re a small organization with large ambitions. Our long-term goal is for independent auditing of vote reporting to become routine practice in every election, in every state, up and down the ballot — the same way independent financial auditing is routine practice for any institution that handles public trust.
Actual Vote produces honest evidence about vote reporting regardless of who uses it or what they hope to find. We welcome participants of all political affiliations, and our findings are published based on what the evidence shows — not on what any party would prefer. For more on how we maintain this commitment, see Non-Partisan Election Advocacy.
Every Actual Vote recording is publicly archived. Every analysis is published with its methodology. Every finding can be independently verified. We hold ourselves to the same standard of transparency we advocate for in elections.
We are not adversaries of election administration. We are an independent check on a high-stakes process — the same kind of independent check that exists in finance, aviation safety, food safety, and every other domain where the public interest demands accountability. We thank the thousands of honest election workers across the country for their service, and we believe our work complements theirs.
We follow the data wherever it leads. When an Actual Vote analysis confirms accurate reporting, we say so. When it surfaces discrepancies, we investigate and report them — regardless of which party or candidate might be affected. We withhold judgment on any accusation that hasn’t been definitively resolved, and we never speculate about motive.
America Counts is led by a small team with deep backgrounds in law, political science, data analytics, and software engineering. Together, we’ve been refining the methodology and tools behind independent election auditing for nearly a decade.
The most impactful thing you can do is use Actual Vote to record poll tapes in your area during the next election. Every recording adds to the body of independent evidence about vote reporting in the United States.
