Actual Vote for Journalists & Media

If you cover elections, democracy, civic technology, or government accountability, Actual Vote is a story worth knowing about — and a resource you can use in your own reporting.

What Actual Vote is, in one paragraph

America Counts is a 501(c)(3) non-partisan nonprofit that enables Americans to independently audit vote reporting. Volunteers use a free smartphone app to video-record poll tapes — the paper strips printed by tabulating machines showing local-level vote totals — and America Counts compares those totals to the officially reported results. All recordings are publicly archived at av.democracycounts.org, all findings are published in full, and anyone can independently verify the work.

Why this is a story

It’s a new model of civic participation. Actual Vote turns election auditing — traditionally the domain of election administrators and political insiders — into something anyone with a smartphone can do. That’s a structural change in who has access to independent evidence about election accuracy.

It has real results. Across 13 county-level election audits in Florida, Georgia, and North Carolina, Actual Vote volunteers have independently audited 1,037,636 individual votes; 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. Published reports with full methodology are available at americacounts.us. Actual Vote has been covered by WLRN (South Florida’s NPR affiliate) and other outlets dating back to its early people-powered audit work in Broward County, Florida.

It sits at a unique intersection. Election integrity is one of the most politically charged topics in America. Actual Vote is interesting precisely because it’s built to be non-partisan by design — the system produces honest evidence regardless of who uses it or what they hope to find. How that plays out in practice, especially as adoption grows, is a story with legs.

It addresses a real gap. About half of US states have no meaningful audit requirements for vote reporting, and the other half have only weak ones. Actual Vote is an attempt to fill that gap through crowdsourced action rather than legislative change — which raises questions about the role of civic technology in democratic accountability.

Key facts for reporting

The citation-ready fact sheet — organization, founding, leadership, methodology, data sources, current cleared statistics, and boilerplate at three lengths — lives in one canonical place: the press kit fact sheet. Everything there is cleared for publication, and the statistics update automatically as new reports publish, so it’s always the current figure.

Angles to consider

The human interest angle: Who are the volunteers who go out on election night to record poll tapes? What motivates them? What’s the experience like?

The civic technology angle: How does Actual Vote fit into the broader landscape of civic tech tools? What are the design decisions that make it work (or create challenges)?

The election administration angle: How do election officials respond to independent election auditing? Where does cooperation happen, and where does friction arise?

The partisan dynamics angle: In an era when “election integrity” is claimed by organizations across the political spectrum, how does a genuinely non-partisan audit system navigate that landscape? How do volunteers from different political backgrounds experience the same tool?

The data story: What do the published Actual Vote reports actually show? What does it mean that thousands of comparisons have yielded zero true discrepancies? Is that reassuring, or is it too early to draw conclusions?

The scaling question: What happens as Actual Vote grows? What are the logistics of auditing vote reporting at the scale of a national election?

How to verify our claims

We designed Actual Vote to be independently verifiable. Here’s how:

Check the recordings yourself. The archive at av.democracycounts.org is public. You can watch the poll tape videos, read the numbers, and compare them to the official results (available on county election authority websites).

Review the methodology. Our technical documentation describes the full analysis process. The underlying technique (batch comparison auditing) has peer-reviewed literature you can reference independently.

Talk to election officials. We encourage you to contact election administrators in counties where we’ve operated and ask them about their experience with Actual Vote volunteers.

Talk to volunteers. We can connect you with Actual Vote users willing to share their experience on the record.

Media contact

For press inquiries, interviews, or to request materials:

Email: info@democracycounts.org

Our press kit has approved boilerplate, logos, leadership bios and headshots, and a quick-reference fact sheet — all cleared for publication.

Background resources

• How Actual Vote Works — full explanation of the system
• Why Actual Vote Is Trustworthy — methodology, real-world results, and structural safeguards
• Non-Partisan Election Advocacy — how America Counts maintains non-partisanship
• About America Counts — organizational background
• Published reports — audit findings from past elections
• Technical Documentation — detailed methodology