Example of Making an Appointment With the Elections Office to View Tapes.
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No matter what state you live in, you can always send an email to your local supervisor of elections asking for an appointment for you (or a group of people) to visit your local elections office in person to video-record poll tapes with Actual Vote.
This method of accessing poll tapes has the advantage that the office personnel often are able to provide you with a large or even complete set of poll tapes all at once. It would be extremely difficult to record this many tapes by driving around on election night.
It also has the advantage that you can ask for poll tapes from absentee voting, early voting, and any other voting methods in your area, in addition to just election day poll tapes.
In the past, we’ve had election administrators in several states offer teams of Actual Vote users to use a conference room for an entire business day, and provided them with a set of each unique poll tapes from the election in question to be video-recorded. This set is usually one of three identical sets of poll tapes printed during the tabulation procedure.
One important consideration for this method involves timing. Any Actual Vote analysis that’s completed before the election is certified and turns up unexplained discrepancies can be used in a court challenge to the official results if warranted. One that’s completed after the election is certified can’t have any impact on the official results (though it does still benefit election transparency).
So for this method, we encourage you to try to make your appointment as early as possible before the election certification date, so that the analysis has the best chance of being completed before certification and we can act on any apparent discrepancies.
Of course, before the certification date election administrators will be busy with the election certification procedure, and may prefer to not allow you to visit until after the certification date. In this situation, it’s up to you how hard you push back. In all situations like this, we encourage you to be assertive and professional, but also to make sure you’re being respectful of election administrators and avoiding even the perception that you might be merely trying to waste their time.
If your only choice is to visit after the certification date, we’ll still analyze your videos, report our findings, and reap a benefit for election transparency, even though at that point those findings can’t actually impact the outcome of the election.
Before you write your formal request for an appointment, gather the following information.
First, you may wish to check if your county uses tabulating equipment that can print poll tapes. Some counties use tabulation equipment that’s not capable of printing poll tapes, and other counties use equipment that can print poll tapes but is configured not to for some reason. The easiest way to find out is to call and ask:
Hi, my name is [name]. I have a question about tabulating procedure for the upcoming election. Do the tabulating machines we use in [our county] print out poll tapes, or results tapes as they’re sometimes called? You know, the thin strips of paper that tabulating machines print out that show the vote totals from the tabulation?
Yes, ok good. Now, will those tapes be printed out during vote tabulation here in [our county] as a part of the vote reporting procedure?
Yes? Ok, great. Thanks!
You could also try to look it up for yourself. Verified Voting‘s Verifier is an up-to-date nationwide database of voting equipment. Look up what tabulating equipment your county uses. Then compare it to the list below, which represents our current best knowledge of which voting machines can print poll tapes (though we may have missed some).
- Ballot Marking Device – Dominion Voting Systems – ImageCast Precinct BMD
- Ballot Marking Device – Unisyn Voting Solutions – OpenElect OVI
- Batch-Fed Optical Scanner – Clear Ballot – ClearCount
- Batch-Fed Optical Scanner – Dominion Voting Systems – ImageCast Central
- Batch-Fed Optical Scanner – Election Systems & Software – DS450
- Batch-Fed Optical Scanner – Election Systems & Software – DS850
- Batch-Fed Optical Scanner – Election Systems & Software – DS950
- Batch-Fed Optical Scanner – Election Systems & Software – Model 650
- Batch-Fed Optical Scanner – MicroVote – MicroVote/Chatsworth Scanner
- Batch-Fed Optical Scanner – Sequoia Voting Systems – NCS OpScan 5
- DRE-Dial – Hart InterCivic – eSlate
- DRE-Push Button – Sequoia Voting Systems – AVC Advantage
- DRE-Touchscreen – Premier Election Solutions (Diebold) – AccuVote TSX
- DRE-Touchscreen – Sequoia Voting Systems – AVC Edge
- Hand-Fed Optical Scanner – Clear Ballot – ClearCast
- Hand-Fed Optical Scanner – Dominion Voting Systems – ImageCast Precinct
- Hand-Fed Optical Scanner – Election Systems & Software – DS200
- Hand-Fed Optical Scanner – Election Systems & Software – Optech IIIP-Eagle
- Hand-Fed Optical Scanner – Hart InterCivic – eScan
- Hand-Fed Optical Scanner – Hart InterCivic – Verity Scan
- Hand-Fed Optical Scanner – Unisyn Voting Solutions – OpenElect FVS
- Hand-Fed Optical Scanner – Unisyn Voting Solutions – OpenElect OVO
- Hybrid BMD/Tabulator – Election Systems & Software – ExpressVote Tabulator
- Hybrid BMD/Tabulator – Election Systems & Software – ExpressVote XL
- Hybrid Optical Scan/BMD – Dominion Voting Systems – ImageCast Evolution
- Hybrid Optical Scan/DRE – Dominion Voting Systems – ImageCast Precinct ATI
- Hybrid Optical Scan/DRE – Hart InterCivic – eScan A/T
The next piece of info you’ll need is how many precincts and voting methods you wish to request poll tapes for. The total number of tapes you can video-record is a function of how many people in your group, how long your appointment is, and how many tapes your election officials are able to provide you with.
Some county elections offices can easily provide you with a set of all of the tapes. Others may have to spend time to do a set of steps for each tape they furnish to your team, such as finding the tape in question, redacting it (even though it’s not necessary since all the info on the tape is public), or “checking it out to you”. In this case, there may be some limit to how many tapes they’re willing to provide you.
If your county has 150 precincts and election day, absentee, and early voting, and you request all tapes, it might take a team of four all day to video-record each tape. If you choose to request only election day voting tapes from your 4 favorite precincts, you could video-record these yourself in under 20 minutes.
You can usually find a list of precincts in your county by googling “voting precinct list in [your county]”.
Then you’ll need your preferred date for the appointment, as well as your availability during the window of time you’d be willing to schedule the appointment in case they offer an alternative date.
Below is one example of an email you could send to request an appointment to view and video-record poll tapes. Keep in mind that you can and should start this process well before the election date to avoid back-and-forth with election administrators during the hectic election certification period.
Hi, my name is [name]. My friends and I are users of the Actual Vote app. This app is from America Counts, a non-profit non-partisan election transparency organization. With the app, volunteers video-record poll tapes. The vote totals on the poll tapes are compared to the officially reported results as an independent double-check. This helps to improve transparency in vote reporting.
You can check out an example Actual Vote analysis here to get a more concrete idea of how Actual Vote works.
We’d like to request an appointment to appear at your office at [address] sometime during [your chosen time window] to observe and video-record poll tapes from election day voting, absentee voting, and early voting for all [number] of precincts in [our county], for [the upcoming election]. [Your preferred date] during business hours would work for us, for example, but we are flexible.
If there are additional conditions or rules you require us to follow to make this appointment possible, please let us know.
And given that:
- Poll tapes contain all publicly-available information,
- The Actual Vote process is trustworthy and non-partisan, and
- All you have to do is provide us with the requested poll tapes and room to work,
we believe that this request is reasonable.
Teams of Actual Vote users have made such appointments in North Carolina, Texas, and Florida in the past, and it’s worked out great.
We hope to hear back from you soon about scheduling our appointment. Thanks!
If you get no response at all, or if the initial answer is “no”, it’s up to you how hard to push back. On the one hand, it’s reasonable to ask to be provided with poll tapes to observe and video-record. On the other hand, election administrators can be busy, and it’s important to not push so hard as to cause an unreasonable imposition on their time.
If the answer is “sure”, though, then get the Actual Vote app, test it out, and look over the information on our Get Started! page. All this takes about 10-20 minutes.
Next, email America Counts to let us know you’re planning to use Actual Vote at the elections office:
Hi there, my name is [name]. Election administrators in my home county of [my county, my state] have graciously agreed to allow my team and I to video-record poll tapes for [the upcoming election] with Actual Vote at their office on [date]. We have requested to be provided with tapes from all precincts for all voting methods, so expect many poll tape videos to come in on that date!
Here’s a picture of some volunteers video-recording poll tapes with Actual Vote in Broward County, Florida in 2020:
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