Example of Making an Actual Vote Plan for Visiting Polling Places on Election Night
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This page illustrates one way to make an Actual Vote plan for visiting polling places on election night, through an example of how someone might have used Actual Vote at polling places on the night of the March 17, 2020 Democratic Presidential Primary election in Broward County, Florida.
You can follow the same basic steps to make your own plan for the next election.
You are highly encouraged to explore making a plan like this if you live in one of the following states:
Alabama, Arizona, Arkansas, Connecticut, Florida, Georgia, Illinois, Kentucky, Louisiana, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, Michigan, Minnesota, Nebraska, New York, North Carolina, Ohio, Oklahoma, Pennsylvania, South Carolina, Tennessee, Wisconsin
If you live in a different state, use one of the other techniques for accessing poll tapes.
Imagine that you live in the Edgewood neighborhood of Fort Lauderdale, Florida, which is located in Broward County:
It’s Sunday, March 15, 2020—two days before election day. That’s plenty of time to make a plan.
You 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, you drop us a line to let us know you’re using Actual Vote:
Hi, my name is [name]. I intend to use Actual Vote in the Edgewood neighborhood of Broward County, Florida for the March 17, 2020 Democratic Presidential Primary election. I’d love any help you could give me for making my plan. Thanks!
At this point, we’d help you make your plan. Of course, you can also make your plan by yourself. Either way, it might look something like the following.
You 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, you email America Counts to let us know you’re using Actual Vote:
Now you’d like to call the Broward County Elections Office to verify that poll tapes will indeed be posted outside of Broward County polling places after the polls close. You already know from America Counts’s Florida State Page that they’re supposed to be, but it seems prudent to confirm this before you drive to polling places on election night.
You look up their contact info and call them. You have the following conversation:
Them: Broward County Election Office, how may I help you?
You: Hi there, I have a question about poll tape procedure for the upcoming election.
Them: Ok.
You: Will poll tapes be printed and publicly displayed on the wall outside Broward County polling places as a part of the poll closing procedure?
Them: Why would you care about that?
You: I’m a democracy-loving election nerd, and I want to observe the poll tapes if they’re posted.
Them: Well, ok… I’m not sure. Let me get my supervisor.
Supervisor: Hi there. I understand you want to observe poll tapes. Why would you want to do that?
You: I intend to video-record them with America Counts’s Actual Vote app, which is nonpartisan and legal. The vote totals on the recordings will be compared with your officially reported results to check for apparent discrepancies.
Supervisor: That’s not really necessary, since we already do internal audits to make sure that the official results are correct.
You: Sure, but with the app, we produce independent evidence about the accuracy of vote reporting. We have no pre-conceived notions or assumptions—we’re just double-checking the vote reporting, which is great for election transparency.
Supervisor: Oh… ok then. Well, yes, the tapes will be printed and posted outside of polling places on election night.
You: Thanks!
Ok, it’s confirmed—poll tapes are supposed to be posted. Of course, there’s always a chance that the workers at a particular polling place might forget to post the tapes, or that the tapes may not get posted for some other reason, but you consider this an acceptable risk.
Next, you look up that the polls close in Florida at 7:00pm. At this point, all voters still in line must be allowed to vote, and after that, poll workers will begin closing the polls. This whole process could take a while. You guess that showing up at your first polling place at 10:00pm should leave plenty of time for the tapes to be posted.
It would be totally fine for you to visit just one polling place for Actual Vote. But you decide that you’re willing to visit about four nearby polling locations on election night. To research this, you go to the Broward County Supervisor of Elections page and click on Election Day Precincts to get this handy map of polling locations:
You enter your address in the Edgewood neighborhood, and the map zooms in:
Yep—that’s the Whiddon Rogers Education Center, where you intend to vote in person on Tuesday Morning. It has precinct code R030. This will be your first stop on your Actual Vote run later that night.
Now it’s time to choose three more polling places to visit. You scan the map and end up with this list:
Whiddon Rodgers Education Center – 700 SW 26th St, Fort Lauderdale, FL, 33315. Precinct Code R030.
Franklin Park Community Center – 2501 Franklin Dr Fort Lauderdale, FL 33311. Precinct Code Z001.
Coconut Creek Governmental Center – 4800 W Copans Rd, Coconut Creek, FL 33063. Precinct Code F003.
Vanguard Village #15 Clubhouse – 6320 Brookwood Blvd, Tamarac, FL 33321. Precinct Code J005.
You are familiar with this general area of town, and decide that it’s safe enough for you to go out to these locations alone on election night. (For extra safety, you could always bring a friend.)
You enter these addresses into Google Maps, giving this route:
This is about an hour and fifteen minutes of driving, round-trip. Figure about 15 minutes tops to video-record at each polling place, and your Actual Vote run should take about 2 hours and 15 minutes. This’ll get you home a bit past midnight, which is totally reasonable.
A little before 10pm on election night, you gather your materials:
- Your mobile device with Actual Vote on it. You’ve made sure you have enough free storage space for the videos you’re going to take. You also make sure it’s 100% charged
- This is March, so you probably don’t need an umbrella. If it were November, you might
- A roll of tape, in case you want to tape the bottom of a tape to make it easier to record
- A flashlight
- A printout of the directions above
- You’ve already made sure your car has enough fuel for the trip
At 10pm, as planned, you get in your car and begin driving. At 10:05pm you arrive at your first polling place, Whiddon Rogers Education Center. Since you voted here earlier today, you go straight to the cafeteria where the polling place was and see two tapes posted up on the wall.
At 10:07pm you video-record the first poll tape with Actual Vote. You make sure that the recording is straight, clear, and no longer than it needs to be. It uploads and becomes https://av.democracycounts.org/PollTape/1524. This link contains a real Actual Vote recording by an Actual Vote user of one of the two tapes that was actually posted in public at this site.
Here’s a screenshot form this recording, which is unfortunately a bit blurry. If you press the “Stop” button and notice that your recording is this blurry, you can always press the “Retry” button in Actual Vote to try again. Or you could simply take another recording.
If you look closely, you can see that it shows 45 votes for Joe Biden, for example, here in the Democratic Presidential Primary.
You continue with your plan:
- 10:09pm – Video-record the second poll tape. It becomes https://av.democracycounts.org/PollTape/1527
- 10:14pm – Leave Whiddon Rogers Education Center
- 10:29pm – Arrive at Franklin Park Community Center. Hmm… you don’t see any tapes posted on the front door…
- 10:31pm – …ok, over there on that window. There we go. One tape posted. You video-record that tape and it becomes https://av.democracycounts.org/PollTape/1543
- 10:35pm – Leave Franklin Park Community Center
- 11:02pm – Arrive at Coconut Creek Governmental Center. Wow, this place is huge! Since it’s late at night, the parking lot is completely empty. You drive around the parking lot looking for poll tapes posted somewhere
- 11:07pm – Ok, there, they’re posted on the glass door right there. You park your car right in front
- 11:09pm – You video-record the first tape and it becomes https://av.democracycounts.org/PollTape/1428
- 11:12pm – You video-record the second tape and it becomes https://av.democracycounts.org/PollTape/1432
- 11:17pm – Ok, one more to go. Leave Coconut Creek Governmental Center
- 11:41pm – Arrive at Vanguard Village #15 Clubhouse. There are two poll tapes posted on the wall near the front door. You park right by the front door
- You quickly record the tapes, one after the other. They become https://av.democracycounts.org/PollTape/1556 and https://av.democracycounts.org/PollTape/1561
- 11:50pm – That’s it! Time to go home
- 12:13am – You arrive home after being out for just over two hours. You pull out Actual Vote one more time just to make sure all of your recordings have uploaded.
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