Using Actual Vote in the intended way is legal. Here, we give a clear description of exactly what this means. This is important for two reasons. First, Actual Vote users may be curious about the reasons why using the app as intended is legal. Second, if there is ever any question about whether an Actual Vote user is proceeding legally, the user can use this explanation to help settle it.

Generally speaking, there are three valid ways to access poll tapes to video-record them with Actual Vote:

1. Video-record the tapes when they’re publicly displayed at a polling place after the polls have closed
2. Video-record the tapes as a part of the tabulation process itself for which you have permission (like a poll observer recording a tape right after it’s printed, as part of the closing procedure)
3. By making an arrangement with the local elections office to have them furnish poll tapes for you after election day to video-record with Actual Vote (like scheduling a meeting to record tapes onsite at the office)

For any of these cases, it goes without saying that if you encounter some new legitimate law or rule while using Actual Vote that contradicts anything here, you must obey that law or rule. For example, if you’re a poll observer, you may have been under the impression that you’d be allowed to video-record the poll tape right after it’s printed, but on election day you may learn that your county supervisor of elections has declared that poll observers aren’t allowed to video-record poll tapes.

Case (2) inherently assumes that the user has obtained permission to video-record during the tabulation process. In case (3), your local elections office has agreed to grant you permission to access the tapes for the purposes of video-recording. In both cases, the user has explicit permission to use Actual Vote.

With case (1), however, the user has only implicit permission to access the poll tapes, based on the fact that voting results are public information, and this information is displayed in a public place. Here, we explain explicitly what this means.

First of all, please note that case (1) does not involve using Actual Vote while the polls are still open. Indeed, many areas prohibit video-recording of any kind at polling places while the polls are still open. For example, Arizona has a law that says that taking photography and videos is prohibited inside a 75-foot limit of the voting location while the polls are open. Furthermore, if the polls are still open, the results tape that you need to record won’t have been printed yet—it only gets printed after the last voter finishes voting and the polling place closing procedure have begun.

So you mustn’t use Actual Vote while the polls are still open—and there’s no reason to. Wait until after the polling place closes its doors and the poll tapes have been posted, and then use it only from outside the polling place from areas you would normally be able to access.

You can check the official poll closing time in your state on this page from Ballotpedia. Remember, though, that these times denote only when the closing procedures begin—voters still in line may be permitted to finish voting, and the entire poll closing procedure needs to happen. In some cases, it could take several hours before a given  polling place posts its poll tape(s) and closes its doors.

Once the doors to the polling place have closed and the poll tapes have been posted in public, the following excerpt pertaining to the legality of using Actual Vote generally applies. It’s from The Photographer’s Right, a 2016 publication by attorney Bert P. Krages: