How to watch them count the ballots
There are more than 3,300 counties in the US. They each have different election procedures. Generally speaking, every member of the public is entitled to walk in the door and have some access to the process.
Your county likely has some type of election observer process.
Call them. Say, “I would like to watch the vote counting process.”
They will likely be very accommodating, and will likely give you back some bureaucratic mumbo jumbo.
All you need to know is, “What do I need to do in order to be able to walk in the door and observe the process?”
There is likely some kind of credentialing process.
If they try to send you a form by email, just ask if you can handle it in person, which will save you the hassle of waiting for an email and printing things out.
Make sure you know the exact address of the building you are going to, which entrance is the best entrance to go into, and opening times. Do not assume. Ask those questions while you have them on the phone, just in case.
Never wear a mask, of course. “I won’t be wearing one today,” is a better answer than the training wheels version: “I am unable to wear a face mask safely,” but anything that gets you through the door unmasked is good.
If asked why you can’t wear a mask: “That’s private.”
If asked about your vaccine status, “That’s private.”
You probably won’t even encounter such nonsense, but I just want you to feel prepared in case you do.
Once there, get your credentials and then ask for a tour of the place. They are unlikely to deny you that. They will tell you some things you may already know. They will tell you other things you have never heard of. Just let them tell it all to you. You might learn something you never before realized. Ask questions, even if they are seemingly stupid questions. It is good for you to be in the habit of asking questions, and for public officials to be in the habit of answering your questions. Choose a part of the process that interests you.
After the tour is over, ask them if you can go back to that part of the process that you wanted to observe more closely. In doing so, I want you to avoid the feeling of awkwardness that comes from overstaying one’s welcome. In this environment, you are able to just stick around for a seemingly ridiculous amount of time observing. If there is a moment where you have nothing to do, you can just stand around looking at things. You are, after all, “an election observer.” In daily life, that kind of behavior would be pretty weird. But in this specific environment, you must never feel rushed out. Standing around and awkwardly watching things is your role exactly.
Bring a paper notebook and pen with you, ideally. This looks way more authoritative than taking notes in a phone. It is good to practice being authoritative. By merely jotting down notes on a piece of paper, I have seen election officials change their tune. I promise you that jotting notes into a phone cannot have the same impact.
The goal is not to go charging in there, changing the process this election. The goal is to get your feet wet a little. By all means, if you see someone using a pen on a ballot after the polls have closed, by all means speak up and intervene. That is patently illegal everywhere in these 50 States. But catching fraud is not the primary goal of such a visit. Just get your feet wet. Weeks, months, even years from now, the time you spent getting your feet wet by physically observing the counting process will come to serve you well.
No matter where you live, around Election Day, the night of Election Day and in the days immediately following, I would like to encourage you to poke in and to observe the process.
And it is a process. With mail-in ballots, what used to be a one-day process, has turned into a day’s long process of ballot tabulation. What follows that initial count, and what has long followed that initial count, is an audit of the vote and a canvass of the vote.
This of course also all works for counties you are not a resident in as well. There is no residency requirement.
Some places may want you to be affiliated with a campaign or organization. Though that is unlikely, push back on such a request and say, “I am a private citizen, are you telling me I have no right to observe this process?” If they continue to require affiliation with an organization — again, very unlikely — then call a campaign you like and offer to volunteer to watch the vote count and report back. That campaign will probably be very pleased to have you do that.
Again, I am not trying to get you to single-handedly stop the steal. That is not usually how such things work. What I am trying to do is to get you familiarized with this process. I want to help take you from relatively little knowledge about the vote counting process, to a little extra knowledge. That knowledge will get you thinking differently about the process. That knowledge will also get you more comfortable questioning the process in the future.
So, to sum it up:
1.) Call ahead to learn the process (or just show up, but I prefer knowing what I am walking into),
2.) Get the proper credentials in person,
3.) Ask for a tour in person,
4.) Choose a part of the process that you want to be around,
5.) Spend some time there; ask some questions.
We live in a special time. It was not always easy to have such unfettered access to the election process. Election watchdogs of the past few years have really done amazing work to make sure the citizen’s right to observe the process has been broadly construed. The more we take advantage of that hard work, the more that access grows. The more we sleep on that hard work, the narrower that access becomes. Take advantage of the special period around elections to grow your muscles for civic engagement, and take advantage of this special time we live in to grow your muscles for the same.
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Allan Stevo