Covering Election Day disruptions

[00:00:20]

MATT DERIENZO: Hey, welcome to SciLine’s briefing on potential election day disruptions and what journalists can learn from independent nonpartisan research on various topics associated with that. We have three amazing experts today to answer your questions about a situation that feels like it’s going to be an interesting year. We’ve seen a various issues at the polls over the past couple of years as the country has gotten more polarized, and we have a bunch of stuff to delve into today.

First, I’m going to introduce our experts in one second. But first, if you’re new to SciLine, I just want to tell you a little bit about why we’re here and what we are. SciLine is about nine year old now. It’s a philanthropically supported journalism support organization, with one sole mission, and that is to get more evidence based research and scientific expertise into news stories to help journalists step back from the political back and forth on any issue that somebody studies and turn to that expertise. So we help people access that through briefings like this, through training, through a whole variety of reporting guides and resources that you can find on our site, sciline.org. We have a whole project around the midterm elections getting into topics like this about what research shows about voting fraud, about voting machine technology, voting by mail, and so forth. So we would encourage you to check that out. And then between now and the election day and beyond, one of the unique things about SciLine is we have an expert matching service. So if you have an individual story that you’re working on that’s not fulfilled by this briefing or is on a completely different topic if you’re writing about flock cameras or data centers, you can go to our site, click on a button that says I need an expert in our team, which is journalism background, people like me and scientists on our team work together to find you the best possible expert who’s published research on the topic that you’re looking at, and we reach out on your behalf and connect you. We do that about 1,000 times a year, so I’d encourage you to do that. All of that’s free.

And so, I want to introduce to you these experts that we have here to talk about election day and what might be happening. First, we have Dr. Martha Kropf.

[00:02:54]

MARTHA KROPF: Hi, there. How is everyone? Shall I tell about myself?

[00:03:00]

MATT DERIENZO: Yes. Please, yes.

[00:03:02]

MARTHA KROPF: Oh, I’m a professor at UNC Charlotte. I have been doing research and teaching in this area for maybe 30 years, if you count my graduate school days. But I became most interested in what could happen on election day, the resources and staffing that election administrators have, and a variety of issues actually starting with the 2000 election. I’ve been around for a while. So I received my Ph.D. from American University in Washington, D.C. I’ve written three books. Now, if you count up all the journal articles and chapters, about 50 of those. So, Matt, pass it right back to you.

[00:03:47]

MATT DERIENZO: Dr. Cohen, could you introduce yourself?

[00:03:49]

MOLLIE COHEN: Absolutely. So my name is Mollie Cohen. I’m an associate professor of political science at Purdue University. I study elections, public opinion, and voter behavior in Latin America, as well as in the United States. And among other topics, I study how partisan features of election administration shape citizens confidence in elections.

[00:04:11]

MATT DERIENZO: Excellent. Dr. King?

[00:04:14]

BRIDGETT KING: Sure. My name is Bridgett King. I’m an associate professor at the University of Kentucky. What I’m predominantly interested in is citizen interactions with systems and institutions. And one of those institutions or systems is election administration across the United States. So thinking about how those interactions shape citizens’ perceptions, but also access to the system, as I also do some work related to individuals with felony convictions and what participation and/or representation in our democratic system looks like for them.

[00:04:46]

MATT DERIENZO: Excellent. So a little bit more about how this is going to go, in that same order, I’m going to pose a couple of questions to each of our experts to delve into a little bit more about what they bring to the table in terms of expertise. There’s a Q&A button that you’ll see. Feel free to use that now or at any time, and we’ll get to your questions as soon as we can. There should be plenty of time for that. And just one note after this ends, we’ll have the video of this up about an hour or two after and a transcript up in a couple of days. Everything that we’re talking about today is on the record, so you can feel free to quote it in stories or just use it as background context for the things that you’re going to be covering in the weeks ahead. So we’ll start with Dr. Kropf if that’s OK. I don’t know how you guys are feeling about this year in particular in terms of the work that you do, but there’s been a lot of fears and there’s been a lot of talk about potential problems on election day. Can you give us just a big picture sense of the past, what unexpected events can disrupt election day and then what’s the system for your local poll workers or how do we respond to those things?

[00:06:07]

MARTHA KROPF: Well, so disruptions can be as small as, oh, the poll workers were late to the polling place on election day morning or as big as 9/11, which actually happened in the middle of a primary election and many things in between. They can be human caused, maybe a lot of people rushed to the polling place at the same time or they can be equipment caused. Well, it’s equipment, it can break down, power can go out or as happened in North Carolina in 2024, there could be a hurricane three weeks before and election officials find themselves having to dig out mud from a polling place in Old Fort, North Carolina.

These events can happen at any time and really sometimes without warning. But there’s also human caused things aside from 9/11 that can be concerning. There could be bomb threats. There could be people setting a dropbox on fire as happened in Oregon. These things can happen. Election officials work to plan for almost anything that could happen. They have a process that they often use. They go through in North Carolina. They do all what they call tabletop exercises where if this happens, what do you do? But then this happens, then what do you do? They’re trying to prepare for these different events, and I can certainly be happy to talk about that more. One of the things that people are worried about is who’s going to show up at the polling place on election day? Is it just going to be the voters or will it be police officers. Will it be ICE? That’s certainly something that’s out there in the background conversation. And so I’m happy to talk about that more.

[00:08:09]

MATT DERIENZO: So I would love to get into that but I have a question. You talked about North Carolina, having all of these scenario planning, which sounds great. One thing I meant to say upfront is to remind everybody that elections are controlled locally. They’re paid for locally, usually, and I assume have a wide degree of difference in resources and protocols and stuff like that. How does that play into this?

[00:08:39]

MARTHA KROPF: Well, as you all know, the states make the laws that control the elections and they’re typically, depending on the state, administered at the local level. In North Carolina, that’s counties and some places like Michigan it’s counties and townships and cities in the Northeast. It’s townships that are actually administering the day to day operations of elections. So that makes for a very hyper-decentralized system. I heard a podcast this weekend where someone was saying the hyper decentralized system in Michigan. But in any case, it is a very hyper-decentralized system, which from a perspective, if someone wanted to have one plan to try and disrupt the elections, it would be very hard because they’d have to be making plans in all of these different jurisdictions all over the country. It would be a challenge.

On the other hand, it also makes it so as you say, there are different levels of resources, different amounts of money that are spent because some jurisdictions can spend more and some must spend less. These election jurisdictions can be very small or as big as Los Angeles that I guess they’re often flying around a helicopter to pick up ballots and they have drug sniffing dogs in their big ballot counting facility because of the worry of people putting I don’t know, powder of mysterious types in with the ballots or just in the dropboxes. And so those dogs actually help keep them safe, and they’re an integral part of what they do when they have a collection of ballots in a dropbox, and it’s effective. But it makes it difficult, I guess, in some ways, but better for security, maybe.

[00:10:36]

MATT DERIENZO: So that sounds scary. My question is, what’s the balance have you noticed this changing over the years? What’s the balance between creating a welcoming environment where voters feel comfortable coming in to vote and all those scenarios of possible security concerns.

[00:10:57]

MARTHA KROPF: I think typically speaking, a voter shouldn’t feel worried about going to the polling place. So, in many places, they are doing scenario planning, and the local election officials. In many places, the local election officials are doing scenario planning. When it comes to potential disruptions, they have typically, okay, well, if we need them, we have a relationship with the police and if we need them to go to a polling place, we can. Now, typically we would say a police officer or a national guard member or a military member, they shouldn’t be at the polling places. But the if the local election officials have built relationships in their community, with emergency management, with local police officers, with a variety of different people that they can just have on their speed dial to call when something is happening, these procedures can help us stay safe. You know, talking to the former state election director in North Carolina, Karen Brinson Bell, she would say, when Hurricane Helene happened, she knew she had the emergency management people for the state on speed dial, and she had encouraged her local election directors also make sure they know their EM, that is emergency management people as well. If she called or the power company even, that’s another relationship they have to build. Oh, the powers out in this place. Well, then we know that this is a place that’s a high priority place because it is the polling place. Again, there’s many things that happen for preparation.

But as you know, there are variations in resources and administrative capacity among all of these election officials because some precincts are very small in North Carolina. That is, I should say, some counties in North Carolina are very small and might have one or two people on staff and maybe the election board working. Others are highly professionalized operations like Mecklenburg County and Wake County. Look to Los Angeles County, it’s a very highly professionalized. And so there’s a lot of variation.

[00:13:45]

MATT DERIENZO: You mentioned, the decentralization as being a positive thing when there is something that happens in an isolated way. I remember bomb threats in the last election and stuff like that or even just past reports of helicopter shows along line. Is there any potential for an incident at one polling place to have an impact, whether it’s perception or otherwise on the rest of voting?

[00:14:19]

MARTHA KROPF: Well, you could answer this question in a couple of different ways. What’s it going to mean for the voters? It depends on the jurisdiction, and how voting is organized. But typically on election day, people have one place that they go to if they’re in a long line and they haven’t voted early and that’s the time they have to vote, then they’re going to have to wait. Certainly the Chief Judge would be in communication or the person who’s in charge at the polling place, that is, would be in communication with their central county office. And they might be talking about, okay, what is it that we can do on election day? But other places that might have a vote center, where anybody in the county could come. Well, it depends on how many vote centers they have. So during early voting, every polling place is a vote center. Anybody from the county can go there in North Carolina. So you could see where if the line is really long at one, then everybody might go to another and it would be super long.

Now, another way to answer that question is the way you were suggesting if there’s a bomb threatened one, will people feel safe about going to another? That’s where those relationships that the local election officials have with their law enforcement, with their emergency management, etc., these things really matter. Because it’s about keeping people safe. And they also need to make a plan that if we can’t vote in polling place A, and our voters are required to go there because it’s election day and that’s the law. Well, we got to figure out is there another place in the county where they could go, which sometimes that’s a rare commodity. Or if you have the fire department on speed dial, they come. The bomb squad checks, there’s no bomb. Get people back in there as soon as possible. I think the number one thing is that voters need to have faith in the local election officials, which I sense sometimes in short supply and it shouldn’t be. I’ve met a lot of election officials. They think a lot about these jobs and they take them very seriously and keeping you safe, it’s a trade off like we call the police and make some people nervous. Well, in this situation, Yes, we got it because it’s a matter of keeping her people safe. It is a trade off but it’s a big job.

[00:16:55]

MATT DERIENZO: And it should be noted about local control and things being run differently in different places. There’s some states like New Hampshire where almost all voting happens in person, and there’s other states like Virginia where 30% of people have already voted, right in early voting.

[00:17:10]

MARTHA KROPF: Absolutely.

[00:17:11]

MATT DERIENZO: So Dr. Cohen, I want to move over to you. And I want to talk about poll watchers. I think people hear that term and maybe assume different things about what that means. Can you lay out that landscape and what their role is?

[00:17:29]

MOLLIE COHEN: Yes, absolutely. So partisan poll watchers are individuals who observe elections on behalf of a political party. So these are not poll workers, the people who administer elections. These are not non partisan or international election observers. Almost every country around the world that holds elections has partisan poll watchers from liberal democracies like Uruguay, the United States to closed autocracies. So Venezuela and Russia actually have partisan poll watchers in their elections.

And poll watchers have been part of American elections since before the country was founded. So there’s evidence going back as far as 1781 of poll watchers challenging people’s eligibility at the polls on the basis that they were still loyal to the king in New York. So there’s a storied tradition of partisan election observers at American polling places. So the fact that they are explicitly partisan actors is what makes poll watchers unique. So poll workers or local election officials, the folks that Martha was just talking about, maybe partisan. They may be nominated by a party, but their role is explicitly nonpartisan. Their job is to check people’s ID, check the register, make sure that everyone who is eligible to vote is able to vote, and that those votes are counted. Full stop. There is no partisanship that is supposed to come into play there.

Poll watchers have a different job, their role is to protect their party’s interests at the polls. This does mean ensuring the integrity of elections like these other nonpartisan actors, but it also means ensuring that their own supporters can vote and from time to time challenging the eligibility of potential opposition supporters. What this looks like in practice varies a lot across American states. In all but one state, West Virginia, partisan poll watchers can operate, so there are none in West Virginia. If you think you’ve seen some, there’s something else, but the rules governing their behavior, really widely. So I’m just going to give you a couple of examples.

In 32 states, poll watchers are permitted to challenge voters eligibility at the polls. Now, the rules around those challenges are really different across states. For example, in North Carolina, poll watchers who challenge the eligibility of a voter have to submit an oath under threat of perjury and perjury to an election official in the state of North Carolina is a felony offense. In a place like Nevada, election day challenges of voters are only considered valid if they’re based on direct personal knowledge of, for example, an incorrect identification or an incorrect address on someone’s voter form. So if parties engage in caging and challenging tactics, that’s when you send mailers to lists of voters and if they’re returned to the party office is undeliverable, you call that person an ineligible voter, you challenge them at the polls. That is not permitted in Nevada.

In other states, though, the laws are much more lax. So in Pennsylvania, any registered voter can challenge another voter’s eligibility to vote at the polls. So challenging voters is one of the biggest most important roles that poll watchers have. There are also some important limitations on their activities. So there are states that require mandate poll watcher training. In the state of Texas, currently, poll watchers have to not just register with the state, but they actually have to attend training by the Texas Secretary of State’s office. In South Carolina, there is no explicit poll watcher training. About half of U.S. states require some form of identification on one’s person, clearly identifying the party that you’re watching on behalf of and there are also important limitations to poll watchers speech and freedom of movement.

So most states have some electioneering prohibition. You’re not allowed to campaign on behalf of your party in the polling place. But the specifics of those prohibitions, again, they vary widely. So, in Alabama, poll watchers can’t disturb, disrupt, attempt to influence voters. In Maryland, the law is really granular. It says that they can’t take pictures or use electronic devices, use their phones, laptops, tablets. In Indiana, where I live, the law is much more vague. And in Missouri, there’s actually not a single specific activity that is listed in the law.

[00:22:13]

MATT DERIENZO: If I’m a poll watcher and I just show up and lurk behind the poll workers, is that unlimited, the amount of people who can do that? Like, how does that work?

[00:22:22]

MOLLIE COHEN: So poll watchers are nominated by the parties. And so, of course, like all things, this varies across states across jurisdictions, so check with your local state. But for the most part, these folks have to register through the party with the county, and the county will keep some record. So when they show up to the polls, they bring a credential of some sort. They’re checked against a register of folks who have been admitted as poll watchers, and that’s the only time they can work. There are also sometimes physical limitations on where they can stand. There are places where there’s like a six foot square in the corner that’s the poll watchers zone. They may not leave that area. Then there are other places where they have effectively free movement. I would recommend for folks on the call, if you’re interested about the laws governing poll watching in your state, the National Conference of State Legislatures has a really great set of resources about these. The laws are so granular and so varied across states. It’s really hard to get a general picture from a couple of minutes discussion like this. So I would recommend looking there.

[00:23:26]

MATT DERIENZO: Does research show if anything about whether the existence of poll watchers makes people feel better about the accuracy or validity of elections versus something else, including maybe feeling intimidated.

[00:23:42]

MOLLIE COHEN: Yes, I’m really glad you asked this question because poll watchers have been implicated both in protecting voters right to access the franchise. This was the story of the post civil rights movement South, as well as directly implicated in making it harder for people to access the ballot. They have this strange dual role. So it is a pretty common assumption, out in the wild that poll watchers improve public confidence in elections.

But there’s actually not a ton of evidence about this supposition. So my colleague Geoff Sheagley at the University of Georgia and I have done a fair bit of work on this. We have found a couple of big things. So let me try and walk through it quickly. So first, we saw that partisan poll watchers and non partisan poll watchers can improve trust in elections. Americans distrust elections more when we tell them that poll watchers are prohibited in those elections. So it’s not the case that Americans reject watchers at the polls out of hand. But the partisan composition of those poll watchers matters a great deal. We ran a bunch of experiments on nationally representative samples of Americans over many years. And one thing that we found is that when there’s only one poll watcher present at a polling place, a hypothetical polling place, Americans trust on average declines. Americans are most trusting of elections when there are watchers from both parties. Now, if that one watcher is from voters cop-artisan, if they’re from the same party, it’s a Republican voter and a Republican watcher, their trust does not decline as much as if it is a Democratic voter with a Republican watcher. We see a much starker decline. We don’t see an improvement, though, in Republicans trust when there’s only one Republican watcher present or Democrats for that matter.

So Americans tend to believe that elections are fairest measured in a bunch of different ways when there are watchers from both parties present at the polls or when there are none at all.

[00:25:49]

MATT DERIENZO: Dr. King, I’m curious what you can tell us generally about when a voter shows up, interacts with a poll worker, election officials, just the process of checking in and stuff like that. I know from my own voting experience that can vary. How does that affect confidence in election, the likelihood that they’ll vote again?

[00:26:14]

BRIDGETT KING: Sure. I mean, so generally for most Americans, voters in the United States, the poll workers, or the person in the polling location or the early voting location or the vote center, as the case may be, that individual is the primary contact that they have with the election system. So as you mentioned, those interactions can be very important, not only with respect to their perception of the process, but also their likelihood of returning in the future. We do know that positive interactions yield positive results. When voters have a positive interaction at check in, a positive interaction with the equipment, and a positive interaction with the casting and completing of their ballot, they do tend to have more confidence not only in processes within their local jurisdiction, but also across their state and across the nation generally, not only do those in person interactions impact them personally, but they also have downstream effects of how they perceive the process at large and generally. Thinking about what we’ve been talking about here already about poll watchers and sort of emergencies that can happen. You know, poll workers also exist to provide reassurance, to reduce friction in the polling location. So not only do poll workers work and exist to help voters understand what it is that they’re doing in the polling location, they also are there to resolve eligibility issues, to provide them with information, which might be you’re at the wrong polling location, you should go here, or also just to provide them with information about the process more generally, which is particularly important for first time voters and young voters.

[00:27:51]

MATT DERIENZO: So what does research tell us about showing up at that same polling place but having to maybe walk through a gauntlet of protesters or maybe the Proud Boys are there or maybe as Dr. Kropf said, maybe ICE is there.

[00:28:06]

BRIDGETT KING: Do you mean the impact on the poll workers or the voters?

[00:28:09]

MATT DERIENZO: Actually, I was going to ask you about voters. My follow up question was going to be poll workers. So I would love to hear about both.

[00:28:18]

BRIDGETT KING: OK, perfectly fine. So I would say for both voters and poll workers where there’s a contentious environment, that can increase stress. And so on the poll worker side, that can distract them from their core administrative duties, such as checking identification, issuing the correct ballots, making sure ballots are submitted appropriately. We also know in chaotic environments that increases stress and cognitive load, which also might elevate the risk for administrative errors, which can spill over into things like longer wait times, procedural oversights, etc.

We’ve also seen in previous elections though, that some of those in person experiences that poll workers have spill over into their personal lives where their personal information is placed on the Internet and they experience doxing and other issues. For the voters themselves, if you’re unsure or uncertain about a process and you show up and the environment feels hostile, that might facilitate a voter deciding to leave and not cast a ballot. If they do stay, they may be discouraged from participating in the future. We also might think about how a protest or something that impedes the physical space might interfere with voters with disabilities and their abilities to cast ballots or depending on who the protesters are, who the organization is that is present. Language minority voters might also be intimidated from participating because their expectations about how they’re going to be treated or, quite frankly, if it’s even safe for them to walk into the polling location depending on where those people are and identify themselves. So negative experiences do produce negative consequences, and those consequences are wide reaching and oftentimes don’t just impact the voter themselves, but also the people they make community with.

[00:30:11]

MATT DERIENZO: So you got into this a little bit just then, talking about people with disabilities or non English speakers. Does research show certain groups over indexing and impact when stuff like that happens when the polling place experience is challenged in that way?

[00:30:29]

BRIDGETT KING: Yes, I mean, I think it would depend on what the specific challenge is. We do know there are federal laws that require polling locations to have accessible equipment for people with physical, audio visual disabilities, the poll workers are obviously there to help facilitate them using that equipment. But as Martha noted earlier, not only are the election offices sometimes small, but the actual polling locations oftentimes are very small as well. I think one thing that people often don’t realize is that, election officials generally do not have the authority to just co-opt any space during early voting or on election day. Those spaces that people who own them have to be welcoming and willing to let them in there and the local elections office also pay for them.

Seeing Martha’s discussion about costs, there’s also costs there. In certain communities, the buildings may not be accessible in a way that would facilitate people with physical disabilities casting a ballot. We might also think about language minorities. There are jurisdictions that have requirements about ballots being printed in different languages, signage being in different languages, and you try to identify poll workers who speak all the languages of the community. But again, election officials generally report that recruiting poll workers is challenging, but also when you get into the specific needs of different types of voters, that is an additional burden or an additional challenge that they have to try to navigate for every election. My general answer is, it depends, and as we think about that decentralization, different jurisdictions in different states serve different populations, and so the challenges they may experience also vary just like the rules.

[00:32:17]

MATT DERIENZO: So I’m curious when bad things happen on elections. Unexpected things happen. The range of options, Dr. Kropf said, relationship with the police and the power company, stuff like that. The range of options that poll workers and election officials have. And then I’ve seen in elections, and I’m not sure how widespread it is. I’d be curious that sometimes that ultimately goes to a judge and it gets resolved by polling hours being extended. How common is that, and what are the other tools maybe that they have to resolve these things?

[00:32:57]

BRIDGETT KING: Yes, so going back to what Martha said earlier, sometimes those disruptions are simply, I’ve been during election observation, not monitoring, they are different, where it’s just a matter if the person that manages the facility forgot to show up and unlock the door. So polling hours are extended. So it can be things as simple and sort of benign as that, but you are correct. There are other instances where the threat or the issue that arises is much more challenging and quite frankly dangerous. So one thing I do know that local jurisdictions do the same way they do for their full time staff, they also train poll workers in de-escalation. So equipping them with resources and skills to help resolve conflict that might come up in a polling location in order to quell someone perhaps doing something that is a violation of election law or statute, increases in the amount of signage that not only articulates voters rights, excuse me, but also what activities are prohibited within the polling location, whether that be something as simple as your campaign signs have to be a certain square footage away or footage away, or things like what people can and cannot wear in the polling location in support of a candidate.

The EAC, the Election Assistance Commission, for example, they have these cards that I know some jurisdictions use that have different scenarios on them. We’re just like the full time election staff. They also do tabletop exercises. We’re a part of the poll worker training. They walk through different scenarios and talk about the best way to resolve them and then provide them with, if something disruptive happens in the polling location and you’ve tried all these tactics, this is who you should call. Maybe that’s the elections office. I’ve been in a polling location where someone had a medical emergency, and so they called police and fire, so they called 9/11. So they do walk them through or try to train them on step by step what it is that they should do relative to the disruption. Also keeping in mind that they’re still trying to process people casting ballots and still want people to be able to exercise their right to vote.

[00:35:10]

MATT DERIENZO: Great. We’re going to transition to a bunch of great questions that we’ve got from reporters on the line. But first, I wanted to ask all of you to respond in however you see fit to just a broad question about, we’ve got a little bit over a week for these reporters to think about this. And also, we live in pretty interesting times. And so what any advice that you have in terms of preparing to cover election day, any fears you have about how coverage could go wrong, mistakes that you think that people should be aware to avoid. What’s your vision for good coverage of problems on Tuesday versus not? Maybe.

[00:35:56]

MARTHA KROPF: Well, let me start. So recall how I said the local election officials, the latency that are running the election in the county, not necessarily the poll workers. They need to have emergency management on speed dial. They need to have the power company on speed dial. I would say, if I were a journalist, the most important thing that I would recommend is, I hope you’ve developed a relationship with the local election official that you might be most likely to have an interaction with or the set, go to the state, meet those people, try and get to know who they are before these incidents start to happen. The second person that I would recommend having on speed dial is a trusted source that you know knows a lot about elections. Fortunately, there are many of us in North Carolina. We have a big group of what we call election science scholars here, have a trusted source on speed dial so that if something happens, you can say, okay, what do I do? Third, I have to endorse what Mollie, Dr. Cohen said, and that is the National Conference of State Legislatures has spent a significant amount of time putting together very valuable resources on what state laws are. And a lot of us academics use that information a lot and so that information is useful on what the state laws are and they cover a variety of election based issues. What to prepare for specifically, I think it’s anyone’s guess. But I would be ready by having those trusted sources lined up.

[00:37:54]

MATT DERIENZO: I was just going to say some good old editor advice for covering elections in the past is get to know those people before election day, so you got in about a week. Go ahead. Sorry.

[00:38:10]

MARTHA KROPF: Yes, I majored in journalism. That’s what they told us.

[00:38:16]

MOLLIE COHEN: I was just going to say two quick things. One is, I think it’s really important to remember that there’s a distinction between legitimate election observation and what we might call election vigilantism and that those two things, they’re like very distant cousins, but they’re not actually related. So poll watchers, these election observers are people who are known to election officials. They have a job to do, and they can’t harass voters. That’s not their job. They can throw sand in the cogs of election administration by challenging a lot of voters. Their job is not to harass people, but harassment of voters is part of the way that that job can shake out. It can feel like harassment or it can feel like intimidation. What we might call vigilantes, their role is not to protect their party’s interests at the polls. Their role is to sow chaos. We’ve seen increased news coverage of folks engaging in activities like lighting ballot boxes on fire, drop off places on fire, wearing masks to the pools and carrying firearms outside of the polling locations and asking people for their identification or tipping people, and clearly trying to intimidate them. Those are unacceptable activities at the polls. Those are not considered within the confines of the way that we think about elections. Those are not poll watchers. Those are something else.

I would just encourage everyone to be mindful that those are different sets of actors. A real poll watcher, when you ask them, what party do you represent? They’ll have an identification. They’ll be able to tell you. They’ll say, I’m with the Republican Party and with the Democratic Party. They might have a credential on them and show that to you in a way that these vigilantes won’t. Yes, I’ll stop there.

[00:40:14]

BRIDGETT KING: Sure. I guess for me, I don’t know if it’s so much unique to this election, but more so the way people discuss elections these days. I do think it’s increasingly important given our decentralized system that when reporting on an issue or an incident because the rules are so different across states, to make sure it is very clear where the incident actually occurred. There are many times when I’ve read an article, I’m from Ohio and thought it was talking about Ohio, and it was actually talking about another state. So, I mean, UK is in Lexington, there’s a Lexington in Ohio. There’s a Lexington in South Carolina. So I think it’s apparently very popular name. But I think it’s increasingly important not only with the way stories are shared on our platforms and our different algorithms but just to make it clear when an incident arises because the rules are so different and what is an issue in one state might be perfectly legitimate in another, to make it very clear what jurisdiction is being reported on, especially since so many of them share the same name.

[00:41:22]

MATT DERIENZO: Great. So I have a quick follow up question from KUNM Public Radio in Albuquerque. You touched on it a little bit, Dr. Cohen. What’s the difference between election observing and election monitoring and have you guys seen an increase in the amount of poll watchers and that organized activity since the 2020 election and denial of the outcome and that thing.

[00:41:50]

MOLLIE COHEN: So election monitoring in the United States refers to a very specific set of activities undertaken by the Department of Justice effectively. They are lawyers who are sent by governments, state or federal to observe elections to take note of any issues at the polls. And then later, those can be used in court filings. Those are monitors. Observers, that term covers a much broader range of activities. So that can be international election observers who will come through, they’ll sort of show up at polling places. They’ll take copious notes. And after the election is over, they will write a report describing the good and bad pieces of an election. Partisan watchers fall more or less under this observation category, although they are different because international nonpartisan observers, those are two different things, international or nonpartisan observers, although international observers are frequently nonpartisan, they cannot lodge challenges at the polls. They can only take notes and make comment about them later. Poll watchers or poll challengers can make challenges at the polls. So that’s the thing that makes those actors unique. Yes, go ahead.

[00:43:07]

MATT DERIENZO: And are we more likely to see this since 2020 is increasing, or do we see it?

[00:43:14]

MOLLIE COHEN: So the best answer is we don’t really know. So let me say more. So record keeping is really varied across states. So I currently live in Indiana. Indiana does not keep any written records of where poll watchers operate. I formerly lived in Georgia. Georgia keeps outstanding records of where poll watchers operate. You can tell which individual was at which polling location at what time on what day, similarly in North Carolina. So we’ve done some digging and tried to sort of track the presence of these folks over time. I can tell you with certainty, a couple of things. I can tell you that the Republican Party has a much better poll watching operation than the Democratic Party. They have an advantage of about two to one in democratic strongholds of watchers. So, in Atlanta, in Fulton County, about two thirds of watchers are from the Republican Party, even though that’s the bluest part of Georgia, and that appears to be increasing over time. So the Republican Party has done a better job of mobilizing poll watchers. Really in 2016, Donald Trump made a bunch of statements about sort of mobilizing what he would call an army of poll watchers, the Republican Party was actually forbidden from engaging directly in those efforts because of a consent decree that dates back to 1987. It’s a long story. But effectively, in 2017, that consent decree expired, and so starting in 2020, the Republican National Committee was able to help with these efforts. So certainly there is more attention being paid to poll watchers. There is a great deal more news coverage of them and greater public interest in them. It’s not clear if that’s actually translating to an increase in the presence of poll watchers at polling places just because the record keeping is so spotty.

[00:44:58]

MATT DERIENZO: So we have two related questions, one from a freelance reporter in Michigan, another from a reporter at WFYI in Indianapolis. And they both relate to, in the case of Michigan, seven cities being notified that the Department of Justice is going to be sending monitors into their polling places in similar to two counties in Indiana. And so the question is, what can they do legally and not do? Can they seize ballots? And then what’s the impact on poll workers? Also, as a student of history, there’s a long history of the DOJ and the civil rights era going in to assure that people can vote, and I’m not sure that that’s the intent in this case, as opposed to preventing people from voting who they don’t think should be able to vote. So can any of you guys speak to what reporters can expect from that and make of it?

[00:46:01]

MOLLIE COHEN: I can say very little bit, and then I don’t know if either of you would like to say more. So the laws governing poll monitors activities, so these observers from the Department of Justice have weakened significantly over time. So in the 1960s, after the civil rights era, poll monitors went explicitly to southern states to protect African Americans access to the polls. Their job was to do that. They weren’t able to enter polling places, but they were able to ensure that these voters were able to do so. So in the last several decades, we’ve seen the gradual weakening of these folks, privileges effectively at the polls. Currently, pool monitors have pretty limited rights in theory. My expectations about how cautious they’re going to be in this current electoral context are weak. I don’t have strong expectations. It certainly seems like the DOJ is looking to see his ballot boxes.

[00:47:07]

BRIDGETT KING: My understanding is that is not legal. I’m not a lawyer, and we have certainly seen the testing of novel legal theories in the last several years. So, you know, as Dr. Kropf and Dr. King have said, a poll workers should be ready for anything. And probably they’ve thought through this in those jurisdictions. It’s probably worth calling them and asking what they anticipate.

[00:47:33]

MARTHA KROPF: I’m not familiar with this particular case, but I am curious what was the stated justification for these five jurisdictions in Michigan. I mean, I think they do have to say why they’re going to be there. If you look back in the past history of the Department of Justice, it was often while there was this history in this particular county of this person or these people not being able to have their right to vote. That would be my curiosity.

[00:48:06]

MATT DERIENZO: Not sure about the Michigan one, but I can tell you what the Indianapolis Reporter said, which was an email from the DOJ says that these monitors will be monitoring for compliance with the federal voting rights statutes that fall within the jurisdiction of the Civil Rights Division of the DOJ and then lists a number of federal statutes. It sounds pretty broad.

[00:48:30]

MARTHA KROPF: I would say the more broadly they list them, the more discretion they’re trying to have. But again, I shouldn’t say much more than that. Yes, I’d be curious to know more, but not especially helpful, I guess. Sorry, guys.

[00:48:54]

BRIDGETT KING: I’ll also say not a lawyer. But I do know outside of their training, even during early voting on election day, poll workers are typically given updates about things that they can expect at the polling location. Oftentimes, it comes from the chief clerk at the polling location or whatever the title may be, and then it’s disseminated to the poll workers. They’re also given updates on who they should call, like I mentioned earlier, if something does happen. But even if they don’t do anything, like we talked about earlier, I think there’s still the matter of intimidation, what does it mean to have an additional physical presence at a polling location in terms of people who might be marginalized or feel vulnerable approaching the polling location to check in and cast a ballot.

[00:49:40]

MATT DERIENZO: We have a question from a Reuters correspondent about what you can say, if anything, about expectations of ICE or border patrol or law enforcement presence at polls, particularly in places like Texas, where there are hotly contested elections and communities that might be affected. I’m curious if ICE has connotations beyond typical law enforcement being there and anything that research might show about that.

[00:50:21]

BRIDGETT KING: I’ll go. Still not a lawyer, just to be clear. I don’t think I have any guesses about where ICE will be, but I do think if we go back to notions of what their presence might mean for voters, whether they’re in the polling location or even if just a vehicles parked outside in the parking lot, you can imagine how someone might respond to that if they are a vulnerable person who falls into the category of individuals that ICE has increasingly detained.

[00:50:59]

MATT DERIENZO: And I’m not sure if this question pertains to any expertise that you guys can offer or not, but again, from KUNM in Albuquerque a lot of their listeners have expressed concerns about mail ballots and there’s been so much back and forth in terms of court decisions and stuff like that. Can people feel pretty confident the rules aren’t going to change again before Tuesday? And does all of this controversy around mail balloting, are there worries about how that’s going to affect? Like, I assume some of the same poll workers are processing those and election officials and stuff like that.

[00:51:42]

MARTHA KROPF: Well, I wouldn’t worry about the people that are processing them. I think all three of us have met a lot of local election officials and they care very much about having a good election. Now, what has happened though is some states have ever tightening rules when it comes to mail ballots. One thing that’s controversial here right now in North Carolina is that that inner ballot needs to be sealed. But the person also needs to have a copy of a photo ID and the person needs to have two people or a notary sign the mail ballot for you. North Carolina has also increasingly done the ballot signature checks. They’ve tried tighten up that. But from the perspective of where I think I would have been more worried is making sure that it gets there on time. A lot of us have been suggesting, get it in the mail, well, before now, because the mail could be slow and unpredictable. We’ve heard about budget cuts. If it’s possible to take it to the election office yourself, and you’re in North Carolina if you are a close relative of the person, I took my son’s ballot as I’m allowed to do by North Carolina law, I took it down there and if that’s possible to do, at this point, it might be a good thing. That’s what I would say about this.

[00:53:33]

MATT DERIENZO: So if I’m just a bystander. I’ve gone and cast my vote. I’m walking out when I see a voter being harassed or I see ICE interfering or something else happening. Is there anything that I can or should be doing? Should I live stream it on my phone on Twitter or contact somebody?

[00:53:56]

MARTHA KROPF: By all means go inside and find the chief judge or the person in charge, the chief poll worker, and you tell them that there is this going on outside. Failing that, there’s all voter protection phone numbers. There are several interest groups that are paying a lot of attention and are ready and willing to file lawsuits if they need to. If you see a person being harassed by ICE and it is by the polling place, the chief judge, the chief poll worker will have, as they said, a protocol. They’ll know what to do. They’ll balance their interests. It may be they’re calling local law enforcement and saying, Hey, you need to do something about this. But if all else fails, as I say, there are voter protection numbers at every polling place, and I would call those and let them know what’s happening. I suspect what would then happen is that they would let interest groups who are supporting voters know.

[00:55:07]

MATT DERIENZO: I got it. You mentioned 9/11 is incredible example of disruption of an election. And so it seems like if an election they could figure that out, it’s possible to overcome other disruptions. Can you give us whether it’s that or any other examples of what the remedies were when a ballot box got burned or bomb threat happened and people got turned away temporarily?

[00:55:38]

MARTHA KROPF: Basically, there were maybe, as I recall reading the case study, about five or so polling places that were in the immediate vicinity and they had to get the poll workers and everybody out. And fairly quickly, the New York City authorities made the decision to stop voting because it was affecting this area so much and very surrounding areas. As you say, what happens at what polling place is going to affect what happens at many other polling places. Ultimately, they did and ultimately was on the news before they wanted it to be, but the state legislature of New York decided to delay the primary. It was a primary election in September and they delayed it two or so weeks, as I recall, from the case study. That’s certainly possible to do. The state legislature has that within their control to be able to make laws governing something like that. If there’s a disaster that’s bad enough, Hurricane Helene, for example, they didn’t delay the election in North Carolina, the general November election. They didn’t delay the early voting. The state election board and all of the county directors were ready to jump in and get things done that they needed to do. In New York City, I think they had several temporary FEMA tents. And those served as polling places. Yes, of course, there’s things that can be done.

[00:57:30]

MATT DERIENZO: I have one more question, then I would love to just get any takeaways that you guys have. And that is, are there any research topics that you’re pursuing with this election cycle or things that you think are worthy of studying, if you’re not based on the circumstances of this year and so forth?

[00:57:53]

BRIDGETT KING: I don’t know if anyone else will think it’s interesting but one of the things we know that came out of the 2020 election cycle and local jurisdictions efforts to increase transparency, was that many of them installed live feeds in their offices in different places, whether it be the voter verification area, tabulation, maybe maybe absentee ballot processing. But we also know on the flip side, as technology evolves, you can also zoom in on a person’s face, find out who they are, etc., and put them in harm’s way. A project I’m working on is looking at the consequences of that transparency, not only for voters, but also the election officials who live in the offices in terms of how it’s also impacted their lives and perhaps changed how they orient themselves towards their work now that there’s a camera in the corner.

[00:58:49]

MATT DERIENZO: Great.

[00:58:50]

MOLLIE COHEN: I’m so excited you’re working on that.

[00:58:53]

MARTHA KROPF: Me too.

[00:58:54]

MOLLIE COHEN: Some work I’ve done out of Chile where we’ve done something similar, I think. I’m going to be running an exit poll in Georgia looking at the effect of partisan poll watchers and other less explicitly party affiliated actors at the polls on voters attitudes.

[00:59:15]

MATT DERIENZO: Great.

[00:59:18]

MARTHA KROPF: Actually, I have two exit polls going on. Right now, one is just a voter satisfaction survey that I teach as a part of a service learning class. The students go and they give these exit polls, so it’s looking at voter confidence and voter satisfaction, it would allow us to study any of these questions. I’m also with some of my colleagues following up on Hurricane Helene study. We have been exit polling up in the 13 worst affected counties to find out about recovery, but then also find out about trust in government, because we have a sense that there’s that’s lagging as well as confidence in elections. This follow up response to tragedy that happened a couple of years ago in some of these counties. So that’s been interesting to talk to voters about the damage they had, but they’re still out there voting. So it’s pretty awesome, I think.

[01:00:28]

MATT DERIENZO: Great. I’m going to ask you guys one second to give us some parting advice or wisdom or takeaways from this conversation, what you’d like people to know who are on the call. But I just want to remind people who are on the call, SciLine is here to help you as you work on other stories and these topics in the next couple of weeks and beyond. And I also want to remind you of a resource that you don’t know about it called Vote Beat. Votebeat.org is another excellent organization of journalists who know what they’re talking about, and they have a slack channel with experts like the ones that we have here today. If you join that soonish, you’ll have that accessible to you too that you can have some on demand support through the election day and please use our expert source thing for that as well. So why don’t we go and reverse order Dr. King and leave us with something, if you could?

[01:01:30]

BRIDGETT KING: I guess the thing to remember for me is that elections are complicated. And while those of us who work in this space think about them all the time, the average person does not. And so as we think about whom we get trusted info from, as Martha mentioned, obviously, your state election director, your county election official, whatever their title may be. But for a vast majority of the public, I would argue that whom they trust to receive election information from, is reporters and other individuals who provide coverage during early voting on election day, etc. And so I guess the thing I would just like to articulate is as we think about the ecosystem that makes up elections and democracy in the United States, our reporters, whether they’re on TV, radio, newspaper, etc., are an integral part of that process, and the work that they do is important.

[01:02:30]

MOLLIE COHEN: Well, obviously, I second that. That’s the correct answer. I would also just like to re emphasize that for the most part, like almost all the time, local election officials and poll workers and even poll watchers are acting in good faith. It is so common for errors to happen because we are human and to be human is to error. But I think that in large part, when we see complications, long lines at the polls, those are the result of mistakes made by people who are acting in good faith, who are trying to serve the public because democracy is the most important thing, and voting is the core act at the heart of a democracy.

[01:03:18]

MARTHA KROPF: I would just like to echo what Dr. Cohen and Dr. King both said and especially emphasize, I would not assume that when something happens, a mistake or voting machine breaks down, or even you can hear these ever present results of someone pressing the button on the voting machine and the wrong person comes up. Well, verify that. But there are backup systems. And also note, there’s audits of elections that are happening, but when there are mistakes that happen, these are humans that are running election. Again, I just cannot emphasize Dr. Cohen’s point enough. They’re humans. Humans make mistakes 99.999 times out of 100, these mistakes are mistakes and not because some official has some partisan motivation or whatnot. I think that’s pretty important to remember, find out what it is, and don’t just assume. At least it worked for me when I was, Oh, I got you. Well, that’s always nice for a headline, but I also think it’s very important to get behind the story and not just do this, got you, this big thing happened. Well, maybe something happened and it got out of control. But whatever, I think that we should assume good attentions from local election officials especially, and the poll workers.

[01:05:06]

MATT DERIENZO: Thank you, guys so much for volunteering your time to help reporters today. This has been super helpful. We’ll have a video. This video will be up within an hour or two on our SciLine site for those who are on the line, and we’ll have a transcript up in a day or two, as well. Thank you guys so much and looking forward to the election.

[01:05:32]

BRIDGETT KING: Thank you for having me.