These people are in line to vote early in Philadelphia.
Nothing unusual about that, except
these voters had already voted.
They cast their ballots by mail,
but they were missing one thing:
an accurate, handwritten date.
The lawsuit that got these ballots thrown out was filed
by the Republican National Committee.
It's part of a larger effort
led by allies of former President Donald Trump,
many of whom ran for election in the 2022 midterms.
In the news, you'll often
hear this group referred to as election deniers.
And while it's true,
they do still deny that Joe Biden won in 2020,
what they can do is just as important as what they say.
In 2020, nearly three-quarters of US
voters cast their ballots early or by mail.
But these politicians want to limit
and even get rid of these practices altogether.
This plan is what motivated
thousands of volunteers across the country
ahead of the 2022 midterms.
They didn't just fight election deniers.
In a lot of places, they beat them.
And how they did it could be the key to protecting free,
fair, and open elections in the US
for years to come.
Let's take another look at those mail in ballots in Philadelphia.
On Monday, I got like 15 calls and like ten text messages
from a variety of, like, volunteers
and like political people about my ballot.
The day before the election.
I got a text from my friend.
Like thousands of other voters in Pennsylvania,
Kristen and Zoe had already verified their identities
by providing a Pennsylvania-issued ID number
when they applied for their mail in ballots.
Their ballots had been postmarked
and stamped by the Philadelphia Board of Elections
on the day they were received.
And yet...
These lists came out that listed
people who had sent in a mail in ballot
that was invalid for some reason, your name showed up.
I was, like, disappointed in myself for a second.
Like, how did I date this incorrectly?
Like, I really thought I was following
all the, you know, the rules and what the guidelines are,
how to fill it out.
Pennsylvania has had mail in voting
since 2019 and in every election
since then, multiple judges have ruled that missing
date should not mean a ballot gets thrown out.
But just weeks before the last day to vote in 2022,
a group of Republican politicians
sued to try to get a different ruling.
And it worked.
The candidate at the top of the ticket for the Republicans,
the gubernatorial candidate, Doug Mastriano,
was like a noted election denier.
I am the elections director
for the mid-Atlantic region for the Working Families Party.
I'm a proud resident of Philadelphia,
Pennsylvania, the greatest city in the world.
We knew that there was a risk
that people would use mail in voting specifically
as a way of attacking the legitimacy of the elections overall.
We ended up with over
1300 unique volunteers who were calling voters
to help them cure ballots
and make sure their voices were heard.
Doug Mastriano lost his bid for governor, and Democrats
now control the Pennsylvania State House.
If enough state reps want to change that rule
about the handwritten dates on the outside
of envelopes, they can.
Like Mastriano in Pennsylvania, one of the candidates
for governor in Michigan, Tudor Dickson, had also cast
doubt on the 2020 election results.
More than half the state's
5.5 million votes in 2020 were cast by mail.
And even though Republicans in the state Senate
authored a report that found no evidence
of widespread or systemic fraud,
that didn't stop Tudor Dickson
from tweeting about stolen elections.
And it didn't stop the Republican-led state legislature
from introducing 39 bills
to dramatically limit mail in and early voting.
There are many, many reasons
why people would want to vote by absentee ballot,
but for some reason, some politicians want to make it harder.
Kim's organization, Voters
Not Politicians, recruited more than 300 volunteers
and knocked on over 100,000 doors.
I remember on Election Day,
I woke up at about 6:00 in the morning.
I went all up and down my street.
I really want to talk to you today about Prop 2,
it's going to give us all the constitutional right to vote
without harassment or interference,
including by our own legislators.
It's going to give us all nine days of true early
in-person voting.
If you roll through Detroit,
you will see this area, especially where I live,
it was covered with Prop Two signs, Yes on Prop Two.
You're going to be able to opt in to a system
where you can request your ballot once
and then get it for every future election.
It was worth it, you know, in the end, it paid off.
Prop two passed in Michigan by a large margin.
And Tudor Dixon lost.
But even if she hadn't, because of Prop Two,
Michigan's constitution
now contains an explicit promise to the state's citizens
that their votes will be counted.
I'm passionate about voting rights.
I know what my ancestors went through.
So I'm here to fight for democracy.
And I'll be here until I guess I leave this earth.
The issue of voting free from interference
was front and center in Arizona, too.
I have been so pleased to hear
of all you vigilantes out there that want to camp out
at these drop boxes. Right?
Kari Lake, one of the candidates for Arizona governor,
tweeted her support for this surveillance project.
Smile. You might be on camera.
So we're going to have people parked out there watching you
and they're going to follow you to your car
and get your license plate.
It's going to happen.
She was right. It did happen.
Armed vigilantes dressed in tactical gear,
guys in body armor carrying guns and taking your picture.
Poll stalkers.
People who've been staking out ballot drop boxes
under the guise of preventing widespread voter fraud.
People spoke up.
They dropped off their ballots and then they filed complaints
with the Secretary of State.
There's a group of people hanging out near the ballot
drop box, filming and photographing
my wife and I as we approached the drop box
and accusing us of being a mule.
Camo clad people taking pictures of me
and my license plate
as I dropped our mail in ballots in the box.
A pro-democracy group filed a lawsuit
and the judge issued a temporary restraining order.
The people voted and Kari Lake lost.
By a very small margin.
The ballot drop boxes
she threatened to remove, the early voting
she threatened to cut off, they're both safe for now.
The US doesn't have one big election.
It has over 3000 small elections run
mostly by volunteers in high school gyms
and libraries and community centers.
And that can make it easy for some politicians
to cast doubt on their efficacy out of self-interest.
But it also means that anyone
who cares about making them actually work
can go from a bystander to an active participant
in the fight to keep democracy alive and well.
Anyone can go from standing in line
to standing behind the table.
Thank you guys so much for watching.
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