This year’s midterm elections cycle brings heightened concerns about election interference and voter suppression. To counteract potential voter intimidation and election fraud, civil liberties groups like the ACLU have pushed early voting campaigns and put plans in place for voters to promote election security.
Deirdre Schifeling, the ACLU’s Chief Political and Advocacy Officer, joins Jen to discuss how voters can maximize the likelihood that their ballots will be accurately counted and certified. Schifeling also shares a plan for how voters can report instances of voter interference to trusted, nonpartisan organizations that are prepared to respond.
Do you have questions about voter registration deadlines, requesting absentee or mail-in ballots, or how to vote in-person during early voting or on Election Day? Call or text 866-OUR-VOTE (866-687-8683) to speak with a trained Election Protection volunteer.
Deirdre Schifeling is the ACLU’s Chief Political and Advocacy Officer. In this role, she leads organizational efforts on national and state-level policy and campaigns, national grassroots organizing infrastructure, and electoral programming.
The following transcript has been edited for formatting purposes.
Jen Rubin
Hi, I’m Jen Rubin, Editor in Chief of The Contrarian. I am delighted to welcome Deirdre Schifeline of the ACLU. She is the chief political and advocacy officer. Welcome, Deirdre.
Deirdre Schifeling
Thank you so much for having me. It’s great to be with you.
Jen Rubin
Many people are concerned not only about whether they’re going to be able to access the polls, but whether their vote will be defended and counted. You are involved in the most extensive ACLU program in history to ensure that will be the case. Tell us about it.
Deirdre Schifeling
That’s right. So this is the largest election safeguarding program in ACLU history. We have gamed out 25 different ways that the administration Um, or, you know, allies of President Trump, um, could potentially act, um, to try to disrupt or interfere with the election. And we’ve made plans for each one of those scenarios on the litigation side, on the advocacy side, on the organizing side, and on the communication side to explain to voters what’s happening.Um, so we are as prepared as we could possibly be. Um, one part of that is really dividing the country into higher risk states. Um, and then, you know, lower risk states that we don’t have to worry quite as much about. And those higher risk states are states that have competitive elections. So states where, you know, it wouldn’t take that many ballots to try to swing the outcome one way or another. Um, states that have election deniers in office, you know, places where we can’t count on the person who is administering the the election to do the right thing. States that have a history of election interference of some sort. You know, like North Carolina we saw last time where they entertained an attempt to disqualify 60,000 votes, 60,000 voters after the election was over. So states like that, and then finally states that have a history of voter suppression, particularly trying to suppress black and Latino voters. Um, so states that are in have some of those risk factors. We’ve put extra effort behind, um, and trained and deployed thousands of volunteer poll monitors so that we have eyes and ears on the ground in higher risk states to make sure that if something does go awry, if it looks like interference is happening, we find out right away and can act right away.
Jen Rubin
Some of your work has been done in advance. For example, you’ve been part of litigation to prevent the federal government from seizing voter data or from knocking on doors and harassing people who they suspect may be noncitizen voters. What are you doing in terms of action at the polls? I show up at the polls on Tuesday. Maybe I haven’t had a chance to really vote. What are the sorts of things that you are deploying to make sure I can access the vote? My vote gets counted and my vote gets certified. Yes.
Deirdre Schifeling
Um, well, thank you for also walking through all of those steps, because that’s exactly right. All those steps are really important. Um, first, we’re really encouraging people to vote early. So we did a big effort last weekend to encourage people to go out and early vote with our partners in in the No Kings coalition, and that was a big success. We had more than 3000 events across the country in places that had early voting events. Turnout increased by 51% on average, which is huge. Um, you know, we’ve been doing party at the poll events this week, all this week in places like Minnesota, Florida, Michigan, um, to really encourage people to vote early. And 39 million people at last count have already voted. So I would encourage your listeners, if you have not already voted and you can vote early. Please do that so that we don’t get down to the wire. Um, if you are going to go on Election Day and vote, um, we will have election observers there who are trained volunteers. Um, people who have gotten a know your rights training, um, have been trained in, um, what a properly functioning voting site should look like. Um, you know, it is illegal to interfere with somebody casting their ballot. It doesn’t matter who you are, whether you are law enforcement, the military, federal or state official doesn’t matter. It is just as illegal to interfere with somebody’s ability to cast their ballot. So we will be on hand to put a stop to that if there is any interference at all, which mostly we don’t expect. And then those same people who have been trained to be election observers will also be observing the counting. Um, will be observing the certification, um, and will be ready to start protesting, um, in a very public way. If it seems like there’s any interference or blocking of the count or the certification.
Jen Rubin
Let’s go through each of those steps. If I go to the polls and someone is hassling me or hassling someone else, or is menacing or is bearing a weapon, and there’s a relevant statute. What do you do? Who do you contact?
Deirdre Schifeling
Yeah. So you should first be calm. Stay calm. Um, you can try to go into your polling place and notify an election official inside. Um, if it seems like that’s not going to work, you can also call 1-866-OUR-VOTE. That is a voter hotline. 1-866-OUR-VOTE. Um, and that is a hotline that is answered by ACLU lawyers. Um, lawyers from our partner organizations. Um, and the person on the other end of that hotline will know what to do. Depending on what state you’re in, what the situation is. They will know what to do and they will quickly take action. So don’t feel like you have to figure it out on your own. Call 1-866-OUR-VOTE.
Jen Rubin
Now when we visit the counting stage, states, localities run elections. Everybody does it differently. But is the counting process something that your people can actually physically observe?
Deirdre Schifeling
Yes. And hopefully it’s very boring. I mean, ideally it is like watching paint dry. Um, and, you know, ideally, election observing is also very boring. I’m going to go to Georgia tomorrow and do a shift of election observing, and I sincerely hope it is very boring. Um, so yes. Um, that is, that is open to the public. Um, it helps to be, uh, have some training, some orientation about, like, what to look for, what you’re anticipating. Um, we know that some election officials in the past have actually, like, live streamed the counting to try to press down on conspiracy theories and, you know, whatever. Um, so, yes, uh, counting and then certification.
Jen Rubin
People should understand who the people at the poles are and who the people are doing the counting. These are not Democratic operatives or national figures. These are their neighbors. These are local and state officials. Is that.
Deirdre Schifeling
Correct? That’s right. Yes, exactly. It’s your neighbors. It’s your it’s your local election official. Yes.
Jen Rubin
County commissioners.
Deirdre Schifeling
That’s right.
Jen Rubin
Now the vote takes place, you get a tabulation. There is any certification process. Explain what that is and what you guys are doing to make sure that the votes are counted. Get certified. Yes.
Deirdre Schifeling
I mean, part of what we’re doing is observing and making sure that all the procedures are being followed. Um, certification looks different in every state and there’s different deadlines in each state. The most important thing is that there is no delays. There’s no seizing of the ballots. Um, there’s no attempt to interfere with that process state by state.Um, what we’re on the lookout for is, you know, the president and his, um, helpers have been casting aspersions on the election process for many, many months, actually, for about ten years. Um, he has been creating this false sense of mistrust in our election system. In reality, we have a very safe, um, very high functioning election system. Um. Thank goodness. It is controlled by state and local levels of government. I mean, that is, um, our saving grace here is that it is not controlled by the federal government, is controlled locally and by states, um, and it is very safe and secure. And, but our concern is that the president will use these kind of manufactured claims, um, to give a pretext for interfering with counting or certification. Um, and so that’s really what we’re on the lookout for, to make sure that doesn’t happen, or if it does happen to quickly take action.
Jen Rubin
When votes get certified, there is a legal process that goes forward. There are opportunities to challenge that in court. Um, should we be concerned if we see simply a court process, or should we have confidence that that’s in fact how you resolve issues, whether it’s a question on Election Day? Do we keep the polls open an extra hour or whether there’s a concern about, Well, certain machines didn’t work. There are lots of little things that happen during election that courts get involved with.
Deirdre Schifeling
I think the courts, on balance, have been a tremendous force, um, a positive force for enforcing the rules and protecting our democracy. Um, so I would have a lot of confidence in the, in the courts. Um, you know, candidates have the right to challenge, um, you know, different aspects of election processes. Um, some of those challenges are spurious, and some of those challenges might be legitimate. And I really do trust the courts in our system to resolve those in a in a quick way.
Jen Rubin
One of the things that the MAGA forces have done have equated time with nefarious action. Some states have a lot of votes to count. California is a very big state. Yeah. Some states don’t let the election officials begin tabulating the votes until the polls close. Should we be concerned simply because it takes a day or even a week to get final results from a jurisdiction?
Deirdre Schifeling
Yeah, I, I do not think we should be concerned. Voting does take time. And we want the right count, not the fast count. Um, and you’re right. In a place like California, where there are millions and millions and millions of votes to count, that will and should take time. Um, so just be patient. Um, and don’t don’t believe that that means there’s something nefarious happening. Absolutely not. Um, it does just take time.
Jen Rubin
I also want to address the big boogeyman that this administration keeps raising noncitizen voters. As if people who are not here legally, or people who don’t have the right to vote, would want to risk getting jailed or getting deported by violating voting rules. It doesn’t make sense. The L.A. times did a study in the entire time they’ve been in office. In the second term. They’ve arrested 180 people, prosecuted a couple dozen. How many millions, tens of millions of people have voted in the last couple of years in various elections?
Deirdre Schifeling
Yeah. I mean, noncitizen voting is so, so rare. And in fact, I’m remembering I’m trying to remember the exact numbers, but there was, uh, some, uh, claims made that in Nevada there were thousands of not.
Jen Rubin
16,000.
Deirdre Schifeling
16,000. Then they were like, oh, no, actually it wasn’t 16,000. It’s 183. 185. Oh, no. It’s zero.
Jen Rubin
Yeah, right. Zero. Zero.
Deirdre Schifeling
So, like, that’s, you know, a good case in point of these wild claims that are made by the administration about noncitizen voting. And then, you know, when you actually dig into it, um, and, you know, turns out to be zero. I’m sure it’s not zero in reality. Right? Mistakes happen. People get confused. Um, but there has not been a case that I’m aware of where noncitizen voting happened in any kind of major way, um, or was outcome determinative for an election.
Jen Rubin
And in fact, in that LA times article, Todd Blank says, well, it could be just people getting confused. Yeah, we don’t really see a plot. We don’t really see a pattern. Yes. Okay. That’s helpful to know. Yes.
Deirdre Schifeling
And in like a place like New Jersey, I was very encouraged that the governor’s reaction to discovering that some people had been mistakenly registered automatically who were not eligible and but the state did it. It wasn’t their doing. It was a mistake made by the state that she was very transparent about it and she, like, let sunlight through, shared everything. Um, shared the accounts and fixed it. So when we have, you know, a country of three, what are we, 330 million people, right? We have a big, complicated country. Of course, mistakes will happen sometimes that is not nefarious. Um, and we need to just be transparent about it and, um, let people know and people.
Jen Rubin
And to put this in perspective, folks, over 110 million, maybe 120 million people are going to have voted by the time we get finished. So if there are a handful of people who have gotten confused. Usually a green card holder or someone else. 120 million votes. We’re going to process that legally fairly quickly with tremendous accuracy. So the last question I have for you, Deirdre. How confident should people be that if they go to the polls, their vote will be recorded, it’ll be counted and it’ll be certified.
Deirdre Schifeling
Yes. I think
Deirdre Schifeling
Medium confident. I think very confident that if you go to the polls and you vote, your vote will be counted. Your, you know, your your count will be certified and democracy will be upheld. The reason I say medium is this year, it might take a little extra effort on all of our parts to make sure that’s true. It shouldn’t it shouldn’t take extra effort, but it might. And so one way that people can get involved in helping make sure that we have a safe and secure election. This cycle is by volunteering to be a volunteer election monitor, account monitor, and getting ready to pay close attention to that process after the election to make sure that the count and certification happen, and being ready to protest in in defense of democracy if that doesn’t happen. So I feel fairly confident it will happen, but we are definitely prepared. Um, if it doesn’t happen to make sure that we get out in the street.
Jen Rubin
And if you want to volunteer, what do you do?
Deirdre Schifeling
So if you want a volunteer, please go to aclu.org/peoplepower and sign up. You can sign up to be a democracy defender and we will train you. We will deploy you. We will put you to work. So please sign up. Please join us. And this year, It will take all of us to make sure that we have the election process that we deserve.
Jen Rubin
You don’t have to be a lawyer, folks. They’ll train you. They’ll tell you what I need to know.
Deirdre Schifeling
I am not a lawyer, so I’m a good example of that.
Jen Rubin
That’s fabulous. And again, if you see something amiss on Election Day, what’s the number you call?
Deirdre Schifeling
It’s 1-866-OUR-VOTE. So call 1-866-OUR-VOTE if you see anything amiss.
Jen Rubin
And remember, folks, most states still have early voting. I actually just checked the number is now past 40 million people voted early.
Deirdre Schifeling
Amazing.
Jen Rubin
Phenomenal outpouring in defense of democracy. Thank you, Deirdre, for everything you’re doing. Everything our dear friends at the ACLU are doing. You guys are really at the vanguard of democracy. We thank you and good luck. I know you’re going to have some busy days ahead.
Deirdre Schifeling
Thank you so much.
