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Another Voter Protection post: Ensuring our Voters are allowed to Vote and have their Ballots Count [1]
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Date: 2025-04-23
One of the key aspects of Hope Springs from Field PAC’s [dated website] voter contact efforts is our emphasis on Super-Compliance with the increasingly stringent rules that Republicans are enacting in Swing States to narrow the electorate. You might even call it suppressing the vote. While other entities are (rightly) challenging the legitimacy of these laws and regulations, our volunteers are out there knocking on doors in these states and explaining to voters that Republicans are working diligently to throw their ballots out so that their candidates can win.
We can see how these efforts to narrow the electorate can prevent Democrats from winning contests in fair elections because of how losing candidates contests those outcomes in the State Supreme Court race in North Carolina:
In North Carolina, the Republican candidate for a State Supreme Court seat has refused to concede to the Democratic incumbent, even though two recounts by a state elections board confirmed that he lost the November election by a few hundred votes. The Republican challenger, Judge Jefferson Griffin, who currently sits on the North Carolina Court of Appeals, has instead embarked on an extraordinary monthslong effort to toss out scores of ballots. The race is the last in the nation to be uncertified.
“The Democratic incumbent, Justice Allison Riggs, appealed a recent State Supreme Court decision that could lead to thousands of military and overseas ballots being tossed.”
Justice Riggs was declared the winner of the State Supreme Court race by 734 votes, an unusually small margin. Judge Griffin sought to verify that margin by requesting recounts. After the State Board of Elections reaffirmed Justice Riggs’s victory twice, Judge Griffin filed a protest with the board, which has a Democratic majority. In his protest, Judge Griffin sought to dismiss the ballots of roughly 65,000 people and argued that a majority of them were ineligible to vote because they did not supply certain required personal data — such as a driver’s license number — when they registered. But the omissions, he admitted, were because of administrative errors, not voter errors. Voting rights experts have described the issues raised by Judge Griffin as moot because even if the voters’ registration forms were missing driver’s license numbers, state law still requires them to show ID when they vote.
Hope Springs adheres to the Obama presidential campaign dictum that if you register a voter, you are responsible for mobilizing that voter on election day (week/month — there is no longer a single election day). But, in a sense, we’ve expanded upon that principle because of the persistent attempts by Republican legislatures to make it harder for infrequent voters to cast ballots that are counted. We’ve prioritized Voter Protection at the center of our voter contact efforts.
As far as I know, Hope Springs is the only entity focused on Swing States taking a wholistic approach to GOTV and making sure voters cast ballots that count. All the pieces of the puzzle have to be addressed, and we are doing that.
We pursue Super-Compliance to New (often racially-motivated) Election Laws through our normal practice of knocking on doors. When needed, we’ve focused our lit on the recent changes but our Issues Survey gives us lots of opportunities to help voters navigate those changes. Making sure voters are registered at their current address is the start. When voters move — and Democrats and progressives are far more likely to move between elections than Republicans — federal law (HAVA) requires them to re-register at their new address. Last year, Hope Springs volunteers have registered or re-registered 52,209 people at their doors in Swing States. And we have helped triple of that through our work with Black Churches by matching their congregation membership rolls with the voter file.
Hope Springs from Field has been knocking on doors, serving as a resource to Elections Committees in Black Churches and partnering with local civics and civil rights groups to raise awareness of the fact that Democrats care about our voters and are working to protect their rights. We are thinking about how to mitigate Voter Suppression efforts, get around them and make sure we have "super compliance," both informing and helping our voters meet the requirements and get out and vote.
Obviously, we rely on grassroots support, so if you support field/grassroots organizing and our efforts to protect our voters, we would certainly appreciate your support:
https://secure.actblue.com/donate/hopevoteprotect
Hope Springs from Field PAC was started by former Obama Field Organizers because field was the cornerstone of our success. Election Protection was central to the Obama primary effort in 2008 because we were running against a party favorite with strong roots in state and local party organizations and we needed to appeal to voters outside that framework. We are returning to the old school basics: looking for patterns, addressing issues that have come up in the past and making sure authorities know about issues that are likely to (or even just may) come up in each election.
Probably Hope Springs’ best known effort at Super Compliance is a core mission in states that require a photo ID to vote is helping voters in those states, who don’t already have one, obtain a free Voter Photo ID so they can vote.
Since our inception, Hope Springs has sponsored 327 (Free) Voter ID days in Georgia and North Carolina counties at their county Elections offices. Hope Springs from Field believes in not only in encouraging Super Compliance for voters, but in making these voters feel safe and free from embarrassment in doing so. In Georgia and North Carolina, we’ve been organizing Free Voter Photo ID Days at their local Registrar’s or Board of Elections offices. And we’ve been doing this from the beginning. On June 12th, 2021, Hope Springs volunteers began canvassing in the Black Belt of Georgia, repeating our steps in the Georgia Senate Runoff, with a special emphasis on helping voters without the newly required photo IDs to obtain them. In 2022, we had to expand this effort into North Carolina after the (state) Supreme Court reversed itself on North Carolina’s photo ID decision. Everywhere that Hope Springs volunteers canvassed, we’ve informed voters of new voter laws and requirements, making sure they were aware of the promise that these photo ID cards would be available without cost at their local Elections office. Some volunteers even asked voters to “show” their photo IDs to make sure they would allow voters to cast ballots that would be counted. This was a shared responsibility. People who don’t have a photo ID generally have reasons why they don’t have one. And often there is a cost involved that the voter can’t afford. In my years of helping people get IDs in order to vote, i can remember one voter in Texas whose cost for all the documentation she needed to get an ID was well over $300. Legislating a “Free Photo ID” rarely means it is free to the voter. But we have often found, in preparing a voter to obtain their “Free” Photo ID, that our Black Churches partners and even some Divine Nine chapters eager to help voters out in this regard. Like i said, shared responsibility. We go to great lengths to make sure that voters have what they need to cast their ballots and have their vote counted. Our (free) Voter Photo ID days have helped 66,295 voters get the required photo identification they needed to vote in their state. 129 of those Voter ID days have been in North Carolina, helping 31,543 voters obtain their free ID; 35,543 voters have gotten their free Photo ID in Georgia. 78.2% of these voters were African-American and 65.7% were older than 60 years old. 68.3% of them were female. More than a third of the voters who have participated in these Voter ID efforts were found at their door. Most were found by our partner Black Churches in their own community outreach. But one of the things that we have found is that many if not all these voters would not have known about this requirement without our efforts organizing around this issue. Our experience in voting, campaigns and elections makes a difference here. In 2024, 66.8% of those voters who received their free Photo ID through our efforts cast a vote had their ballot counted. Voter turnout nationally in 2024 was 63.9%, so these infrequent voters who wouldn’t have been able to vote in 2024 was slightly better than the national average. But this was no small feat. Another part of our Super Compliance effort is making voters, community leaders, pastors as well as influencers aware about Rightwing Voter Intimidation Tactics. But we don’t come to that conversation unarmed. From the beginning, Hope Springs has been collecting information and building a database about problems the voters we talk to (and congregations we are allied with) experienced in prior elections. We collect this data through Incident Reports, and we share that data with other voter protection groups as well as law enforcement. No one claims to be able to predict where there will be an attempt to disrupt the election, but we do know that there are polling places that historically have had issues and it is good to remind law enforcement agencies of that. (It has also got me on quite a few sh*t lists, and a couple of written and verbal threats (which disturb my wife.) Still, it’s not enough to get voters to cast a ballot, we need to make sure those ballots are counted. But that’s also why the final aspect of GOTV (in those states that allow this) is ballot-curing. While we have yet to be involved in an election where the election went down to making sure all our ballots cast are counted, it’s good practice, and we’ve even had volunteers with experience in chasing down ballots (for ballot curing purposes) go to other states to train volunteers there how to do this. Voter Protection is the final aspect of these special projects. Sure, it is a regular part of GOTV, but voters do appreciate that we plan and detail that aspect of our GOTV plan in advance. I get that. GOTV has morphed into Voter Protection as well as Election Protection as it focuses on Mobilizing Voters to cast ballots that are counted. We are on top of this; our voter contact plans start from this principle. As Republicans try to narrow the electorate by passing Photo ID laws, we use our canvassing and partnerships with minority communities to organize massive Free Voter Photo ID days at Elections offices. Republicans remove voters “from the rolls en masse” and we target those who’ve been removed to correct the error with the Elections offices or re-register them to vote. Sure, these are really terrible things to be doing to fellow Americans but we don’t have to just take it. The courts aren’t our only recourse, and they are definitely not an immediate recourse. Getting our voters out to vote and cast a ballot that counts is a year-round and requires constant vigilance. Early Organizing allows us to address this. So the final aspect of our GOTV efforts is Super-Oversight and Poll Protection. I note in almost every post that Hope Springs volunteers walk with Incident Reports (above), something we’ve also distributed to Black Churches and Civic and Civil Rights organizations. We’ve collected 3,132 Incident Reports at voter’s doors but we’ve collected and additional 36,127 Reports in these other ways, mostly from Black Churches in Florida, Georgia, North Carolina, Michigan and Wisconsin. Voter Protection Tabling Incident Reports inform our GOTV and Election Protection Plans. While our 2026 GOTV and Election Protection Plans are far from being finalized, we expect them to follow what we did in 2024. We combine Incident Reports with those collected by other groups (like NALEO) to search for patterns of abuse. Voter Suppression or Intimidation can be isolated events, but they are more commonly historical patterns. Repeated incidents, similar events aimed specifically at minority voters, not just in Majority Minority precincts. And one way you deal with Voter Suppression is through Super-Oversight and Poll Protection. The main reason why Hope Springs from Field is organized as a federal political action committee is because that gives us the ability to request poll watcher credentials in most states. And the Harris, senatorial or Coordinated Campaigns are making sure polls have poll watchers in place, Voter Protection Tabling — including in areas where we make sure there’s a poll watcher inside — is also key. Years of experience has taught us that voters don’t always understand what has happened to them inside the polling place. They may walk away stunned or confused about how they’ve been treated. Voter Protection Tabling allows voters to talk through their experience and discuss with others how it may be remedied. Here’s the thing: nothing has upset the MAGA-verse in Arizona, Florida, Georgia, North Carolina and Wisconsin than Hope Springs volunteers (and others) pulling out these Incident Reports and recording what has happened. I’d bet most of the threats made against my person have been as a result of this data collection. In our experience, MAGA Intimidators don’t want to provide their name — and they don’t want their attempts at disrupting an election recorded. Arming people with Incident Reports seems to have deterred promised acts of disruption from occurring. And at least one poll worker (that i know of) has thanked us because disruptive behavior stopped inside their poll when someone pulled out an Incident Report. My favorite example of this has to be when several MAGA voters started filming after an Incident Report was brought out (pretty sure they weren’t supposed to film inside the polling place) and when our Poll Watcher asked for their names they quickly decided they were done. We have power — and we need to use it.
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