The goal of safeguarding democracy may have been lofty, but the work was hardly glamorous. It involved waking before dawn to scout out problems and threats at poll sites, taking hotline calls from panicked voters, running to the courthouse to file emergency litigation, and staying up late to ensure every legitimate ballot was counted. In an age of rampant misinformation and rancorous politics, this nonpartisan work has grown harrowing.
Election Day has turned to election season in recent years, thanks to early voting and an increasingly contentious certification process. But Nov. 5 marked the last opportunity for citizens to participate in the democratic process, and what transpired Tuesday will likely tee up litigation in the coming days and weeks.
And so Law360 documented attorneys' election protection work, from the early morning hours before the polls opened in the East, until the vote count began in the West. Here are the stories of the lawyers on the ground, who safeguarded the election.
6 a.m. Newark, New Jersey | Lack Of Signs Confuse Voters
By Corey Rothauser
Stanley Holdorf started his Election Day before the sun came up at 5 a.m. in Newark, New Jersey.
Holdorf, an attorney with the Lawyers for Equal Access to Advocacy & Dignity Foundation, arrived at the Boylan Street Recreation Center before it was set to open at 6 a.m. He spoke with a small group of voters who'd already gathered there, eager to vote before their early work shift.
But while he was there, he got a phone call from Amelia Armstrong, executive director of the LEAAD Foundation. Reports of late openings and lack of directional signage had come in from voter tips and social media posts. Holdorf hopped in his car, which bore a white decal that identified him as an election monitor.
The LEAAD Foundation coordinated the Election Protection Coalition's New Jersey field program, which sent nonpartisan poll monitors to voting locations across the state.
This year, approximately 70 poll monitors, 75% of whom were attorneys, committed more than 500 pro bono hours to monitor polling stations across New Jersey. The program's participants included corporate pro bono initiatives, law schools and bar associations.
"Our mission is twofold," Armstrong told Law360. "We aim to answer voter questions at polling places and identify any irregularities, so that our coalition partners can work to resolve them swiftly."
At Weequahic High School, a few voters gathered in confusion about where they were supposed to go. The door was closed. There was no signage. It turned out the official address of the polling place did not reflect that the entrance was on the other side of a large building on the school's campus, about half a mile away.
Holdorf drove two voters to the other side of the building. One woman said she had to go, and left without casting a ballot.
"It is a great concern to me that some of these voters may have been trying to vote for the first time and had this very negative experience," he told Law360. "Others, I think, frankly, would have felt like they were ignored by the very government, the very county government, that they were counting on to be able to vote."
Holdorf reported the problem back to election protection headquarters, where attorneys called local officials. After about 90 minutes, signs had been put in the front of the building indicating the entrance was on the other side.
Holdorf was glad the issue was fixed, but expressed frustration that it had occurred at all.
"It's a disappointment that any voter has been turned away or turned off when the one thing they can do in a good, functioning democracy is cast the ballot and make a difference," he said. "Those who tried and couldn't have been hurt in ways, and so has our democracy."
7:30 a.m. Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania | Broken Ballot Scanners
By Matthew Santoni
At about 7:30 a.m., the calls started coming into the election protection "command center" at Reed Smith's Pittsburgh office: Multiple ballot scanners, which read marked paper ballots for later tabulation, were not reading ballots in Cambria County.
In dozens of calls to a hotline staffed by lawyers from firms including Blank Rome, Troutman Pepper and Kirkland & Ellis, voters reported they were instructed to insert their completed ballots into secure boxes to be scanned later, but some said they were turned away or given provisional ballots that wouldn't be counted until after Election Day.
Run by the American Civil Liberties Union of Pennsylvania and staffed by attorney volunteers, the Pennsylvania Election Protection Coalition command center handling election-protection complaints for all of Western Pennsylvania started taking information and its leaders began weighing their options.
There were attempts to contact the local election office and the Pennsylvania Department of State, and discussion of sending field volunteers — connected with the election-protection operation through Common Cause Pennsylvania — to verify the problems and talk to election officials about what was being done to fix the scanners and keep people voting.
But the Cambria County solicitor, Ronald Repak of Dillon McCandless King Coulter & Graham, beat the voter-protection lawyers to the punch and filed a request with the county court to keep the polls open later. The court issued the order shortly after 11:30 a.m., keeping the polls open until 10 p.m. and directing anyone who votes after 8 p.m. to use a provisional ballot, so the command center attorneys put out a notice to the hotline volunteers to remind callers of the new deadlines and rules.
Sara Rose, deputy legal director of the ACLU of Pennsylvania and the leader of the Pittsburgh command center, said the Cambria County scanner issue was the biggest issue of Election Day as of mid-morning, though a few other reports had cropped up elsewhere in the 30-plus counties the Western Pennsylvania center was covering.
Voters with concerns can call the hotline, staffed by law firm volunteers who make the first attempt at resolutions by asking questions and giving out information, Rose said. Problems that weren't solved at that stage got a "ticket" in the command center's computer system, and could be assigned via the messaging app Slack to lawyers at the command center or in the field for additional consultation or follow-ups at the polling places.
If an issue needed it, the organization had attorneys available to go to the county-level election courts, where judges were on stand by all day to hear motions generated from templates or in improvised oral arguments, Rose said.
Other law firms and businesses contributed attorney personnel to the effort, including Dechert, Arnold & Porter, Ballard Spahr — which was hosting a similar command center in its Philadelphia offices — BNY Mellon and Highmark, she said.
One polling place in Blair County was asking every voter for identification, even though state law required only first-time voters do so, Rose said, so an attorney from the Pittsburgh team made a call to the county solicitor to pass along a reminder of the rules. Students at the University of Pittsburgh were being told they were at the wrong polling place, so volunteers at the command center were trying to run down if there were other polls on campus and figure out if the students, county or poll workers were mistaken about who should go where.
Other issues included polling places that didn't open promptly at 7 a.m., and complaints about signs and electioneering encroaching on the 10-foot limit around polling places where they were prohibited.
9:30 a.m. Chapel Hill, North Carolina | Poll Workers Grapple With New Voter ID Law
By Steven Trader
A new voter identification law in North Carolina, a pivotal swing state in the 2024 presidential election, had already resulted in some confusion among poll workers on Election Day who were grappling with how to implement it.
Ann Webb, the policy director at Common Cause North Carolina, said the new voter ID law was tricky to implement because of certain "sticky" situations, such as an elderly voter who was still allowed to use an expired ID card as long as it was valid on their 65th birthday. As part of the new law, voters could also opt to cast a provisional ballot and provide their identification later, or fill out a voter identification exception form.
"For the vast majority of the calls that we get, our assumption is that poll workers are simply grappling with a lot of new rules they need to understand," Webb told Law360. "We're able to connect directly with the county boards of elections, sometimes directly with the poll worker in that site, and make sure that a legal expert can help clarify. So we are optimistic that poll workers are trying their very hardest to do the right thing here."
Webb was one of dozens of legal volunteers who took calls directly from voters in a hotline command center at the headquarters of the Southern Coalition for Social Justice in Chapel Hill, North Carolina on Election Day.
Any issues beyond basic advice to voters, such as how to find their polling location, got passed to an "escalation team" that included a group of attorneys like Webb and others. They followed up with voters directly and, if necessary, were on call to file emergency litigation. The coalition of attorneys was also in contact with the state board of elections about any confusion regarding the new voter ID law.
While polling places all appeared to be open on time in North Carolina, one issue that volunteers were paying close attention to was voter intimidation and electioneering, as instances of aggressive and intimidating signage targeting Spanish-speaking voters had already plagued early voting locations.
Webb told Law360 that the U.S. Department of Justice would be on location in three North Carolina counties — Mecklenburg, Alamance and Wake — monitoring polling sites to ensure voters didn't face any intimidating tactics.
Attorneys with the Black Legal Network, a program of the North Carolina Black Alliance, had likewise been fanning out across the state to monitor polls for access issues and voter intimidation.
They'd already encountered complaints of intimidation and partisan poll workers during the early voting season, but Yolanda Taylor, the group's program attorney, said Election Day was an important final push. In big counties, like Mecklenburg, Wake and Durham, a large percentage of Black voters and voters of color had not yet voted as of Monday evening, she said.
"Hopefully they will get out to the polls today," Taylor said. "I know some people just have this tradition of voting on Election Day, or feeling like their vote only counts on Election Day for whatever reason."
Webb added that more than 4.5 million people had already participated in early voting, surpassing the amount in the 2020 election.
"We know that the population of North Carolina has grown, but we are seeing rates of turnout incredibly high, which just emphasizes that voters are voting in spite of new barriers to voting, and we are turning out in force, not to be deterred," she said.
10:30 a.m. Albuquerque, New Mexico | Quiet Out West
By Cara Bayles
Former public defender Kari Converse checked in on this poll site in southeast Albuquerque on Tuesday morning. (Courtesy of Kari Converse)
Kari Converse began poll monitoring in southeast Albuquerque, New Mexico, at 7:30 a.m. local time, and about 90 minutes into her shift, she'd already visited five of the eight polling stations she'd been assigned.
She was looking for all the irregularities poll monitors watch for around the country — parking and disability access issues, a lack of clear signage, electioneering within 100 feet of a poll and voter intimidation. But so far, she'd said, everything was quiet and as it should be in her "corner of the world."
Converse had answered a few voter questions, and said she saw a police officer entering a poll who told her he was there to give his number to the election judge in case a problem came up.
"Not the intimidation one would fear," she said.
A retired public defender, Converse said her career as an attorney informed her election protection work for Common Cause.
"I think I've got fairness and justice hardwired into my system, and I want to make sure that everyone who wants to vote has the opportunity to vote," she said. "How I voted doesn't matter to this work. I know there are people here voting not the way I would vote, but when I was a criminal defense attorney, just because I'd defend them as best I could didn't mean I agreed with their actions, just like here, I will defend people's right to vote, regardless of which way they want to vote."
11 a.m. Bladen County, North Carolina | 'Grooving And Dancing'
By Phillip Bantz
Maroon 5's "Moves Like Jagger" was pumping from a DJ's turntable to a mostly empty parking lot outside the North Carolina Cooperative Extension-Bladen County Center, one of several polling places in rural Elizabethtown that weren't seeing much voter action late Tuesday morning.
"We had some of the people that are working the polls over here dancing," said Melvin Marshall, also known as DJ Smylz, a volunteer with DJs at the Polls, a national, non-partisan group that encourages people to vote. "We're bringing the good vibes. Grooving and dancing."
Inside the Bladen County Center, which was largely empty around 11 a.m., election official Pia Jessup told Law360 that things had been "pretty uneventful" so far. She attributed the low turnout Tuesday morning to "jam-packed" early voting.
It was a similar story just down the road at the National Guard Armory, another polling place in Elizabethtown, which has a population of about 3,300.
Michael Boykin, Raleigh-based lawyer volunteering as a poll watcher with the North Carolina Black Alliance, was surprised by the relative quiet.
"I would've expected to see more traffic, more voters during the daytime," he said.
Boykin started his day at 8 a.m. and planned to drive to different polling locations until they closed at 7:30 p.m. His organization had been sending attorneys to counties around the state since early voting began, focusing on rural counties and places that could be targets of voter intimidation.
Boykin said the lack of long lines on Election Day was probably a good sign.
"As we are hearing from the different locations, there was a lot of activity during early voting, as well as the mail-in ballots," he said. "This is a little surprising, but that just means things have been going well."
Noon Nationwide | Attorneys Ready To Rep Election Workers
By Cara Bayles
An army of attorneys was at the ready to represent election workers who face threats and intimidation or seek to blow the whistle on misconduct by officials.
But as of midday Tuesday, they remained on standby.
The Election Official Legal Defense Network, which was founded three years ago to offer free legal advice and representation to election officials who experience harassment and threats, has garnered more attorney volunteers around the country than ever before.
But as of noon on Election Day, David Becker, executive director of the Center for Election Innovation & Research, which manages EOLDN, said he wasn't aware of any election officials calling in to seek legal representation from the group.
"We would prefer not to receive any requests, and we would prefer that election officials are not being abused and threatened and harassed," he said. "I suspect that a big issue right now is ... election officials, they are very busy right now. And they, as they always do, they're keeping their heads down and getting their work done and facilitating voting. I'm cautiously optimistic that the threat environment will not affect them too much. But I will also say I wouldn't be surprised if we see the threat environment become difficult in the aftermath of the election."
The same was true of the Government Accountability Project, which has pro bono attorneys in almost every jurisdiction in battleground states ready to represent any election workers who want to blow the whistle on misconduct at the polls.
Dana Gold, director of the group's Democracy Protection Initiative, said they hadn't yet received any rapid response calls from election workers on Tuesday, but expected the real issues will come up not on Election Day, but during the certification process.
"We are ready, although I hope we have built a fire extinguisher that we do not need to use," she said. "This could be a long game, or, depending on the results, it could be over."
Representing a government whistleblower requires rigorous verification by attorneys who then guide clients through a difficult litigation process that involves fear of both futility and retaliation, Gold said. And for election workers, the stakes are even higher.
"It's a hard thing to blow the whistle, it's a hard thing to report in this environment. So it's not necessarily that we would expect a deluge of 100 calls," she said. "The other way to think about it also is, we know that, basically, elections run well. There are a lot of checks and balances. These are public servants dedicated to ensuring that the votes are counted fairly. We're just standing guard in case that that isn't what the priority is for some bad actors."
Gold said, ideally, she will get no calls.
"I want to have no reason to have this democracy protection initiative activated," she said.
2 p.m. Atlanta, Georgia | Bomb Threats Complicate Voting
By Cara Bayles
Several bomb threats called into Georgia poll locations were noncredible and of Russian origin, according to Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger, and only caused the temporary closure of polls in Union City, outside of Atlanta.
But while the threats were deemed unserious, their repercussions continued throughout the day. When the polls closed down, some voters lost a window of time during which they could vote. While they soon opened again, some voters couldn't leave work to cast a ballot, and some remained afraid to return to their polling place.
Those problems were further exacerbated by Georgia's new voting laws, and that caused concern for election protection attorneys like Harold Franklin, a partner at King & Spalding.
It used to be the case that voters who showed up to the wrong precinct could still vote by provisional ballot, and their vote would be counted in the races that spanned both voting locations — for example, in contests involving statewide or presidential candidates.
But that changed with the passage of S.B. 202, sprawling election legislation signed into law three years ago. Now, those ballots must be thrown out, unless those voters go to the wrong precinct after 5 p.m. and swear and affirm that they're unable to get to the correct polling place before it closes.
"Any issues causing voters to vote out of precinct are certainly very concerning for us, and it's a matter of educating voters so they understand those repercussions," Franklin said. "We certainly are more concerned when we see deliberate efforts to prevent voters from being able to vote, or disrupt the process."
There were also problems that Franklin has seen come up again and again during more than two decades of volunteering in elections: polls opening late, machines malfunctioning and problems with absentee ballots. Many of those required calls to election officials.
"We have these relationships with election officials at the county level and also at the secretary of state's level," Franklin said. "We have been engaged in those calls throughout the day and will be doing it for quite some time to come."
2:15 p.m. Wyoming, Michigan | A Missing Ballot
By Aebra Coe
Erik Daly arrived for his first shift of the day Tuesday as a nonpartisan election challenger at 11:15 a.m. The polling location was a rustic log building in Pinery Park, in the city of Wyoming, Michigan, just outside Grand Rapids, the state's second-largest city.
A member of Miller Johnson's corporate mergers and acquisitions practice, Daly was volunteering with nonprofit organization Promote the Vote. He immediately got to work upon arrival, checking in with the precinct chair and settling in working through a checklist to ensure the location was in compliance for a wide range of issues. He ensured that the poll was accessible for people with disabilities, that it had sufficient supplies, that its tabulators were in working order, and that appropriate signage was present.
During his nearly two-hour shift at the location, Daly didn't encounter any issues, and a line never formed.
This was his first year working as an election challenger, he said. He became involved after an associate at his firm suggested they work with Promote the Vote. The firm formed an election integrity working group over the summer, and Daly and several other lawyers and paralegals completed training through the non-profit organization.
Daly hoped that the organization's work would help ease concerns about the election process, and the wider legal system.
"It's about fostering trust ... and ensuring the public understands that the system has safeguards in place," he said.
Daly's next stop after Pinery Park was another location in Wyoming, at Bethany United Reformed Church. He arrived just before 1 p.m. and all was quiet until 2:15, when poll workers began pulling ballot stubs out of the trash can near the tabulation machine.
Three workers knelt on the floor, looking through dozens of stubs.
The workers told Daly that a ballot had been issued, but it was never returned. They were trying to determine whether the ballot had been taken out of the building. Daly spoke with the workers, made note of the time and took notes about what had occurred. As the workers crowded together to discuss what to do next, he leaned in to listen.
The precinct chair and other poll workers called the clerk's office to inform them of the missing ballot and searched further within and outside the building. Daly reported the incident to his Promote the Vote shift leader and to the organization's election hotline. The clerk's office planned to call the voter to see if they could cure the ballot.
Just after 3 p.m., the polling location ran out of voting applications, which every voter must fill out before voting. Soon before that the workers noticed they were running low and had called the clerk's office for more. Voters began to line up, waiting for the applications to arrive. A few left.
Daly spoke to the precinct chair, letting him know that voters unable to wait could opt to use an absentee ballot at the clerk's office. Approximately 10 minutes after the applications ran out, a representative from the clerk's office arrived with more.
"Overall, it's been a great experience collaborating with the election inspectors here and to demonstrate to the voters that people involved with the election are acting with transparency and integrity," Daly said. "And that they can be confident their votes are being cast and counted."
2:30 p.m. Detroit, Michigan | Minor Hiccups, Festive Atmosphere
By Steven Trader
Nick Martire (front right) and Amanda Daily (back left) along with fellow UM Law students used their day off of school to serve as election challengers at multiple polling and vote count facilities in the Detroit area Tuesday. (Courtesy of Nick Martire)
A group of University of Michigan Law School students took advantage of a day off of class for Election Day, driving to the Detroit area Tuesday morning to serve as nonpartisan election challengers, monitoring the location for fraudulent behavior.
Amanda Daily, co-president of the Michigan Voting project, was stationed that morning at an elementary school serving as a polling location, while fellow co-president and classmate Nick Martire was similarly embedded at a church.
One of the biggest issues at Martire's location was an accessibility ramp door being locked, temporarily holding up the voting line, while Daily dealt with some electioneering outside the location and a vote count machine temporarily shorting out, resulting in a few ballots that had to be spoiled and recounted. Otherwise, the atmosphere was festive, the two told Law360.
"People did this really fun thing where, whenever a first-time voter voted, the election inspector who gave them their ballot would go 'first time voter' and the whole room would cheer," Martire told Law360. "That was fun, and great just to get a closeup like that of democracy in action."
Daily and Martire, both 2L students at UM Law, partnered with Promote the Vote and United Michigan to set up volunteer opportunities for law students on Election Day. Both received multiple hours of training to serve as nonpartisan challengers, which put them in an observational position to ensure any issues with voter registration, or with the casting of ballots, was resolved on site or else elevated to the proper election authorities.
"We're there to make sure every voter is able to get their vote counted," Daily told Law360. "There's a lot of little intricacies, like, for example, you actually don't have to have your ID to vote in Michigan, as long as you sign an affidavit that is still a legitimate vote and should be counted as such. We're there making sure little things like that are being followed."
Following a morning session at voter locations, Daily and Martire headed to a Detroit absentee ballot counting center Tuesday afternoon to serve as monitors there, making sure that any challenges to cast ballots were legitimate.
3 p.m. Columbus, Ohio | Monitoring Democracy, One Race At A Time
By Steven Trader
Professor Steven Huefner and a group of students at the Ohio State University's Moritz School of Law had a unique role to play on Election Day. They were interested in the results, sure, but were more significantly tuned into the "margin of litigation" in dozens of races across the country Tuesday.
For weeks, Huefner, the deputy director of the election law program at OSU, and three dozen students had been looking into the tightest contests of the election cycle, from district congressional races to the presidential showdown, before huddling together on campus to document all litigation that stemmed from those battles on Tuesday and beyond.
The Moritz College of Law itself did not get involved in any of the litigation or offer legal advice, but will use those instances as a means to learn from and improve the democratic process as a whole, Huefner told Law360.
"The purpose of the election law program has been to develop a deep understanding of the way in which American elections are conducted and to be able to analyze and promote improvements in those processes," he said. "And so every four years we have an especially important opportunity to try to help keep track of how well the election processes are being implemented, and also to help the public understand what is and isn't working and what is really going on with respect to all the details of these processes."
The OSU volunteers, mostly law students and faculty, met at noon at the campus radio station and spent the day tracking close races through various news and social media platforms. The students were divided into jurisdictions where they tracked what they'd identified as races that could fall within the margin of litigation.
Some, like a Pennsylvania county congressional race, had already seen a court order extending voting hours because of an equipment malfunction earlier in the day. Others might result in no court fight at all, Huefner said.
The atmosphere, he told Law360, was relaxed, with everyone enjoying each other's company while they generally monitored the election process Tuesday. Once the polls closed, they planned to home in on those results where courts could play a role.
"We're interested both as citizens just in the outcome of the elections, but as election law researchers, we're really looking for whether there are close races where some legal challenge might still defer our ability to know the winner for some additional period of time," Huefner said.
3:30 p.m. Atlanta, Georgia | Calling Up Voters
By Kelcey Caulder
Rather than taking calls from confused voters, lawyers and law students at the NAACP's Atlanta office actively called voters on Election Day, seeking to provide them with information about casting their ballots and to clear up misinformation.
Quiana-Joy Ochiagha, of the NAACP's Office of General Counsel, started her day at 6 a.m., preparing the office to host a team of Howard University School of Law students tasked with calling Georgians who had not yet cast ballots.
Some of those calls involved providing would-be voters with information about where to vote or helping people arrange discounted transportation through the NAACP's partnership with Lyft, which provides $20 off of two rides — one to the polls, and one back.
Other calls, Ochiagha said, were targeted at correcting misinformation originating from the brief cancelation of the city of Camilla's special election to fill two local city council seats.
The special election was canceled on the evening of Nov. 4 after the city's election superintendent and assistant election superintendent announced their resignations in a letter posted on the city's Facebook page. However, the special election later did go forward after a judge's order to do so.
Before that order was issued, a post was made stating that the ongoing special election was canceled and signs were posted outside city hall announcing that the special election would not go forward as planned.
"Some voters were under the assumption that because the special election was canceled, the general election was canceled," Ochiagha said. "That is not the case, so our law students are getting out the word that the general election is ongoing."
As the day wore on, Ochiagha said she and her team also got involved with efforts to secure extended polling hours at the Etris-Darnell Community Center and C.H. Gullatt Elementary polling locations in Union City, Georgia, after five noncredible bomb threats led to temporary evacuations.
Election officials in Fulton County had requested a court order to extend polling place hours at the two locations, Ochiagha said, and the NAACP was doing its part to help ensure anyone who may have been impacted by the closures got a chance to vote.
As part of those efforts, she said her team was helping obtain a court order extending the hours and sending letters to Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger requesting that the extension be granted.
"For about 30 to 45 minutes people were evacuated from polling places, and under statute people are ensured they will have a full 12 hours to exercise their right to vote," Ochiagha said. "So, because of that interruption, we are trying to get the hours extended for the affected polling places in Fulton County to stay open an additional hour."
3:40 p.m. Bladen County, North Carolina | Tabulator Snafu
By Phillip Bantz
An integral piece of voting equipment at a polling place in Bladen County, North Carolina, experienced a tech issue Tuesday afternoon, according to an attorney serving as a poll watcher.
Volunteer poll watcher with the North Carolina Black Alliance and Raleigh-based lawyer Michael Boykin told Law360 that the time stamp on a ballot tabulator at Jones Lake State Park was 20 minutes faster than the actual time.
He advised the election official in charge of the precinct to contact the Election Protection Hotline at 888-OUR-VOTE to report the issue and seek a possible fix.
The machines would not automatically shut down when the state's polls closed at 7:30 p.m., and voters who were in line at that time would still be able to cast their ballots.
But if the tabulator's time stamp was inaccurate, it could create discrepancies between the machine's recordings and the election officials' records.
It was not immediately clear how the issue would be handled.
4 p.m. Florida | Voting Location Website Down
By Cara Bayles
A team of attorneys at Baker & McKenzie LLP's Chicago office answered Florida voters' hotline calls on Tuesday. (Courtesy of Baker & McKenzie)
About 80 Baker & McKenzie LLP attorneys, most of them in the firm's Chicago office, took hotline calls from across Florida Tuesday.
The biggest problem of the day was a malfunction with the state election division's poll location look-up website, which was down for approximately three hours.
Floridians unsure of where to cast their ballots called 866-OUR-VOTE, the national election protection hotline orchestrated by Lawyers' Committee for Civil Rights Under Law. The Baker & McKenzie attorneys recommended voters call their county supervisor of elections, who could look up their polls the old-fashioned way.
"Most people have come to rely on the where-do-I-vote website," according to Baker & McKenzie LLP partner Duffy Lorenz.
The hotline attorneys informed a team of attorneys in Florida, who in turn got in touch with local officials.
"Within 30 minutes or so, we had a person from the on-the-ground team in touch with a supervisor of elections in Florida," Lorenz said.
Overall, though, the day was quiet. Early voting ensured there wasn't a deluge and that the team of lawyers were prepared, and enough time had passed since Hurricanes Helene and Milton that affected voters knew where to vote.
"There was nothing too scary," Lorenz said.
4 p.m. Boulder, Colorado | Tribal IDs, Addresses Are Reported Barriers
By Clara Geoghegan
Against the foothills of the Colorado Rockies sits the Boulder office of the Native American Rights Fund, where a small team of staff attorneys fielded election questions Tuesday from polling sites on or near reservations and pueblos in six states: Montana, Nevada, New Mexico, North Dakota, South Dakota and Wisconsin.
NARF volunteers reported police stationed near polling sites, which could intimidate voters, as well as locations running out of ballots, voting equipment malfunctions and polling sites being at different locations than listed, according to senior staff attorney Jacqueline De León.
"We've just been troubleshooting those throughout the day," she said.
NARF, a nonprofit founded in the 1970s to offer legal assistance to Native American tribes and individuals, organized 170 volunteers, attorneys and law students to act as poll watchers as part of its nonpartisan Native Vote Election Protection Project to reduce voting barriers that Native Americans faced.
NARF Deputy Director Matthew Campbell said that this was the second time NARF had organized these robust election protection efforts. Compared to 2022, when there were 40 poll watchers, he said things had been busy.
NARF staff attorney Allison Neswood experienced this first-hand when she looked at her phone at 6 a.m. Mountain Time to begin fielding questions from on-the-ground poll watchers. Slack messages and group texts flooded in from volunteers, and tickets started coming in from the election protection hotline, which partnered with NARF.
Throughout the day and across multiple states, volunteers reported election workers not accepting tribal IDs. Many homes on tribal lands don't have residential addresses, Neswood said, creating potential ID and voter registration problems.
"A polling location in New Mexico was rejecting IDs from the Zuni tribe. In Wisconsin, we're seeing a lot of rejection of IDs from the Oneida Nation," said Neswood. "In North Dakota, the ID issue overlaps with the residential addressing challenges. If the address on the ID doesn't look familiar or doesn't look the way the polling worker thinks it should look ... then those IDs are getting rejected and people are getting turned away."
Neswood said that NARF's volunteers received training to help them "issue spot" specific barriers that Native voters might encounter, like ID and address troubles. The volunteers let voters know that they had the right to use their tribal ID to vote and educated poll workers if they turned someone away for using tribal ID.
If there was still pushback from poll workers, NARF staff attorneys would get in contact with county and local clerks, Neswood said.
"We're finding it really valuable to have our volunteers on the ground to help voters troubleshoot how to navigate these issues, and just to make people feel like they have someone on their side," she said. "I think so often in our democracy, Native people feel like it wasn't built for them or for our communities. Even when things aren't able to be worked out, I think it's really valuable for our people to have advocates there to support them if they need."
5:45 p.m. Maricopa County, Arizona | Long Lines, A Visit From Kari Lake
By Steven Trader
The Paradise Valley Community College voting location north of Phoenix, Arizona, where U.S. Senate candidate Kari Lake stopped by earlier Tuesday (Courtesy of Daniel Green)
Republican U.S. Senate candidate Kari Lake showed up at a polling location north of Phoenix on Tuesday afternoon, while long lines plagued other locations in Maricopa County in what was an eventful Election Day for UCLA Law student and volunteer poll monitor Daniel Green.
Green, a 2L student and co-president of the American Constitution Society at the UCLA School of Law, was among three dozen student volunteers who spent Tuesday monitoring the voting process in Maricopa County, one of the largest counties in the nation with a population of nearly 5 million. Green served as a roving monitor, visiting locations in the Scottsdale and Phoenix area throughout the day.
At the Paradise Valley Community College voting location north of Phoenix Tuesday afternoon, Lake arrived, took some photos and spoke for a few minutes with what appeared to be Republican electioneers near the site, according to Green.
In Arizona, electioneering is allowed outside 75 feet of a polling location. Green said that when Lake arrived, almost all voters waiting in line were less than that distance from the building, leaving few the candidate could speak with.
A substantial presence from one campaign or another at different polling locations was not an uncommon sight on Tuesday, he told Law360.
Additionally, long lines formed outside some locations throughout the day Tuesday. At the Arizona State University West Valley campus location, where Green spoke to Law360 Tuesday at 3:45 p.m. local time, the wait was slightly less than an hour and a half.
"The Arizona ballot this year is very long, it's taking voters sometimes upwards of 15 or 20 minutes just to fill out the ballot," he told Law360. "That can really put a strain on the system if they don't have enough places for people to fill out the ballot."
Green also discussed an isolated "incident" at one of the locations he visited, though he could not discuss any details as he was bound by a confidentiality agreement with the coalition Election Protection Arizona. He said only that it was in the "voter intimidation category," and that it was handled quickly by poll workers and did not disrupt the voting process at all.
7 p.m. Nationwide | Attorneys Combat Misinformation Online
By Cara Bayles
Disinformation swirled through the internet Tuesday, with allegations of poll closures across several Pennsylvania counties and of machines in voting centers in Arizona running out of toner. There were efforts to dox poll workers, and even misinformation from well-meaning celebrities.
Attorneys from around the country monitored social media platforms like Facebook, NextDoor, Reddit and X, the site formerly known as Twitter, for mis- and disinformation and intimidation on Tuesday. They compared notes on Slack and asked questions in real time over Zoom.
This "digital democracy" program, run by the nonpartisan group Common Cause, ran from 9 a.m. until 8 p.m. on Election Day in an effort to counter election disinformation. All volunteers underwent a training session in which they learned where to look for disinformation, how to spot it, and when to report it. Then staff at Common Cause reviewed their findings as they came in, deciding whether to raise concerns with social media platforms, or combat the disinformation with facts.
Common Cause began recruiting lawyers for this work on the attorney volunteer site We The Action back in September. Raelyn Roberson, Common Cause's media and democracy campaigner, said lawyers are particularly well suited to combat misinformation.
I'm in a deep red part of swing state Pennsylvania, and all the voting machines are broken across this county and the neighboring ones.
— Amy (@amytheartist) November 5, 2024
People are stranded in line, and a constable told them they don't get the machines working by 10PM, they will turn people away.
I'm not sure…
One law student found a Facebook post that claimed to catalog 28 instances of voter fraud from less-than-credible sources. Another found a post on Reddit warning "the deep state left is running a fraudulent election" that would lead to a civil war.
Some social media posts even fooled members of the digital democracy team, who at first thought this X thread was from a local misinformed voter in Pennsylvania, until words like "constable" tipped them off. They labeled the poster a "bad actor" trying to suppress voter turnout and confidence in the process.
This is why we all need to vote! Polls are open today until 8pm. https://t.co/WBIck3t92Z
— Stephen Curry (@StephenCurry30) November 5, 2024
Roberson said this year the misinformation was "a lot calmer than previous cycles," but added that the work has also become more difficult, because platforms are less inclined to take down disinformation, especially since some, like X, have laid off content monitoring staffers.
"If we get a tip where it's something like, 'Oh, this is blatant disinformation, it's confusing and harming voters, and it's spreading like wildfire,' we take that to the platforms, and we ask them to either issue a fact check or remove it," Roberson said. "This is the first time since 2016 that we've run this program where social media platforms are just ignoring — not listening, not responding, not engaging."
7:30 p.m. Pennsylvania | Judges Deny Bids To Extend Poll Hours Near Colleges
By Cara Bayles
Efforts to extend hours at polls near Villanova University and Lehigh University were both denied by local judges in Pennsylvania Tuesday evening.
The American Civil Liberties Union tried to keep Delaware County polls open an additional two hours, filing an emergency motion on behalf of a sophomore at Villanova University who said she was unable to vote. She claimed she first tried to vote at 11:15 a.m., but left because the line was too long and she had an exam at 2 p.m. She returned in the evening, but said in a statement she had a 7 p.m. class.
"I will have to leave and not vote if the wait is two hours," she wrote.
Other voters signed similar statements saying they'd been waiting in line for two hours and still hadn't voted.
The ACLU blamed limited resources, saying "only three machines were provided to cover two precincts," resulting in "extreme delays."
The motion to extend hours at the Northampton County poll near Lehigh University was filed by the Democratic National Committee, which argued the county's board of elections had "failed to provide sufficient voting machines and personnel to accommodate the citizens and electors."
The DNC alleged voters had waited four hours to cast their ballots. The DNC, with the ACLU joining on behalf of voters, sought to keep the polling place open until 10 p.m., saying that without redress, voters would be "deprived of a lawful, full, and fair election."
The Northampton County Republican Party and Pennsylvania Republican Party opposed that petition, and Judge Craig Dally denied it, but ordered that voters who were in line by 8 p.m. could still vote.
8 p.m. Milwaukee, Wisconsin | Recount Out Of Caution
By Steven Trader
ACLU Wisconsin attorneys and legal volunteers hunker down in a voter hotline command center in Milwaukee as the polls close Tuesday evening. (Courtesy of Liam Byrnes)
Problems with tabulating machines at a central vote count facility in Milwaukee led to the recounting of roughly 31,000 ballots, but nonpartisan ACLU Wisconsin attorneys and election monitors indicated to Law360 that it was a low cause for concern and was merely done out of an abundance of caution.
Liam Byrnes, a 2L at the University of Wisconsin-Madison Law School and an intern with ACLU Wisconsin, told Law360 that the organization had a large core of attorney volunteers at the Milwaukee facility where, according to news reports, the access doors on several vote tabulating machines were not properly sealed.
There was no evidence to suggest any sort of manipulation of the machines though, and the Wisconsin Elections Commission called for a recount in the interest of transparency. Byrnes said the ACLU was monitoring the situation but seemed satisfied with the explanation and decision.
"When anything like that is reported, there are some folks who ... want to run with that I think a little bit more," he told Law360. "And so that's just something that we've been aware of and the folks on the Wisconsin Elections Commission have been already kind of talking about why that's happening, what it really means, and trying to get in front of any sort of rumor mills or disinformation that might spread about it."
Byrnes was one of a dozen legal volunteers who'd been hunkered down in a voter hotline command center in the Milwaukee area since 6:45 a.m. CDT, part of a nonpartisan coalition taking calls ranging from questions about basic voting information, to concern over long lines at polling locations.
Polls closed in Wisconsin at 8 p.m. local time, and no litigation had been filed mandating any locations stay open later, according to Byrnes, indicating a fairly smooth day for voters save for a few isolated incidents of electioneering that were quickly handled.
Wisconsin law allows for municipalities to either count votes directly at polling locations, or create a central counting location where votes are counted separately, usually somewhere nearby or even in the same but separate part of the polling facility. This voting cycle, 37 municipalities opted for a central count center, the largest of which was at the Baird Center in downtown Milwaukee.
ACLU Wisconsin and its partners had nonpartisan vote count observers stationed at all but one of the facilities throughout the state, Byrnes said, tracking any issues of partisan or frivolous ballot challenges. Though certain issues did get elevated to the command center to keep an eye on, he said he wasn't aware of anyone being removed.
Wisconsin is also unique in that no absentee ballots can be processed until the polls open on Election Day, meaning the state's results were likely to come in late according to Byrnes, who added that an early morning result did not necessarily indicate something has gone wrong.
"Wisconsin does run just really good elections generally, and we have been happy with the communication that we've had with clerks for the most part throughout the day," he told Law360. "It's been really neat to see the collaborations between our law student volunteers that we have from over six law schools in three states mobilizing and working together with our field attorneys who are also from both the state of Wisconsin and outside who are really making sure that we have safe and secure elections."
8:30 p.m. Burlington County, New Jersey | Polls Ordered To Stay Open
By Cara Bayles
During an emergency hearing Tuesday night, a New Jersey judge ordered election officials in Burlington County to use paper ballots and keep polls open until 9 p.m.
Judge John Harrington found that longer lines at the polls stemmed from new voting machines that created a steep learning curve for poll workers.
"I do believe that the standard is to enforce a public right of the voter to be able to vote," he said.
The emergency application was filed by New Jersey Attorney General Matthew Platkin and Sundeep Iyer, director of the New Jersey Division on Civil Rights. They requested the use of paper ballots and the later closing time, citing long lines and problems with the new machines.
"Even now the lines are long, and they're getting longer," said Andrew Wilson of Emery Celli Brinckerhoff Abady Ward & Maazel LLP, who argued in favor of the application.
Susan Scott, who represented the Board of Elections, said the lines were caused by "historic turnout for this election," not any technical malfunctions.
Judge Harrington agreed, saying the technology itself was not to blame.
Still, he ordered the polling stations to use emergency, not provisional, ballots, and said lines at the polls could keep forming until 9 p.m., adding, "If it takes all night, it takes all night. That's the American way."
9 p.m. Reno, Nevada | Two Hour Wait Times For Voters
By Steven Trader
Polls closed at 7 p.m. local time in Nevada, but extremely long lines at some locations across the state meant doors would likely remain open much later, according to ACLU Nevada voting rights attorney Sadmira Ramic.
Voters in Washoe County, where Reno is located, were experiencing wait times of almost two hours at the end of the day. Similar delays were expected in rural areas such as Carson City, where there was one polling location, though there were no indications of malfeasance, Ramic told Law360.
"I can only guess that because it's a presidential election, we often have very high turnout," Ramic said. "People are energized by the fact that this is an important election, especially first time voters, so it's a lot of people wanting to vote in person, with a limited amount of options of where to go."
Ramic and her colleagues have been tracking voter issues in the state from a command center from Washoe County since about 5:30 a.m. this morning. She said some instances of electioneering were reported, but nothing that rose to a level of litigation, mostly because many of those issues had been dealt with during early voting and election officials were prepared to respond quickly.
3L students from UC Irvine School of Law, along with Professor Anna Davis (second from left) flew to Las Vegas on Monday night to monitor polls on Election Day, and observe ballot counting on Wednesday. (Courtesy of Anna Davis)
ACLU Nevada and Ramic herself coordinated a team of legal volunteers to monitor polls on Tuesday, including Professor Anna Davis and four 3L students from the University of California Irvine School of Law, who flew into Las Vegas on Monday evening, were stationed at polling locations in Clark County on Tuesday and planned to stay through Wednesday to monitor ballot counting.
Davis could not comment for this story due to confidentiality issues, but reported at least two voting locations with a DJ stationed outside, keeping spirits high with music despite the long voter lines.
For her part, Ramic wasn't prepared to leave the ACLU's command center until the last polling location was closed, and said the real work would likely start Wednesday, as the focus shifted to post-election ballot processing.
"We'll have observers present at vote counting centers and where they're processing mail ballots, monitoring Board of Commissioners meetings to make sure they certify the election, because in Nevada, during the primary, Washoe County did not certify," Ramic said. "So the litigation possibility is not a shut door at this point. We're prepared for that post-election possibility."
10:30 p.m. Nationwide | Hotline Calls Continue
By Cara Bayles
The national 866-OUR-VOTE hotline operated by Lawyers' Committee for Civil Rights Under Law and staffed by volunteer attorneys around the country had fielded nearly 16,000 calls from across the U.S. by 10 p.m. on Election Day, and was set to keep taking calls until midnight.
The highest number of calls on Tuesday came from Pennsylvania, followed by North Carolina, Florida and Texas.
About 75% of those calls came from voters who sought general information, according to Camille Wimbish, national director of campaigns and field programs for the Lawyers' Committee.
She said there were also "widespread voting machine problems ... which were particularly profound in Pennsylvania," a closely watched battleground considered the top prize in a tightly contested presidential election, because it has the highest Electoral College count of the seven swing states.
Election Day was relatively peaceful, but the threat of violence — bomb threats outside Atlanta and in South Philadelphia, and a suspicious package in Florida — still shook voters' confidence, according to Damon Hewitt, executive director of the Lawyers' Committee.
"This is the kind of thing that scares people. We haven't tracked the demographics in every single precinct, but this stuff started in Georgia, in Fulton and DeKalb counties, in heavily Black precincts. That is not a coincidence," he said. "This seems like an orchestrated effort, foreign or domestic, to have a chilling effect on Black people's willingness to come out and turn out now. Our messaging was that, 'Hey, voting is safe, and it remains safe, and of course it remains your right.'"
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