Can Philadelphia’s poll counters outrun election lies?

The room the place it occurs has steel beams and harsh overhead lighting. Paper whizzes via conveyor belts on giant gears close to tall, human-sized cages with keypad locks. 

Although it resembles one, this isn’t a manufacturing facility. It’s Philadelphia’s mail-in ballot-counting facility, the place someplace round 200,000 votes are anticipated to be tallied starting on Election Day. The longer that tally takes, the extra misinformation may seep right into a deep effectively of paranoia and mistrust over the democratic course of — one which overflowed 4 years in the past in a violent assault on the US Capitol.

The stakes, you possibly can say, are excessive.

Pennsylvania’s 19 electoral votes may determine whether or not former President Donald Trump or Vice President Kamala Harris wins the 2024 presidential election. Most of the state’s ballots have already been forged via the mail. But Pennsylvania’s legal guidelines prohibit even starting to course of mail-in ballots till 7AM on Election Day. The end result is usually a severe delay in reporting election outcomes — in 2020, The Related Press didn’t name Pennsylvania as having been gained by Joe Biden till 4 days after Election Day.

The state’s answer is a downright industrial ballot-counting course of, which elected officers invited reporters to preview (utilizing take a look at ballots for demonstration functions) in late October. It’s a extremely regimented course of that takes place in a sprawling warehouse in northeast Philadelphia, crammed with the sounds of whirring ballot-sorting machines and the fixed rifling of paper. On Election Day, employees will open a whole bunch of hundreds of mailed ballots and feed them into machines that learn and depend them, preserving a cautious eye on displays flagging any irregularities. The scanned ballots may also be watched by election observers from every political celebration. “We do it proper,” says Philadelphia Metropolis Commissioners chair Omar Sabir, a Democrat. 

The town’s press tour is a part of a broader effort to teach voters and reassure them that voting is protected, safe, and reliable. It’s an tried bulwark in opposition to false claims about ballots being inaccurately tallied, flipped, or destroyed to skew election outcomes.

Lisa Deeley, Democratic vice chair of the Philadelphia Metropolis Commissioners, says she doesn’t anticipate as lengthy of a delay as 2020. Mail-in voting was an unusually fashionable choice that yr as a result of ongoing covid-19 pandemic. However when conspiracies can ricochet throughout social media in seconds, each hour counts. “The extra individuals hear issues, sadly, the extra inclined they’re to imagine them,” she says.

As Deeley explains, election employees are “ranging from brick one” on Election Day. Meaning not simply tallying who votes for whom, however reviewing the signatures on sealed envelopes, eradicating them from their secrecy sleeves, and flattening the ballots themselves. Commissioners have been “begging” for reforms to this course of, Deeley says. Absent these modifications, they’re left with technical and procedural options like shopping for new gear and counting on extra skilled election employees — shaving time without work the clock any means they’ll.

“We all know that the eyes of the world are going to be on Philadelphia,” Metropolis Commissioner Seth Bluestein, a Republican, advised reporters gathered within the warehouse. “We’re going to run the most secure, most safe election in Philadelphia historical past.” 

The method of tallying ballots — as I and different reporters see, shuffling behind Sabir across the 360,000-square-foot room — begins with what appears like an outsized Xerox machine. It feeds ballots in sealed envelopes right into a conveyor belt on two gears and spits them out throughout a protracted monitor, sorting them into totally different slots primarily based on ward and division. The machine scans barcodes on the envelopes, each linked to a registered voter’s ID to mark the ballots as “acquired” so one voter can’t ship a number of votes. If it was mailed and not using a signature or not positioned in its included secrecy envelope, it’s put aside and added to an inventory that voters can examine, letting them right the issue with a alternative poll. 

That is so far as employees can get earlier than Election Day, so the sorted envelopes go into safe storage till the morning of November fifth. Then, on the daybreak, the depend begins. Twenty-two envelope extractors, constructed round desks the place employees will assist separate the envelopes from their contents as soon as opened, run about 1,000 envelopes every per hour. 4 fast slicing machines open the yellow secrecy envelopes inside these envelopes at a price of about 10,000 per hour. Employees take away the ballots from the now-opened secrecy envelopes — and since this course of is separated from when the ballots are faraway from their outer envelopes, it ensures votes keep nameless. Now patted flat, the ballots attain the step this entire course of is constructing as much as: the depend.

An election scanner is principally a big Scantron machine, with a stretched-out steel S-shape that ballots glide via because the machine reads the marks voters have made. This warehouse has eight high-speed scanners, each anticipated to examine about 2,500 ballots per hour. (4 further slower scanners can learn 1,000 per hour.) Some ballots can’t be learn — if they’ve been marked with a light-colored pen or had errors erased with Wite-Out, for example. A employees of nonpartisan civil servants overview these and mark the voter’s decisions onto alternative ballots, which might then be scanned.

Election observers — who’re chosen by every celebration — will watch screens displaying the ballots to assist guarantee every little thing is adjudicated pretty. Lastly, the processed ballots go into one other locked storage space. They’ll finally be saved in long-term storage for the 22 months mandated by regulation — simply in case they’re wanted for a recount. 

As this depend is going down, an opposing course of will likely be spinning up: a disinformation equipment that goals to persuade voters the election is being rigged.

In 2020, this course of coalesced into the “Cease the Steal” election denial motion, culminating in an try and overturn the election of President Joe Biden by power. In 2024, it’s already gotten began. A bunch of Republicans together with Home Rep. Scott Perry (R-PA), who voted to maintain objections to the 2020 election outcomes, sued Pennsylvania’s state authorities, demanding army and abroad ballots be put aside due to what election specialists name unfounded doubts in regards to the course of. (It was additionally just lately tossed by a choose.) Election deniers have gained seats on essential state and native our bodies that would give them leverage over election certification. And on-line, Trump mega-donor Elon Musk has arrange an X neighborhood for reporting “voter fraud and irregularities,” which has already crammed up with unfounded claims. 

For Philadelphia’s Metropolis Commissioners, misinformation is private. Sabir smiles as he relates one of many “craziest” conspiracy theories: a weblog put up that claimed he was personally taking ballots to a mobster in Atlantic Metropolis, New Jersey, to be destroyed. (It’s not clear why the mobster wants them trucked out greater than 60 miles simply to be shredded.) “We’re not doing loopy stuff. We’re simply attempting to return to do our job for the American individuals,” Sabir says.

The threats aren’t at all times amusing. Bluestein advised The Verge that, whereas ballots have been being counted in 2020, he acquired antisemitic threats. The harassment bought so dangerous that Bluestein had police safety at his home the week of the election.

To date, “the warmth is down” in 2024, he says. However election officers across the nation are nonetheless on excessive alert. In Maricopa County in Arizona, one other swing state, an official just lately mentioned safety will likely be out there to escort election employees to their vehicles. The state can be making ready for cutting-edge dangers like infiltration by synthetic intelligence scams, a situation the employees roleplayed final yr.

Bluestein himself is attempting to identify and name out false info on-line. In a single case, he debunked an allegation — shared on X by Musk — {that a} nonprofit providing companies to low-income and houseless people harvested hundreds of mail-in ballots from one tackle. (Bluestein says “fewer than 150 ballots” have been mailed there in 2020.)

His energetic function on-line is partially as a result of he feels that social media platforms “are usually not doing pretty much as good a job as they did in 2020” with combating misinformation. 4 years in the past, platforms have been on excessive alert for false claims, even when they typically didn’t implement their insurance policies successfully. In 2024, the scenario is totally different. Below stress from Trump and his allies to take a extra hands-off function on the subject of election misinformation, many tech firms have relaxed the insurance policies that they had in place final time round. Meta and YouTube each rolled again guidelines in opposition to false claims that the 2020 election was stolen, and each Meta and X have made it tougher for researchers on their platforms to entry information used to watch rising threats.

On the similar time, each Bluestein and Sabir say they haven’t but seen the identical degree of focused harassment and threats. Bluestein says broader misinformation claims are circulating, however he hasn’t discovered as many claims that single out particular officers or rank-and-file employees. Regardless of harassment in 2020, he says Philadelphia had no drawback recruiting ballot employees or staffers on the warehouse. “I believe everybody understands the significance of this work, they usually perceive that whereas there may very well be dangers related to it, they’re all signing as much as do the job.”

Misinformation typically picks at tensions that exist already. Black Individuals, for instance, are already a gaggle generally focused by disenfranchisement efforts, which Sabir says ends in “misconceptions about ‘my vote doesn’t depend.’” Add disinformation to that, and Sabir says it drives a notion via this neighborhood of “What am I doing? Why am I losing my time?” 

Bluestein has discovered that he can persuade voters via one-on-one conversations. However throughout that point, false claims can attain hundreds of thousands of voters on-line. “If you scale that as much as construct belief, it’s loads more durable,” Bluestein says. “However while you actually inform individuals the information and present them, they are going to have extra religion.”

Whereas election officers attempt to persuade skeptics, election deniers have elevated their assaults in opposition to the administration of the voting course of itself. In 2020, election deniers “used violent rhetoric because the means to suppress the vote and make it more durable for folk to vote, or make the voting course of appear scary and intimidating,” says Deborah Hinchey, Pennsylvania state director for the nonpartisan nonprofit All Voting is Native. This yr, she is seeing election deniers use “administrative ways to do the identical factor — to suppress the vote, to make it appear an intimidating and overwhelming course of, and to make people really feel like their vote will not be counted.”

However Hinchey says these efforts will fail. In 2020, Trump attorneys and different allies introduced quite a few instances to alter the election outcomes after the very fact. These fits invariably fizzled, and among the attorneys who filed them have been sanctioned or disbarred. “The evaluation now appears to be, ‘Effectively, then let’s go immediately for the votes themselves, and discredit sure sorts of voters and make it seem to be sure individuals are voting that aren’t, in order that we will then assault all votes.’”

To date, these makes an attempt largely haven’t panned out. Whereas right-wing activists all through Pennsylvania have sought to problem voter registrations, they’ve confirmed unsuccessful or recognized inactive voters election officers already knew about. 

As for belief, a September Highlight PA ballot by MassINC Polling Group discovered that 63 % of respondents have been very or considerably assured that votes within the presidential race can be counted precisely and pretty nationally. However voters had much more confidence in how elections in their very own counties can be administered — 78 % expressed confidence within the outcomes.

Organizers are seeing extra individuals desirous to become involved within the strategy of democracy, and that participation will help quell election fears, says Susan Gobreski, president of the League of Ladies Voters of Philadelphia. Whereas listening to about election skeptics getting concerned within the course of may elevate some purple flags, Gobreski says it’s essential to do not forget that “most individuals are literally appearing in good religion.”

Arming the general public and the press with reliable info is a great transfer, says Hinchey. “You may’t dispel all dangerous info with good info, however you possibly can guarantee that organizations and the press have a very good understanding of how elections are literally functioning in Pennsylvania,” she says. Gobreski encourages voters to ask questions but in addition to “be ready to take heed to the solutions.”

Finally, Hinchey provides, most voters are simply in search of dependable info. “The typical Pennsylvania voter is in search of the information of the scenario, and will take within the falseness, however when introduced with information, goes to simply accept that as actuality.”

There’s one closing choice on the desk for poll tallies: a hand depend. It’s frequent to audit samples of ballots by hand and examine them to machine outcomes, confirming the machines are working correctly. (Election officers additionally do preelection testing of apparatus to verify they’re correctly calibrated, typically on livestreams.) However in states like Georgia, election skeptics have — to this point, unsuccessfully — pushed for full hand counts of each poll. That’s a recipe for errors and delays.

Hand-counting has an essential function in auditing elections, says Pennsylvania Secretary of the Commonwealth Al Schmidt, a Republican. “However in the event you’re simply counting by hand, you don’t have something to check it in opposition to. So when individuals do vital numbers of hand counting, that’s the place you see extra errors.” In comparison with machine counts, it’s additionally a glacial course of. “If individuals are sad with how lengthy they wait now, think about how lengthy” it will take with out the equipment to get outcomes, says Deeley. “It’s [like] going to Nabisco and having them make all of the cookies by scratch.”

On Election Day, the machines in Philadelphia’s warehouse will flip on, rifling via hundreds and hundreds of envelopes, slicing and scanning. Signatures will likely be checked and folded. Paper will likely be flattened. The work of democracy will run via machines and cautious human palms. It’s a tedious course of, however it’s additionally one which’s on the very coronary heart of the American experiment. Every poll counted is one step nearer to figuring out if Pennsylvania will likely be coloured in purple or blue on TV screens throughout the nation — and probably figuring out the following president. And though each minute after polls shut is one other minute for spreading doubt in America’s electoral system, Philadelphia’s officers are resolute.

“Philadelphia is the birthplace of democracy,” says Sabir. “I’ll be damned if democracy dies right here.”