Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

Hey hey, RFK, how many kids did you kill today?

If ‘weird’ was the finish line, they ran through the tape and kept running.

Compromise? There is no middle ground between a firefighter and an arsonist.

If rights aren’t universal, they are privilege, not rights.

Jack Smith: “Why did you start campaigning in the middle of my investigation?!”

Wow, I can’t imagine what it was like to comment in morse code.

I did not have this on my fuck 2025 bingo card.

Authoritarian republicans are opposed to freedom for the rest of us.

Do we throw up our hands or do we roll up our sleeves? (hint, door #2)

We’re watching the self-immolation of the leading world power on a level unprecedented in human history.

You can’t attract Republican voters. You can only out organize them.

Consistently wrong since 2002

Their boy Ron is an empty plastic cup that will never know pudding.

Anyone who bans teaching American history has no right to shape America’s future.

The revolution will be supervised.

People identifying as christian while ignoring christ and his teachings is a strange thing indeed.

Quote tweet friends, screenshot enemies.

“Perhaps I should have considered other options.” (head-desk)

People are complicated. Love is not.

If you still can’t see these things even now, maybe politics isn’t your forte and you should stop writing about it.

If you can’t control your emotions, someone else will.

That’s my take and I am available for criticism at this time.

The next time the wall street journal editorial board speaks the truth will be the first.

Bad people in a position to do bad things will do bad things because they are bad people. End of story.

You are here: Home / Elections 2024 / Defenders of Democracy in Michigan, Ohio, Florida and Wisconsin

Defenders of Democracy in Michigan, Ohio, Florida and Wisconsin

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On of our lurkers passed along a link to his friend Sara’s new short film: The Officials.

It’s non paywalled at Time.com, and it’s about the people in the trenches who organize and staff elections in Michigan, Ohio, Wisconsin, and Florida.  It features people whose names you might not recall, but you will likely recall the stories about them.  Like Meagan Wolfe – remember the woman the Republicans tried to throw out of office in in Wisconsin?

Sara Archambault is a Sundance Documentary Lab fellow, and works at the Kennedy School of Govt. at Harvard. Here previous feature, No Time To Fail, was about election officials in Rhode Island in the 2020 election.

These people take their jobs, and the sanctity of elections, so seriously.  It must be exponentially painful when the lies are spread and they are attacked for their good work.

If you have time, take a few minutes and watch it for inspiration.

The Officials: a 25-minute film

Otherwise, open thread!

Reader Interactions

18Comments

  1. 1.

    TBone

    I watched the movie ‘Amsterdam’ the other day (mixed reviews but I really liked it). One of its themes is every day, regular “little people” changing/making history.

  2. 2.

    Omnes Omnibus

    Meagan Wolfe and I overlapped for a few months at the at the WI GAB.  She had just been hired as an entry level elections specialist when I was winding up my tenure there.  I wouldn’t have marked her as being the fierce election watchdog that she has been.  She was just a pleasant coworker.

  3. 3.

    trollhattan

    Stop promising me a good time.

    Former President Donald Trump has said he does not expect to run for election again in 2028 if he is defeated in this November’s US presidential poll.
    Trump, 78, has been the Republican candidate for three national elections in a row and has reshaped the party greatly over the last eight years.
    In an interview with Sinclair Media Group, he was asked if he could foresee another run in the event that he loses to Democratic Vice-President Kamala Harris. “No, I don’t. I think… that will be it,” Trump said. “I don’t see that at all.”
    But he added that “hopefully, we’re going to be very successful”.

    US law bars presidents from serving more than two terms, and so Trump is not expected to run in 2028 if he wins, either.
    In the past, the real estate mogul has rarely acknowledged the possibility of losing the election, more often firing up supporters with speeches and social media posts pledging victory at the polls.
    But this is the second time in four days he has mentioned a chance of defeat.
    During an event held by the Israeli-American Council on Thursday, he brought up losing, and suggested that any such loss would partly be the fault of Jewish voters.
    “Do they know what the hell is happening if I don’t win this election?” he said, according to various media reports. “And the Jewish people would have to do a lot with that if that happens because at 40% [support] that means 60% of the people are voting for the enemy.”
    The comments were condemned by the Harris campaign and by the nonpartisan American Jewish Committee and Anti-Defamation League.
    –BBC

  5. 5.

    KrackenJack

    KrackenJill and I are finishing up our 1000 Postcards to Swing States today, We got Ohio addresses, so they could be for Sherrod Brown. P4SS also does critical state legislature races, too.

    Ours will be the third postcard for these voters. We’ll send them the week before the election. We both went with the “Your vote is private, but who you vote for is public record.” Their research shows it’s up to three times as effective as the next best statement. That’s enough for me to get over my discomfort.

    Now to see what else we can do…

  8. 8.

    H.E.Wolf

    Thank you for the link to the film, and the shout-out to election officials of integrity. I’ll look forward to watching it!

  10. 10.

    japa21

    I’ve been an election judge since 2016.  This year I will also be 2working the early voting site.  16 days straight, last day being el3ection day.  The 1st 15 are basically 9 hour days, the last one is 15.  A lot of people don’t realize how much dedication these workers have.  As one person in the film states, “It is worthy”.

    Yes they get paid, but compared to the time put in, it really isn’t a lot.  And since the pandemic, the number of people willing to do the work has dropped.  Suburban Cook County standard is 5 judges for each precinct.  I have worked the last 3 elections with 2 or 3 per precinct.

    Anybody who suggests that election judges are corrupt gets a major pushback.

  11. 11.

    Uncle Cosmo

    Just FTR, I read that message as

    The vote that you cast, when added to all the other votes cast, becomes a matter of public record – even though no one can know which of those votes was yours.

    Fifty years back, when voting machines were all the rage, there was a saying amongst pols: Only God and the machine know who you voted for; God’s not telling and the machine can’t.

  12. 12.

    Omnes Omnibus

    @japa21: The worst thing I found when I was working in election regulation is the some of the 90 year olds working the polls were working to execute faithfully the rules that were in effect when they originally trained in 1972.  Their commitment to doing a good and fair job is something I would hesitate to question.

  13. 13.

    rodwell

    @japa21:

    I have been an election since 2020.  I signed up based on posts there was not enough poll workers.  I have been doing for election since.  On Election day, I will start at 5:00 AM and finish around 9:00 PM.  I will get paid $300. I am not doing this for the money.  There is a core group at my Ward that show I every election.  Our goal is that everyone that walks in cast a ballot either on the machine or provisional.  I also get upset when people question the ethics on the individuals running this elections.

  14. 14.

    Mousebumples

    Thanks to everyone for postcarding or working at the polls!

    I look forward to watching this video later, thanks!

  15. 15.

    Motivated Seller

    Has anyone ever seen the movie, “Defendor” (2009)?  That was the first thing that popped in my mind when I read this title.  Probably worth watching after the embedded clip of the post.

  16. 16.

    Betty

    I am an overseas voter registered in Pennsylvania so I received my ballot by email weeks ago. Today I was notified that my ballot has been received. Now I just hope everything is A-OK. My signature has suffered some deterioration over the years, and I know some folks looking to reject ballots carefully compare the current one to the original one. In this case that was some forty years ago.

  17. 17.

    wjca

    @rodwell: I also get upset when people question the ethics on the individuals running this elections.

    What gets me are the people who argue for fraud.  Invariably they have no clue at all how the whole counting process works.  I walk them thru it, from the time the voter walks in the door until the statewide results are posted.  Then ask, where, exactly, in this process do you see an opportunity to fiddle the results?

    And they got nuthin’.  Because, absent a conspiracy of hundreds of people, with 100% perfect security, it simply can’t be done — at least not without immediate and high profile reporting.  And nobody ever sees such reports with any credibility.

  18. 18.

    Gloria DryGarden

    @wjca: I agree. I was an election poll worker in 2020, and as I was trained it was clear the system is Water tight. No way to commit fraud. Very close to impossible.

    Because potential fraud was being discussed, I made a mental game of looking for where anyone could cheat. Nope. I found half of a way, once, but it was so hypothetical and far fetched. Just nope. Not bloody likely. At all.

Comments are closed.