Election Day Special: Guns, Cameras, and Sample Ballots at Polling Places (with Lauren Burke)
Guns at Polling Places: This election cycle is seeing a rise in armed poll-watchers, raising concerns about voter intimidation. Guns are prohibited at polling places in Virginia, but that only applies to 40 feet from the front door of the voting location. As Thomas, Michael, and Lauren discuss, there's a clear difference between ordinary gun-carrying citizens and clear attempts at voter intimidation.
Cameras at Polling Places: Polling places have become a hotspot for vigilante surveillance, with cameras attached to political signs pointed toward ballot drop-boxes and polling places. Other reports show people taking photos of license plates and individuals traveling to and from polling places. While journalists still need to be able to do their jobs at polling places, how do we draw the line between good-faith journalism and more voter intimidation?
Sample Ballots at Polling Places: Local polling places have sample ballots to help explain the voting process, but political parties also mail out their own sample ballots--often indicating the party-endorsed positions. Analysts call this an important heuristic, especially for smaller races. But what about attempts at misleading sample ballots designed to confuse voters about their local party positions?
At the Watercooler: Lauren Burke discusses her latest reporting on the campaign trail following incumbent Democrats Elaine Luria and Abigail Spanberger, Thomas notes a controversy at a Prince William County polling place where Republican policies have made it difficult to field enough poll workers, and Michael highlights a ProPublica story that reveals how many Fortune 500 companies have failed to uphold their pledges after January 6th.
Episode Transcript
Michael Pope
On this episode of Pod Virginia.
Thomas Bowman
The 2022 election.
Lauren Burke
What can we expect to see at the polls?
Michael Pope
Guns, cameras, and sample ballots.
Lauren Burke
Whether it's video surveillance or questioning people, or bringing a AR 15? Across my shoulder walking, that's what this is about. This is about trying to get people uneasy about voting.
Stephen Farnsworth
There seems to be this sentiment that unless ballots are cast on election day and they're counted by hand, they shouldn't count.
Thomas Bowman
You're listening to Pod Virginia, stick around.
Michael Pope
I'm Michael Pope.
Thomas Bowman
I'm Thomas Bowman.
Lauren Burke
I'm Lauren Burke.
Michael Pope
And this is Pod Virginia, your favorite source for Virginia politics for the 2022 election. So hey, election day is finally here. Or hey, Lauren, and Thomas, do we need to forget about the idea of Election Day. So there is no election day anymore? It's now like this 45 Day season? I think we needed a whole new language to talk about all this stuff.
Lauren Burke
Well, since Virginia has one of the biggest, obviously, early voting periods, maybe so, but not really. A lot of people are nostalgic about Election Day and only vote on Election Day. And I get that there are 30 million people around the country who voted early. But still, it's a big day. It's a holiday in Virginia, but it will still be a big day on Tuesday.
Thomas Bowman
Yeah, for sure. Election day isn't going anywhere for now.
Michael Pope
All right. Well, let's get on to our first story. Guns at polling places, this election cycle is seeing a rise in armed poll watchers, that's prompting concerns about voter intimidation. But where exactly are the line between the Voting Rights Act on one side and the second amendment on the other? I asked that question to a friend of the podcast, David Ramadan; he's a former Republican delegate in the House of Delegates and is now at the Schar school at George Mason University. And this is what he told me.
David Ramadan
There's a big difference between somebody having, owning, and walking around with a gun with them and threatening somebody. Those are two separate things. Remember that brandishing guns is illegal. So the fact that they happen to be carrying a weapon does not mean that the gun is being used for intimidation.
Michael Pope
People do have a second amendment right to bear arms. And if I think about the polling place where I vote, you could be 40 feet from the school. It'd be could be across the street from the school, not on school property 40 feet away, and have an AK 47 there. And I guess it really wouldn't be illegal unless you're brandishing it. Lauren, do you think that we're gonna see more guns at polling places this election cycle?
Lauren Burke
Probably because we've seen more guns, period, in this country just year after year, year over year, decade over decade, and, you know, as somebody who grew up around a bunch of guns in the house, my father was a hunter safety instructor and a law enforcement officer. I'm used to guns, but I'm not sure why guns need to be at polling places. And I particularly don't understand why guns need to be at polling places only months after things like the Uvalde massacre or the Buffalo massacre. I mean, I get that the Republican Party has effectively branded guns, to patriotism, to strength, to all of those things that are certainly embedded in our culture, certainly in movies, but I'm not sure why we need guns at polling places. I'm not sure why that's necessary. And with political violence ramping up, I really am not sure. I'm not sure why we act like these things are normal and act like these things are okay. Voter intimidation has been a thing in American history since the beginning of time, so to certain constituencies, particularly Black Americans, that's going to be a red flag talking about guns at polling places.
Michael Pope
Thomas, where do we draw the line here? I mean, like there's, there's got to be a gray area between, you know, the Voting Rights Act and the Second Amendment.
Thomas Bowman
No, there's not a gray area here because one, when you write a law that has anything to do with regulating one of the rights given to people in the Constitution, the test is compelling state interest, and we have a compelling state interest that for these 30 minutes to an hour where you're standing in line and waiting to vote and going to vote, that it is better to not have guns there and people with guns there than not nobody really cares about people who are, who quietly have their gun concealed. And you never know, and they don't bring it up, and it's not there for you. That's not what anybody is afraid of; what people are concerned about is open, implied voter intimidation. Right. And so taking a gun to any polling place in Virginia is illegal. And I find it weird how the law and order crowd has an issue following the law here.
Michael Pope
So what do you do with that person? Let's assume someone is standing outside of my local elementary school, or I vote, and they're 40 feet away, and they're not on school property. And they are open carrying, they've got like the assault rifle around their back or their chest or whatever, do the local police try to arrest that person to the federal police show up and try to do something like what happens to that person?
Thomas Bowman
Well, if it's voter intimidation, that's a felony. So yeah, enforce the laws we have on the books. That's part of the problem. And the reason we're in a mess were in.
Michael Pope
Should federal law enforcement officials show up?
Thomas Bowman
Everybody's got jurisdiction. So local police, it's the state laws, their local police, state police, whoever gets to the scene first. And yeah, enforce the laws on the books. Part of the reason we're in this mess is that people weren't doing that.
Lauren Burke
Right. I'm not sure why that wouldn't be brandishing, by the way. I mean, I find this very odd and just very weird. You know, I vote in Suffolk at a house I own and stuff in Virginia, a pretty rural area of Virginia. And, you know, the idea that somebody would be standing outside the polling place with a gun that can be seen. And Thomas makes a very good point. Why is the gun being seen? You know, for most people who are buying firearms protection, it's usually something that is concealable. Why do you want people to know that you have it? That makes absolutely no sense. The other day I went with my boyfriend to vote in Arlington. And he is a federal law enforcement officer. He didn't bring his firearm with him. He could have, but he didn't; there's no reason to. But I just stand there and watch him vote. And when you stand and watch somebody vote, you're standing next to somebody. You have to fill out a little piece of paper that says your quote, assisting them, which I wasn't; I was just reading the ballot initiatives just as he was. But the point is, a piece of paper had to be filled out for me to watch him vote, and nothing has to be filled out to have a deadly weapon standing outside of the polling place. Really? That makes no sense.
Thomas Bowman
Yeah, we've got a compelling state interest here to prevent armed vigilantes from watching our polls. We don't need that. We've got a very trusted group of poll workers. Listen to the episode we just published with Chris Piper, the former chairman of the Department of Elections; he's got a lot to say about just how much you can trust. Virginia's electoral system here.
Michael Pope
All right, moving on to our next topic. Cameras at polling places, when you go to a polling place, you might have a campaign stick a camera in your face and ask you if you are a good Democrat or a good Republican. Those campaign yard signs and polling places might have cameras attached to them. J. Miles Coleman at the University of Virginia says voting places have become sites for vigilante surveillance,
J. Miles Coleman
There seems to be this sentiment that, you know, unless ballots are cast on election day, and they're counted by hand, you know, they shouldn't count. And you know, I think really a lot of the conspiracy theories that have sort of come out from the 2020 election are really sort of informing a lot of these antics we've seen.
Michael Pope
I was talking to someone out in southwest Virginia who was telling me about a local school board race out there where one of the candidates had a camera attached to a political side, like a vote for me. The sign had a camera on it. And the camera was pointed at a dropbox. And that same campaign apparently had people in the parking lot sticking a camera in people's faces asking them if they were good Republicans. So then they were handed the Republican sample ballot in any event. The reason I bring all this up is cameras at polling places. We've heard stories from all across the country of people taking photographs of license plates of cars that show up at early voting places and people taking photographs of individuals as they walk to and from a dropbox. Lauren, you and I know that journalists have a professional interest here. And making sure that you and I can take pictures of voters as they come and go from polling places and even ask people who they voted for. I've done that dozens and dozens and dozens of times. So you know, once again here, we got to strike a balance somewhere between the First Amendment rights to free speech and harassing voters. Lauren, where's that line?
Lauren Burke
Right. Well, obviously, if you're at a polling place, and you're doing reporting or sort of a little bit of exit polling, and people come out, typically as a journalist, you, of course, introduce yourself and say, I'm Lauren. Broke the Guardian, and I'm asking X, Y & Z, or whatever I'm doing, right? I think that that's sort of obvious. And some people want to talk, and some people don't. Typically people do enjoy talking, which is interesting. People want to talk about their political views, usually. But this sounds like another form of the gun thing is a more audacious form of intimidation, like a low-level form of intimidation. You know, it's funny, I was out of souls to the polls event in Hampton a few weeks ago, and I'm standing next to Bobby Scott and Senator Mamie Locke. And they walk from one location to register, and people vote, etc. And I don't vote at that Hampton location. I'm standing just like in the inner doorway, and somebody came over to me, and one of the poll worker folks came over and told me, are you voting here? And I said, no, I vote in Suffolk. No, can you stand outside? So it's sort of like, it's interesting. You know, there are definitely rules to polling places that are asked to adhere to, and that's fine. But this idea that we need people, you know, videotaping people, etc. I just think it's something that the disinfo and misinfo people want to put into the bloodstream and make people feel uneasy about going to vote. That's always their game, making people feel uneasy and getting fewer people to vote.
Thomas Bowman
In this specific instance. It's a group called True the Vote that's been pushing this, and they are widely discredited and having a lot of legal problems right now. But they're trying to find out how you're voting, Michael, and then you're trying to get your identifying info, that means your images, that means in the case of your license plate, they're going to be able to potentially tie that to an address and other things that you own. And there's actually they've told us why they're doing that because it's come out as part of the various trials associated with January 6, right? And this isn't necessarily on the front page of the Washington Post every day, or in Fox News, or MSNBC on TV every day. But this is a prerequisite for these right-wing organizations to figure out who needs to be on their kill lists. This is a step to genocide, and we're on like step six out of eight. I think we're really close to it coming. And they've openly advocated for killing liberals, and they're doing it on their right-wing channels. They're actually doing it out in the open too. And this isn't like pulling your identifying information and getting a list together of who the trusted right-wing Republican voters are versus lefties and liberals and Democratic voters. This is part of that larger campaign. So I think it's really important that we put this into the broader context because it's not isolated. And this doesn't happen in a vacuum.
Michael Pope
Yeah, that's all really horrifying, everything you just laid out. That group is just like, losing sleep at night thinking about that. But you know, campaigns are also using cameras too. I don't want to overlook that, like this school board campaign out in Southwest. They've got a whole campaign where they've got a bunch of cameras on their yard signs in there in the hands of their campaign workers. And they've got a video record of everybody who has been to an early voting place, or at least a pretty good record of the actual individual people that have come and gone. What about if a campaign does that kind of surveillance? I don't think there's anything legally, you know, to stop them from doing that. But Lauren, what do we make of campaigns using modern tools to do surveillance of voters?
Lauren Burke
Well, I don't know why you would think that you would know what anybody did in there. Unless it was an extremely small precinct. I mean, you know, somebody comes in, you got their license plate, or their photo, whatever, okay. So you know, they voted, but you don't know what they voted. And in most precincts, it's enough people that anybody can say anything when they come out.
Michael Pope
Yea, but if you're in a local campaign or a school board campaign, you actually might know a good number of those people and how they voted. I mean, you could have a database where you could say, I know how Thomas Bowman voted. So I'm going to stick him in my database this way on the campaign. So like, they actually might have some of that data.
Lauren Burke
You could, I mean, they may have some of it, but I just think at the end of the day, what these things were to the voters about is driving paranoia and making people paranoid and uneasy about going to the polls. That's what this is really about. So anything that causes that to happen, whether it's video surveillance or questioning people or bringing a AR 15 across my shoulder, right, that's what this is about. This is about trying to get people uneasy about voting.
Thomas Bowman
And Michael, I got news for you these crazy MAGA Republican right-wingers are running for these local offices. So just because they're running for school board doesn't mean that they don't also fit into this bigger picture, this larger campaign, because they are part of the problem.
Michael Pope
Well, moving on to our final story for today. Sample ballots at polling places. Now your local registrar has a sample ballot that will show you what's on the ballot where you live. But political parties also have sample ballots, pieces of paper that are mailed to members of the political party or handed out, and polling places. Amanda Wintersieck at Virginia Commonwealth University says this is particularly true. In nonpartisan local elections.
Amanda Wintersieck
We refer to this as low information rationality. That is, it's not feasible in terms of the cost for voters to collect full information to make a vote choice. Instead, they rely on heuristics, that is, trusted sources, to help them make those decisions.
Michael Pope
Alright, heuristics are trusted sources. This is really, really important when you get to like who the voter is going to vote for in a local election and local elections. They actually might be partisan. They might be nonpartisan. But odds are your local political party has made an endorsement even in those ostensibly nonpartisan races. And so the heuristics here, the indication, the trusted source, is this piece of paper that says this is how the Democrats are voting or this is how the Republicans are voting. And every election cycle, I see a bunch of people getting angry about what they consider misleading sample ballots. This is often the case with local elections. This particular election cycle has an interesting twist, which is a lot of those old May elections are now in November. So you got a lot of people who are showing up to the polls, who can tell you everything about the congressional race and who they're voting for. Congress probably doesn't know that much about the mayor's race in their city or the city council race in their local city. And that's where these sample ballots become really important as heuristics trusted sources to say, these are the candidates the Democrats are endorsing. And these are the candidates that Republicans are endorsing. But Lauren, I'm always hearing about these; oh, they're trying to mislead me by thinking the Democrats really endorsed this candidate when they didn't or vice versa. And sometimes they look like official documents; they might have a seal on them or that sort of thing. And I'm always hearing stories about these sample ballots. But this election cycle, I'm hearing way more than usual.
Lauren Burke
Yeah. And it's because of likely because of what you just said, which obviously, we have the school board candidates, the city council candidates, and in some places, the mayoral candidates on the same ballot as congressional, which is a new thing. So people are not really paying that much attention to small races. Now, I have already been to three polling places. You know, in early voting, and I haven't seen this, not to say it hasn't happened. I'm sure you're right. And I'm sure it's happening. But generally, what you see is a very organized place. In the bigger precincts, you'll see the actual candidates themselves or in fact, you know, certainly their camping workers with the shirt on, and some people typically are familiar to you in the community. So that type of backing in terms of the people, you know, standing at the polling place, standing at the precinct, and handing you the sample ballot is typically what I think impacts people, and the other day in Arlington, there was a Republican sample ballot person there and a Democratic sample ballot first, and they're very nice and professional, and the sample ballots are very, we're accurate. At the polling place, I went to Suffolk to see if everybody was there; candidates, their election helpers, everybody. So I think, though, because when you're in a community, and you work in the community, you live in a community, you will right actually recognize the people as valid.
Thomas Bowman
Yeah, Michael, all this talk about heuristics. I feel like I'm back in my high school AP Psych class.
Michael Pope
I know, yeah, we got the Virginia Commonwealth University professor here dropping some language on us.
Thomas Bowman
Well, and if I can recall that class correctly, I was taught that party affiliation is the largest, most accurate heuristic and most frequently used heuristic. And so, that would make sense as to why people rely on those sample ballots. Because if you think about it, especially these days, you don't need to know a lot more than that. If they're Democrats, then they probably are going to be pro-choice. If they're, they're also going to be common-sense gun laws. If they're Republican, they're probably not going to be for any of those things and everything else that goes with that. So that's why we actually protect sample ballots. There are a lot of rules around skullduggery that you cannot do on sample ballots, and people, every once in a while, do get in trouble for it.
Michael Pope
I think anybody can stand on the corner and hand out pieces of paper that say listen to Pod Virginia. I think anybody could stand on a corner and hand out pieces of paper that say vote for candidate x. That's a little different. If you try to make people think that this is an official Democratic Party publication or an official Republican Party publication, misleading people about that probably has some ramifications. But just a piece of paper that says, this is who the person who printed the piece of paper thinks you should vote for. Is it sort of a different thing? Where this has become an issue is
Thomas Bowman
Michael Michael, you're actually factually incorrect here. Code of Virginia 24, two dashes 622 on unofficial sample ballots, they have to be authorized by electoral boards and provided by electoral boards or general registers to those precincts. They're allowed to be printed and circulated. But all sample ballots accepting official sample ballots are advertisements, right? And so they need to have, like, paid for and authorized lines the on the bottom. And you can take those kinds of sample ballots to those voting booths, but you can't give tender or exhibit such sample ballot to any person other than an assistant designated here in the code. So this is heavily, heavily regulated because it is such a vital heuristic for people.
Michael Pope
Well, two places it has become a big issue are Fairfax City and Herndon. So Fairfax City, for the entirety of its history, has had May elections and nonpartisan races with no sample ballots. So this year, for the first time, they are going to have a May election. So they're gonna have a whole lot of people showing up to vote for Congress that may or may not know anything about the city council race in Fairfax City, and also for the first off a sample ballot. So the Democrats will be handing out a sample ballot in Fairfax City for the first time ever, which coincides with the first time the November election will have happened. So that is actually a really big change for Fairfax City. And then, in Herndon, it's almost the reverse. The Democratic Party there has decided not to make endorsements. And so there's like a PAC that is formed that has made endorsements. And so there are really interesting things going on with sample ballots. So if you're at a polling place, and someone hands you a sample ballot, you really want to read it closely. As Thomas just pointed out, there probably is language on there about who paid for it, who authorized it, and some paper trail essentially of where it came from. But there, every election cycle has some skullduggery with sample ballots, and this election cycle, actually, I see more than usual.
Thomas Bowman
it would be nice if we could count on our law enforcement apparatus to enforce the laws that are on the books.
Michael Pope
All right, well, let's head over to the water cooler. Lauren, I know you've been out on the campaign trail. In these hotly contested congressional races. What do you what kind of vibe are you picking up out there on the campaign trail?
Lauren Burke
It's been interesting. Like, I think that the level of energy is a little bit lower than I would have expected this late in the campaign. And last Sunday, I was in Virginia Beach. Elaine Lauria had Hakeem Jeffries at an event. That was good. I mean, you could see on social media a lot of people there. I think she's done a really good job of being in the right places and seeing the right people in campaign right places. Elaine Lauria has run a really energetic campaign. Unfortunately, the Democrats made a big mistake during redistricting. And unfortunately, I think she's going to be the one paying for it first. Just not being real about how redistricting works and how power works when you're in power. And using that power to your advantage. Democrats got sideways on redistricting. But she is running an energetic campaign. But it's just, I think, just the demographics are against her in the case of, you know, Abigail Spanberger, who is in a district, it's almost 50% minority sort of closely inching up on that. What I think Congresswoman Spanberger is doing there is sort of running the race two years ago and not running the race that she's got right now in front of her. And unfortunately, it sort of went to toss, which I'm really surprised about because Yesli Vega, I think, is a very mediocre candidate. But you can see, I mean, you guys can see the ads that Abigail has run where you have Republicans, you have this sort of Denver Riggleman ad where Denver Riggleman Republicans saying, hey, Abigail was great. And then you've got the Culpeper chief of police. And I just think it's another example of Democrats trying to get Republican votes, and they're never gonna get particularly in the policing community, which Spanberger is really focused on. And, you know, as somebody who's been around cops my entire life, they vote Republican. So I'm just a little bit kind of confused by that strategy. So we'll see what happens; hopefully, you know, the prognostication for those two seats is a toss-up. It's hard to predict what happened in a case, but I do think that it's kind of been strange that race to watch the events that I've gone to Spanberger events, I'm just seeing elected officials and not a lot of what I would consider quote normal people, you know, and that's something that kind of looked for certain after watching Glenn Younkin, last year had been the several of his events, and you just saw people coming out because they were excited. I'm not expecting every race to be like the Barack Obama 2008 race where you know, and people come in because they're excited about this person that they don't know. And they're curious, but I do expect, when I go to an event on a Saturday morning in Dale City, to see people who are just generally interested, I think if it wasn't for Moms Demand Action, which to me is like the best organizing group on the left right now in the Commonwealth, there wouldn't be a whole lot of other people who just they are watching Spanberger. So I think it's going to be an unnecessarily close race for her.
Michael Pope
Excellent. So Thomas, what's in your water cooler?
Thomas Bowman
Well, you know how we'll publish something. And right after we've recorded, we published some breaking news comes out. Yeah, well. So right after we record with Chris Piper, although like the day before it actually comes out, it comes out that a judge in Prince William County ordered the local electoral board to shuffle the number of poll workers and assign more Republicans. So days, of course, before this election, and what Prince William County is saying is that they assigned who they could, but the Republican Party has a clause in order to be a member that you cannot ever vote in the other party's primaries, or you cease being counted among the Republican rank and file. So there were apparently some poll workers who had voted in Democratic elections recently in primaries, and the Republicans, through their party chair Rich Anderson said they didn't count anymore. However, Prince William County says that the Republican Party made no effort to restock the number and recruit new officers for those poll workers, right and then placed the burden on the county days before the election. And that's got some pretty serious implications that, you know, may cause problems on election day in some local precincts in Prince William County. Now, we've got a lot of redundancies in the system, so it's not going to be the biggest concern. And the Department of Elections is perfectly capable, and it will be a hiccup, but it won't be like a speed bump if you will. But I sent that to Chris Piper after I saw it. And he said, you know, the funny thing about that is a similar case in Flint, Michigan got dismissed, so there's gonna be some now like incongruencies here because of that in the law.
Michael Pope
Well, one thing that's in my water cooler is a great story I saw on Pro Publica headline is what fortune 500 companies said after January 6 versus what they did. So listeners may recall right after January 6, you had all these fortune 500 companies say we're no longer going to give to those Republicans that voted to overturn the election. Well, guess what? They lied to you, those fortune 500 companies, they decided that they would, in fact, actually donate money to the Republicans that voted to overturn the election, and Pro Publica actually followed the money and provided a list of all of the members of Congress that receive money from these fortune 500 companies that went back on their word, Rob Wittman, it got the most amount of money from these companies about $200,000. Morgan Griffith got about $120,000 Ben Klein got about $60,000. And Congressman Good got $1,000. So, yeah, this fortune 500 companies, when they said that they would no longer donate money to the members of Congress that voted to overturn the election, well, they decided that they, they probably would actually end up donating money to those members.
Thomas Bowman
It might have been easier to stick to their guns if those members had been prosecuted and booted from office as the Constitution prescribes.
Michael Pope
Lauren, what's with the PR there? I mean, like, this is a PR decision for these companies to say to make a public pledge that they knew was bullshit when they made it, like. Why did they do it?
Lauren Burke
Well, because at that moment, they get that PR hit, and the media that we the media world that we exist in now in the technological world, we exist and now gives you a lot of credit when you just have a press conference and say something, or really just put out a piece of paper. I mean, you don't really have to verify or prove anything, and you will get in the media, you will get in the media bloodstream, and you will get the credit for that PR at that moment. And that is considered the winner. And if a year from now we look back and it didn't happen. That gets less press, usually a lot less press. So that's why they did it.
Thomas Bowman
Yeah. Nobody ever reads the follow-up, Michael, you know, think about
Michael Pope
Well, I just read it to our listeners here.
Thomas Bowman
Right, right. But think about how corrections work in newspapers, right? Everyone reads a mistake, and then a lot fewer people read the correction that comes a week or two later. In this case, I think there's like something like 250 companies like AT&T, and all of them pledge to stop giving, and it's basically only Lyft. That is still doing it. Wow. Wow. Yeah, plug for Lyft. I guess sponsor this podcast.
Michael Pope
Please advertise Lyft. Just give us a call.
Thomas Bowman
All right. Let's leave it there for today guys. Thanks for joining us, Lauren and everyone. If you haven't already voted, go and cast your ballot. We'll be back after the election with the next episode of Pod Virginia.
