The goal of safeguarding democracy may be lofty, but the work is hardly glamorous. It involves 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 is 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 marks the last opportunity for citizens to participate in the democratic process, and what transpires today will likely tee up litigation in the coming days and weeks.
And so Law360 is documenting attorneys' election protection work, from the early morning hours before the polls open in the East, until the vote count begins in the West. Here are the stories of the lawyers on the ground, safeguarding the election.
10:30 a.m. Albuquerque, New Mexico | Quiet Out West
By Cara Bayles
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."
She's 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."
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, has already resulted in some confusion among poll workers on Election Day who are grappling with how to implement it.
Ann Webb, the policy director at Common Cause North Carolina, said the new voter ID law can be tricky to implement because of certain "sticky" situations, such as an elderly voter who is 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 can 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 is part of dozens of legal volunteers who are taking calls directly from voters in a hotline command center at the headquarters of the Southern Coalition for Social Justice in Chapel Hill, NC on Election Day.
Any issues beyond basic advice to voters, such as how to find their polling location, gets passed to an "escalation team" that includes a group of attorneys like Ann and others. They follow up with voters directly and, if necessary, are on call to file emergency litigation. The coalition of attorneys are 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 — Mecklenberg, Alamance and Wake — monitoring polling sites to ensure voters are not faced with any intimidating tactics.
Attorneys with the Black Legal Network, a program of the North Carolina Black Alliance, have likewise been fanning out across the state to monitor polls for access issues and voter intimidation.
They've 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 is 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," she 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 so far, more than 4.5 million people have 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," Webb said.
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, Pa.
In dozens of calls to hotlines 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 hotlines, staffed by law firm volunteers who make the first attempt at resolutions by asking questions and giving out information, Rose said. Problems that aren't solved at that stage get a "ticket" in the command center's computer system, and can 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 needs it, the organization has attorneys available to go to the county-level election courts, where judges stand by all day to hear motions generated from templates or in improvised oral arguments, Rose said.
Other law firms and businesses have contributed attorney personnel to the effort, including Dechert, Arnold and 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 says only first-time voters at a polling place have to 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 if the students, county or poll workers were mistaken about who should go where, and correct that information if necessary.
Other issues included polling places that didn't open promptly at 7 a.m., or complaints about signs and electioneering encroaching on the 10-foot limit around polling places where they are prohibited.
6:00 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 is coordinating the Election Protection New Jersey Coalition's field program, which sends nonpartisan poll monitors to voting locations across the state.
This year, approximately 70 poll monitors, 75% of whom are attorneys, committed over 500 pro bono hours to monitor polling stations across New Jersey. The program's participants include 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 a half-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," Holdorf 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."
He 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," Holdorf said. "Those who tried and couldn't have been hurt in ways, and so has our democracy."