Wrote to Garland. It isn't my greatest writing but I think it gets the point across.
"Elon Musk is buying Republican votes in Pennsylvania. This egregious violation of the law and interference in our election must stop immediately! Please use the power of your office to investigate this tampering and make sure our election is free and fair. Our democracy depends on it.
Yes! And our other superpower is helping get people to the polls! I just spent two days at the University of PA and registered/helped make a plan to vote with 850+ college students (see link below). Despite it being the battleground states with swarms of volunteers and at an Ivy League college, 99.9% of the students did not know about early voting three mins from campus, many had questions about registration, and a number of students did not even know what day Election Day was even though their plan was to vote on ED!
Again and again, it’s clear that act of voting is not easy for new voters or voters who have moved. I had one Penn student from TX who wanted to get registered in PA, but she said it was ok if it didn’t happen bc she would just vote when she went home to TX for…Thanksgiving!!!
So my shout out to all of you, get a few dozen donuts and head to your nearest college or community college and make sure kids have a plan to vote. www.iwillvote.com is the most user friendly resource for finding early voting AND Election Day voting (they are often different) as well as voter ID reqs. Have students enter their info to get polling location for EV and ED voting (two different tabs) and have them take a picture with their phone. It really works!
Also for anyone who wants to volunteer, in the newsletter below, we put together a list of competitive tipping point races and links to phonebank or canvass. We did this bc we kept getting requests from friends for whether to volunteer. So please share - it was actually a little more complicated than it should have been so hopefully it’s helpful!
Ps: Jess - I know you’ll appreciate this - after we finished our two days at Penn, we ran into Rep. Jamie Raskin at the train station and when he heard about DD, he asked if could take a selfie with us so he could post about it. I literally told him I loved him. Twice. With a straight face. 😂 https://x.com/jamie_raskin/status/1847751493551636738
I have had this conversation with my sister, my canvassing partner and countless others, but they don't believe me that she's definitely going to win. I don't know how to explain that I've been fighting with so many others for years and the amount of work behind the scenes--postcarding, phonebanking, canvassing--the 2022 red wave pollsters coming back with a vengeance, the amazing analysis by Tom Bonier that it all points to a good outcome as long as we keep pushing. I sometimes feel insulted that they don't believe me. But it helps to look at it you wrote :"We’re used to believing experts, and the experts are seemingly unanimous. When everyone who should know is telling you the same thing it’s hard to resist the temptation to believe them." (I even get tempted to believe them so your words are a balm, thank you)
As usual Simon has good detail much like yours. Polls are skewed at this time. Essential NOT to spread anxiety & fear. I just took on more postcards specifically designed by native americans targeting very rural tribal members in NM & Az. To encourage them to register on election day at the polls.(campaign from SOS Indivisible). We mustn’t obey in advance or cave to fearmongering. Sure we all feel anxious at times, but own it and move on to something positive!
Have to say I share your opinion about the race not being very close. Biden only carried 5% of Republican votes in 2020, and won by nearly 8 million votes. Here in AZ there is a significant advantage for the Republican party in terms of registered voters, but in 2022 we got a gem of a governor and not one election denier gained statewide office. Why? 11% of Republicans were motivated to turn out and vote against Kari Lake and her ilk. It was reported on the Gen-Z Perspective substack that polls of early voters in Pennsylvania show 12% of Republicans voting Harris/Walz. The last thing I would wish would be for anyone to stay home and not vote or back off on the efforts to sway any undecided voters, because the more clear the margin of victory, the more difficult it becomes for Don-old to steal it in the courts. And less likely his "base" will try resorting to violence, which a significant portion want. Looking forward to that discussion with Heather Cox Richardson she can even teach history majors a thing or two.
Jess - wrote to the DOJ with some modifications (thank you so much for the template and instructions - you are SUCH a good activist!). Also donated to the final effort in North Carolina. We are so, so close there and these final efforts will make all the difference.
Hi Naima, I am on the ground in Mecklenburg County (NC). I voted early on Thursday, Day 1 of early voting. Since then, I have either been an official inside poll observer or been a poll greeter handing out blue ballots (twice each). I've been greeter at the same EV site where I voted and been an observer at two different sites. I'm observing at a third site Tuesday afterrnoon until close.
We haven't quite hit 2020 early voting numbers in Mecklenburg County (and we're nowhere close to 2020 mail-in ballots, which were actually higher than the number who voted on election day 2020!). But I have been tracking the daily totals and over 120K voters have voted in that 5-day period this year, just 1800 votes shy of the 2020 numbers.
The poll workers announce when there is a first-time voter and everybody makes a big deal of it clapping and woohooing it. There have been far more first time voters this year than in 2022 (when I also was a poll observer a half dozen times).
Early voting is popular here with both Democrats and Republicans, but there appears to be a huge difference in the ground game between the parties. I haven't run across any GOP poll observers and the GOP greeters have been pretty spotty so far, leaving hour-long gaps where no one is urging voters to vote for their candidates. Saturday morning they showed up ~10 am, just when there were only a dozen or two people waiting in line. I think they may be cycling between EV sites rather than trying to cover every EV site for the entire day like the Democrats. (There is actually space for two Dem poll greeters to sign up for each shift).
I so enjoyed hearing firsthand from someone on the ground there! And huge thanks to you for all the volunteer work you are doing. I am 79 and cannot manage so much standing and activity as when I was young (in Berkeley marching and protesting! Walking with MLK…). I am holding fast to my faith in the sanctity of our right to vote and doing more postcards this week: I am in NM and some native artists designed postcards especially for the tribal members to encourage same-day registration and I treasure our tribal communities here. Blessings and Solidarity!! 🙏🏼💕🕊️🌊
Here's my message to DOJ (thanks Jess for the substance and address!):
Elon Musk is illegally luring potential voters to sign on to promise to vote for his candidate by offering millions of dollars in a lottery.
Numerous legal experts have said the petition may violate federal election laws that prohibit paying or offering to pay for someone to register to vote.
But there’s more. According to Talking Points Memo, Musk’s PAC has “set up fake sites impersonating the Harris campaign using fake policy positions and then sending out text messages also impersonating the campaign which aim to drive voters to the fake site.”
This is also illegal.
The DOJ needs to act, and it needs to do so now. We are two weeks from Election Day. This is election interference and it cannot be tolerated. Please take action right away.
"Election Interference!" Why is the wealthiest man in the world allowed to give $1M every day, until the presidential election, to someone who signs his petition? It appears to be a way to incentivize Republicans in battleground states to register to vote! And the same mega-billionaire is allowed to set up fake sites impersonating the Harris campaign, using fake policy positions, and then they send out text messages also impersonating the campaign, which aim to drive voters to the fake site. What new way to buy this election will billionaires think of next? WHY is this election interference allowed? I realize lawyers can slice and dice words like “fake” and “impersonating" and make election interference sound legal and cool. But it's like Supreme Court Justice Potter Stewart and the definition of obscenity: We know it when we see it. We are two weeks from Election Day! This is election interference and it cannot be tolerated! Please take action right away. Thanks.
Expect Nate Cohn at the NYT to continue running his curated "polling" horror story right down to the wire at which point Harris v Trump will be a tie or maybe Trump will be proclaimed up by a point. Cohn will continue to manipulate the daily results by including Trump biased polls and ignoring polls that show Kamala up by 3-5 points.........
While terrifying Liberals, Cohn and his polling staff are publishing self doubting articles explaining that polls can frequently be wrong, sometimes beyond the margin of error. WOW! Who knew???.......
Please, please, ignore the daily polls. Pollsters simply can't reach too many voting groups that will decide the election. Cohn is just fabricating results to sell newspapers.....
Meanwhile, the Times adheres to it's "centrist" political view, regardless of the threat from Trump. The paper has so lost its soul, my recommendation to the Times would be....
Stop trying to publish the news and change your moniker to "All the recipes and word games fit to print". The paper would have a better shot at the truth.
Also - for anyone who is confounded by the polls - take a few minutes and check out what Bullfinch Polls did - - - they released OPEN info about their poll metholologies re: third quarter polls - - and discussed methods used by many if not all pollsters. So whatever you think -- or don't think --about Bullfinch, it explains why it's likely they are so very wrong this cycle.
The document with toplines for the blue wall states explains it well.
They are under-weighting women. Young women. Over-weighting Trump voters. Even the "well-intentioned" fair polls are doing it; it's part of the methology. There is WAY MORE ERROR than we know.
The weighting, the errors, the "recalled vote" (which means most polls are weighting former Trump voters greater than Biden voters, to ensure they don't "miss the shy Trump voters). (which do not exist this cycle!)).
I stopped even looking at polls earlier this summer when I finally sifted through a NYT cross tabs and saw they were proudly "giving heavier weight to non college educated white men"....and it's not that I have anything against that demographic but in this post Dobbs election that just seemed absolutely insane to me lol. And if they're doing that, and all the other polls I've seen still only think young voters will account for 10% or less of the voting pop this year despite all evidence to the contrary....what else are they getting wrong? What's the point!
I will laugh, heartily, when the next U.S. Attorney-General, who will likely be as fiery as Merrick Garland is timid, throws the complete works of Shakespeare at Elon Musk, Curtis Yarvin and Peter Thiel, for all the chicanery that they've been exhibiting, in this election cycle alone. Yes, and Jack Smith will have the full backing of said AG, to bring Donald John Trump, Sr., to justice.
Watauga County Dems, in western NC, needs help calling their voters! If anyone can help phone bank, please contact bricca.sweet@gmail.com This is a great phonebank because you can leave messages. Another way to help folks impacted by Hurricane Helen.
When the feel anxious, the last thing we should do is spread it. It's natural to want to connect with others when we're scared, but let's connect by sharing our volunteering stories vs. our worries. Deep breath everyone. I'm trying to squeeze in 15 more Vote Forward letters before Oct 29 so I can hit 500 total. Finally, this is complete speculation and not data driven, but I feel the record breaking amount of people early voting are not doing so for a 78 year old man who has now been on the ballot three times. Time will tell of course and we can't let up off the gas.
I'd say believe the polls. We have to keep our foot on the GAS!
I heard a great quote last week - "If the polls are within the margin of Error, they are within the Margin of Effort" we need to keep working as hard as we can to Elect Kamala and Tim, give her a Democratic House and Keep a Democratic Senate.
BTW Thank for driving Saturday Jess I'm sure I'll see you in the next 15 days
Wrote to Garland. It isn't my greatest writing but I think it gets the point across.
"Elon Musk is buying Republican votes in Pennsylvania. This egregious violation of the law and interference in our election must stop immediately! Please use the power of your office to investigate this tampering and make sure our election is free and fair. Our democracy depends on it.
Thank you."
Better said than mine! Thanks!
Not at all. I love your writing.
Yes! And our other superpower is helping get people to the polls! I just spent two days at the University of PA and registered/helped make a plan to vote with 850+ college students (see link below). Despite it being the battleground states with swarms of volunteers and at an Ivy League college, 99.9% of the students did not know about early voting three mins from campus, many had questions about registration, and a number of students did not even know what day Election Day was even though their plan was to vote on ED!
Again and again, it’s clear that act of voting is not easy for new voters or voters who have moved. I had one Penn student from TX who wanted to get registered in PA, but she said it was ok if it didn’t happen bc she would just vote when she went home to TX for…Thanksgiving!!!
So my shout out to all of you, get a few dozen donuts and head to your nearest college or community college and make sure kids have a plan to vote. www.iwillvote.com is the most user friendly resource for finding early voting AND Election Day voting (they are often different) as well as voter ID reqs. Have students enter their info to get polling location for EV and ED voting (two different tabs) and have them take a picture with their phone. It really works!
Also for anyone who wants to volunteer, in the newsletter below, we put together a list of competitive tipping point races and links to phonebank or canvass. We did this bc we kept getting requests from friends for whether to volunteer. So please share - it was actually a little more complicated than it should have been so hopefully it’s helpful!
https://open.substack.com/pub/democratsdeliver/p/lets-huddle-up-team?r=51f18&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web
Ps: Jess - I know you’ll appreciate this - after we finished our two days at Penn, we ran into Rep. Jamie Raskin at the train station and when he heard about DD, he asked if could take a selfie with us so he could post about it. I literally told him I loved him. Twice. With a straight face. 😂 https://x.com/jamie_raskin/status/1847751493551636738
This is amazing, thank you. Sharing widely.
Thank you so much and thank you for your generous donation! 🩵
I have had this conversation with my sister, my canvassing partner and countless others, but they don't believe me that she's definitely going to win. I don't know how to explain that I've been fighting with so many others for years and the amount of work behind the scenes--postcarding, phonebanking, canvassing--the 2022 red wave pollsters coming back with a vengeance, the amazing analysis by Tom Bonier that it all points to a good outcome as long as we keep pushing. I sometimes feel insulted that they don't believe me. But it helps to look at it you wrote :"We’re used to believing experts, and the experts are seemingly unanimous. When everyone who should know is telling you the same thing it’s hard to resist the temptation to believe them." (I even get tempted to believe them so your words are a balm, thank you)
As usual Simon has good detail much like yours. Polls are skewed at this time. Essential NOT to spread anxiety & fear. I just took on more postcards specifically designed by native americans targeting very rural tribal members in NM & Az. To encourage them to register on election day at the polls.(campaign from SOS Indivisible). We mustn’t obey in advance or cave to fearmongering. Sure we all feel anxious at times, but own it and move on to something positive!
Have to say I share your opinion about the race not being very close. Biden only carried 5% of Republican votes in 2020, and won by nearly 8 million votes. Here in AZ there is a significant advantage for the Republican party in terms of registered voters, but in 2022 we got a gem of a governor and not one election denier gained statewide office. Why? 11% of Republicans were motivated to turn out and vote against Kari Lake and her ilk. It was reported on the Gen-Z Perspective substack that polls of early voters in Pennsylvania show 12% of Republicans voting Harris/Walz. The last thing I would wish would be for anyone to stay home and not vote or back off on the efforts to sway any undecided voters, because the more clear the margin of victory, the more difficult it becomes for Don-old to steal it in the courts. And less likely his "base" will try resorting to violence, which a significant portion want. Looking forward to that discussion with Heather Cox Richardson she can even teach history majors a thing or two.
Here in Arizona agreeing with you.
Jess - wrote to the DOJ with some modifications (thank you so much for the template and instructions - you are SUCH a good activist!). Also donated to the final effort in North Carolina. We are so, so close there and these final efforts will make all the difference.
I SO want NC in the Harris camp!! And I believe we DO have the numbers and certainly the champion in Anderson Clayton.
Hi Naima, I am on the ground in Mecklenburg County (NC). I voted early on Thursday, Day 1 of early voting. Since then, I have either been an official inside poll observer or been a poll greeter handing out blue ballots (twice each). I've been greeter at the same EV site where I voted and been an observer at two different sites. I'm observing at a third site Tuesday afterrnoon until close.
We haven't quite hit 2020 early voting numbers in Mecklenburg County (and we're nowhere close to 2020 mail-in ballots, which were actually higher than the number who voted on election day 2020!). But I have been tracking the daily totals and over 120K voters have voted in that 5-day period this year, just 1800 votes shy of the 2020 numbers.
The poll workers announce when there is a first-time voter and everybody makes a big deal of it clapping and woohooing it. There have been far more first time voters this year than in 2022 (when I also was a poll observer a half dozen times).
Early voting is popular here with both Democrats and Republicans, but there appears to be a huge difference in the ground game between the parties. I haven't run across any GOP poll observers and the GOP greeters have been pretty spotty so far, leaving hour-long gaps where no one is urging voters to vote for their candidates. Saturday morning they showed up ~10 am, just when there were only a dozen or two people waiting in line. I think they may be cycling between EV sites rather than trying to cover every EV site for the entire day like the Democrats. (There is actually space for two Dem poll greeters to sign up for each shift).
I so enjoyed hearing firsthand from someone on the ground there! And huge thanks to you for all the volunteer work you are doing. I am 79 and cannot manage so much standing and activity as when I was young (in Berkeley marching and protesting! Walking with MLK…). I am holding fast to my faith in the sanctity of our right to vote and doing more postcards this week: I am in NM and some native artists designed postcards especially for the tribal members to encourage same-day registration and I treasure our tribal communities here. Blessings and Solidarity!! 🙏🏼💕🕊️🌊
Here's my message to DOJ (thanks Jess for the substance and address!):
Elon Musk is illegally luring potential voters to sign on to promise to vote for his candidate by offering millions of dollars in a lottery.
Numerous legal experts have said the petition may violate federal election laws that prohibit paying or offering to pay for someone to register to vote.
But there’s more. According to Talking Points Memo, Musk’s PAC has “set up fake sites impersonating the Harris campaign using fake policy positions and then sending out text messages also impersonating the campaign which aim to drive voters to the fake site.”
This is also illegal.
The DOJ needs to act, and it needs to do so now. We are two weeks from Election Day. This is election interference and it cannot be tolerated. Please take action right away.
Thank you.
Doing the work. And- thanks for the information about the DOJ. I also contacted the PA Attorney General here https://www.attorneygeneral.gov/contact/
I tried to sign up for the Voter Protection Hotline, but they are only accepting volunteers who speak languages other than English.
"Election Interference!" Why is the wealthiest man in the world allowed to give $1M every day, until the presidential election, to someone who signs his petition? It appears to be a way to incentivize Republicans in battleground states to register to vote! And the same mega-billionaire is allowed to set up fake sites impersonating the Harris campaign, using fake policy positions, and then they send out text messages also impersonating the campaign, which aim to drive voters to the fake site. What new way to buy this election will billionaires think of next? WHY is this election interference allowed? I realize lawyers can slice and dice words like “fake” and “impersonating" and make election interference sound legal and cool. But it's like Supreme Court Justice Potter Stewart and the definition of obscenity: We know it when we see it. We are two weeks from Election Day! This is election interference and it cannot be tolerated! Please take action right away. Thanks.
Expect Nate Cohn at the NYT to continue running his curated "polling" horror story right down to the wire at which point Harris v Trump will be a tie or maybe Trump will be proclaimed up by a point. Cohn will continue to manipulate the daily results by including Trump biased polls and ignoring polls that show Kamala up by 3-5 points.........
While terrifying Liberals, Cohn and his polling staff are publishing self doubting articles explaining that polls can frequently be wrong, sometimes beyond the margin of error. WOW! Who knew???.......
Please, please, ignore the daily polls. Pollsters simply can't reach too many voting groups that will decide the election. Cohn is just fabricating results to sell newspapers.....
Meanwhile, the Times adheres to it's "centrist" political view, regardless of the threat from Trump. The paper has so lost its soul, my recommendation to the Times would be....
Stop trying to publish the news and change your moniker to "All the recipes and word games fit to print". The paper would have a better shot at the truth.
https://www.thebullfinchgroup.com/post/public-release-of-bullfinch-q3-nationwide-survey-2
Also - for anyone who is confounded by the polls - take a few minutes and check out what Bullfinch Polls did - - - they released OPEN info about their poll metholologies re: third quarter polls - - and discussed methods used by many if not all pollsters. So whatever you think -- or don't think --about Bullfinch, it explains why it's likely they are so very wrong this cycle.
The document with toplines for the blue wall states explains it well.
They are under-weighting women. Young women. Over-weighting Trump voters. Even the "well-intentioned" fair polls are doing it; it's part of the methology. There is WAY MORE ERROR than we know.
The weighting, the errors, the "recalled vote" (which means most polls are weighting former Trump voters greater than Biden voters, to ensure they don't "miss the shy Trump voters). (which do not exist this cycle!)).
Thank you for sharing this!
I stopped even looking at polls earlier this summer when I finally sifted through a NYT cross tabs and saw they were proudly "giving heavier weight to non college educated white men"....and it's not that I have anything against that demographic but in this post Dobbs election that just seemed absolutely insane to me lol. And if they're doing that, and all the other polls I've seen still only think young voters will account for 10% or less of the voting pop this year despite all evidence to the contrary....what else are they getting wrong? What's the point!
Thank you for your excellent work, Jessica. I recommend your newsletters to everyone. I am the founder of grassrootsofdemocracy.com
There is a share-able song/vid there on the home page about Jan 6. Please share!! Music can make a difference.
We also have a Substack : Grassroots Of Democracy Group.
Let’s DO this! We CAN and we WILL save America from the fascists. May we all hold our heads HIGH for democracy!!
I will laugh, heartily, when the next U.S. Attorney-General, who will likely be as fiery as Merrick Garland is timid, throws the complete works of Shakespeare at Elon Musk, Curtis Yarvin and Peter Thiel, for all the chicanery that they've been exhibiting, in this election cycle alone. Yes, and Jack Smith will have the full backing of said AG, to bring Donald John Trump, Sr., to justice.
Watauga County Dems, in western NC, needs help calling their voters! If anyone can help phone bank, please contact bricca.sweet@gmail.com This is a great phonebank because you can leave messages. Another way to help folks impacted by Hurricane Helen.
When the feel anxious, the last thing we should do is spread it. It's natural to want to connect with others when we're scared, but let's connect by sharing our volunteering stories vs. our worries. Deep breath everyone. I'm trying to squeeze in 15 more Vote Forward letters before Oct 29 so I can hit 500 total. Finally, this is complete speculation and not data driven, but I feel the record breaking amount of people early voting are not doing so for a 78 year old man who has now been on the ballot three times. Time will tell of course and we can't let up off the gas.
I'd say believe the polls. We have to keep our foot on the GAS!
I heard a great quote last week - "If the polls are within the margin of Error, they are within the Margin of Effort" we need to keep working as hard as we can to Elect Kamala and Tim, give her a Democratic House and Keep a Democratic Senate.
BTW Thank for driving Saturday Jess I'm sure I'll see you in the next 15 days