Craziness at the Polls? Get the Evidence on Your Smartphone

Video the Vote

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Judging from recent experience, close presidential elections tend to coincide with problems at the polls. Remember the 2000 election’s butterfly ballots and dangling chads? Or, four years later, the 10-hour lines in Knox County, Ohio? Though civil rights groups worry that history will again repeat itself this year, at least one thing will be different: what’s in our pockets. Anybody with a smartphone can now shoot video of polling irregularities and upload it to the internet. But someone must still curate all of this citizen journalism, and that’s where a group called Video the Vote comes in.

A member of a network of voting rights groups known as the Election Protection Coalition, Video the Vote wants anybody who notices voting problems to document the situation and bring the footage to its attention. “In an era of partisan voter purges, onerous ID requirements, and organized intimidation, it’s not enough for citizens to just cast their ballots,” says Matt Pascarella, Video the Vote’s campaign director. In addition to collecting citizen uploads, he’ll field a national network of his own videographers to target swing-state hotspots.

You might end up seeing some of these videos on the Mother Jones website; I’ll be embedded with Video the Vote office during much of Election Day. In addition, Mother Jones is encouraging readers to report any poll problems, voter intimidation, and vote suppression attempts you might encounter via our short Report Your Voting Problem form (available below). We’re tracking problems at our interactive map and mega-guide to election problems.

For more on how to work with Video the Vote, check out the group’s promotional video:

You can help Mother Jones track voter suppression and poll problems around the country—report your problem using this short form:

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“This could be the first time a corporation would be held criminally liable for forced labor in their own supply chains,” according to a retired special agent we talked to.

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WHO DOESN’T LOVE A POSITIVE STORY—OR TWO?

“Great journalism really does make a difference in this world: it can even save kids.”

That’s what a civil rights lawyer wrote to Julia Lurie, the day after her major investigation into a psychiatric hospital chain that uses foster children as “cash cows” published, letting her know he was using her findings that same day in a hearing to keep a child out of one of the facilities we investigated.

That’s awesome. As is the fact that Julia, who spent a full year reporting this challenging story, promptly heard from a Senate committee that will use her work in their own investigation of Universal Health Services. There’s no doubt her revelations will continue to have a big impact in the months and years to come.

Like another story about Mother Jones’ real-world impact.

This one, a multiyear investigation, published in 2021, exposed conditions in sugar work camps in the Dominican Republic owned by Central Romana—the conglomerate behind brands like C&H and Domino, whose product ends up in our Hershey bars and other sweets. A year ago, the Biden administration banned sugar imports from Central Romana. And just recently, we learned of a previously undisclosed investigation from the Department of Homeland Security, looking into working conditions at Central Romana. How big of a deal is this?

“This could be the first time a corporation would be held criminally liable for forced labor in their own supply chains,” according to a retired special agent we talked to.

Wow.

And it is only because Mother Jones is funded primarily by donations from readers that we can mount ambitious, yearlong—or more—investigations like these two stories that are making waves.

About that: It’s unfathomably hard in the news business right now, and we came up about $28,000 short during our recent fall fundraising campaign. We simply have to make that up soon to avoid falling further behind than can be made up for, or needing to somehow trim $1 million from our budget, like happened last year.

If you can, please support the reporting you get from Mother Jones—that exists to make a difference, not a profit—with a donation of any amount today. We need more donations than normal to come in from this specific blurb to help close our funding gap before it gets any bigger.

payment methods

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