Tennesseans are organizing ahead of the November midterm elections to train as poll observers in an effort to ensure voter fairness is not an issue voters need to think about ahead of Nov. 3, according to Organize Tennessee, a nonpartisan, nonprofit election integrity group.
“Our whole mission is to make sure that all eligible voters have a safe, free and very simple day to go vote on Election Day,” said Adam Altendorf, organizing director at Organize Tennessee. “We're working really hard in Tennessee to make sure that we're not just educating voters on their rights, but also to put poll observers in place to monitor and report issues.”
Among many initiatives, the group trains Tennessee residents to become poll observers who attend polling locations
on election night to monitor for and report machine disruptions, voter intimidation and illegal activity that would discourage people from voting.
Tennessee law allows each political party to appoint two poll observers per location, and two poll observers representing a citizen group, like Organize Tennessee.
During the August primary election, the group trained 353 observers and reported mobilizing 117 nonpartisan poll observers across 186 locations in 15 counties.
The numbers represent the largest single mobilization the organization has undertaken for an August election, underscoring the urgency many voters feel regarding the upcoming midterm elections.
“I think people really want to do this work this year,” Altendorf said. “Not everyone's going to knock on a door or do a phone bank or all that other stuff, but this is a way for them to continue to fight back.”
In data provided by the group, observations reported by poll observers from the August primary election included instances of polling locations closing early, law enforcement officers entering polling locations — something largely prohibited by state law — and some voters being told by campaign volunteers that “machines were down” when machines were fine.
Instances of voter disruption like this would not be flagged without observers.
Altendorf said the goal of the organization is to prepare poll observers to not just make the day seamless for voters, but to also know how to respond if the government “doesn’t follow the rules.”
“We have to ask ourselves that question,” he said. “What happens if they decide to seize ballots in Memphis, or if they decide to do like a sobriety check or an ICE enforcement point right next to a polling location? What happens if the governor delays certification of the election because they found inconsistencies (in the ballots)? What happens when there's not enough time for the courts to intervene? We have to be prepared to mobilize really, really quickly.”
In a Sept. 28 interview with Time magazine, President Donald Trump refused to rule out declaring a national security emergency ahead of the election or invoking the Insurrection Act, which allows the president to deploy the military on U.S. soil to suppress civil disturbances.
Altendorf said the organization’s effort to ensure fair and smooth elections, which is being supported by multiple nonprofits across the state, is more important than any partisan affiliation.
“Disruption is part of like the larger tactic to call into question whether the votes were all legal,” he said. “To insert the uncertainty into the outcome lets them say later on, ‘Well, we don't know who won, so we just have to like pick the winner.’ That's something that would happen in authoritarian countries. It's a bad precedent — if the results don't go the way that you want, you just recall the election every time. That’s not democracy.”
As the organization prepares its poll observers for Nov. 3, he said the importance of the work could not feel more timely.
For the first time in decades, the Trump administration did not invite foreign-based observers with the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe to monitor the election, according to a late-September statement released by the organization, ending a longstanding tradition of "independent and objective assessment of the electoral process.”
The United States is a founding member of the group and signed an agreement in 1990 to invite foreign and domestic observers to monitor national elections.
“Being a poll observer … feels like an act of defiance right now,” Altendorf said. “It’s a way to make sure that every eligible voter gets their vote counted, which in some cases across the country, is not a given.”
Angele Latham’s role covering First Amendment issues at The Tennessean is made possible by a collaboration among Freedom Forum, Journalism Funding Partners and the USA TODAY Network. Freedom Forum does not provide editorial input. Reach Angele Latham at alatham@gannett.com, on X at @angele_latham and on TikTok at @angelelatham.
This article originally appeared on Nashville Tennessean: Tennesseans are volunteering again — this time at the polls
