Nothing unusual about that, except

these voters had already voted.

They cast their ballots by mail,

but they were missing one thing:

an accurate, handwritten date.

The lawsuit that got these ballots thrown out was filed

by the Republican National Committee.

It's part of a larger effort

led by allies of former President Donald Trump,

many of whom ran for election in the 2022 midterms.

In the news, you'll often

hear this group referred to as election deniers.

And while it's true,

they do still deny that Joe Biden won in 2020,

what they can do is just as important as what they say.

In 2020, nearly three-quarters of US

voters cast their ballots early or by mail.

But these politicians want to limit

and even get rid of these practices altogether.

This plan is what motivated

thousands of volunteers across the country

ahead of the 2022 midterms.

They didn't just fight election deniers.

In a lot of places, they beat them.

And how they did it could be the key to protecting free,

fair, and open elections in the US

for years to come.

Let's take another look at those mail in ballots in Philadelphia.

On Monday, I got like 15 calls and like ten text messages

from a variety of, like, volunteers

and like political people about my ballot.

The day before the election.

I got a text from my friend.

Like thousands of other voters in Pennsylvania,

Kristen and Zoe had already verified their identities

by providing a Pennsylvania-issued ID number

when they applied for their mail in ballots.

Their ballots had been postmarked

and stamped by the Philadelphia Board of Elections

on the day they were received.

And yet...

These lists came out that listed

people who had sent in a mail in ballot

that was invalid for some reason, your name showed up.

I was, like, disappointed in myself for a second.

Like, how did I date this incorrectly?

Like, I really thought I was following

all the, you know, the rules and what the guidelines are,

how to fill it out.

Pennsylvania has had mail in voting

since 2019 and in every election

since then, multiple judges have ruled that missing

date should not mean a ballot gets thrown out.

But just weeks before the last day to vote in 2022,

a group of Republican politicians

sued to try to get a different ruling.

And it worked.

The candidate at the top of the ticket for the Republicans,

the gubernatorial candidate, Doug Mastriano,

was like a noted election denier.

I am the elections director

for the mid-Atlantic region for the Working Families Party.

I'm a proud resident of Philadelphia,

Pennsylvania, the greatest city in the world.

We knew that there was a risk

that people would use mail in voting specifically

as a way of attacking the legitimacy of the elections overall.

We ended up with over

1300 unique volunteers who were calling voters

to help them cure ballots

and make sure their voices were heard.

Doug Mastriano lost his bid for governor, and Democrats

now control the Pennsylvania State House.

If enough state reps want to change that rule

about the handwritten dates on the outside

of envelopes, they can.

Like Mastriano in Pennsylvania, one of the candidates

for governor in Michigan, Tudor Dickson, had also cast

doubt on the 2020 election results.

More than half the state's

5.5 million votes in 2020 were cast by mail.

And even though Republicans in the state Senate

authored a report that found no evidence

of widespread or systemic fraud,

that didn't stop Tudor Dickson

from tweeting about stolen elections.

And it didn't stop the Republican-led state legislature

from introducing 39 bills

to dramatically limit mail in and early voting.

There are many, many reasons

why people would want to vote by absentee ballot,

but for some reason, some politicians want to make it harder.

Kim's organization, Voters

Not Politicians, recruited more than 300 volunteers

and knocked on over 100,000 doors.

I remember on Election Day,

I woke up at about 6:00 in the morning.

I went all up and down my street.

I really want to talk to you today about Prop 2,

it's going to give us all the constitutional right to vote

without harassment or interference,

including by our own legislators.

It's going to give us all nine days of true early

in-person voting.

If you roll through Detroit,

you will see this area, especially where I live,

it was covered with Prop Two signs, Yes on Prop Two.

You're going to be able to opt in to a system

where you can request your ballot once

and then get it for every future election.

It was worth it, you know, in the end, it paid off.

Prop two passed in Michigan by a large margin.

And Tudor Dixon lost.

But even if she hadn't, because of Prop Two,

Michigan's constitution

now contains an explicit promise to the state's citizens

that their votes will be counted.

I'm passionate about voting rights.

I know what my ancestors went through.

So I'm here to fight for democracy.

And I'll be here until I guess I leave this earth.

The issue of voting free from interference

was front and center in Arizona, too.

I have been so pleased to hear

of all you vigilantes out there that want to camp out

at these drop boxes. Right?

Kari Lake, one of the candidates for Arizona governor,

tweeted her support for this surveillance project.

Smile. You might be on camera.

So we're going to have people parked out there watching you

and they're going to follow you to your car

and get your license plate.

It's going to happen.

She was right. It did happen.

Armed vigilantes dressed in tactical gear,

guys in body armor carrying guns and taking your picture.

Poll stalkers.

People who've been staking out ballot drop boxes

under the guise of preventing widespread voter fraud.

People spoke up.

They dropped off their ballots and then they filed complaints

with the Secretary of State.

There's a group of people hanging out near the ballot

drop box, filming and photographing

my wife and I as we approached the drop box

and accusing us of being a mule.

Camo clad people taking pictures of me

and my license plate

as I dropped our mail in ballots in the box.

A pro-democracy group filed a lawsuit

and the judge issued a temporary restraining order.

The people voted and Kari Lake lost.

By a very small margin.

The ballot drop boxes

she threatened to remove, the early voting

she threatened to cut off, they're both safe for now.

The US doesn't have one big election.

It has over 3000 small elections run

mostly by volunteers in high school gyms

and libraries and community centers.

And that can make it easy for some politicians

to cast doubt on their efficacy out of self-interest.

But it also means that anyone

who cares about making them actually work

can go from a bystander to an active participant

in the fight to keep democracy alive and well.

Anyone can go from standing in line

to standing behind the table.

Thank you guys so much for watching.

One of the things we're trying to do on this channel is really

just be like your one stop shop for context for the news.

Like if something is happening,

you're seeing lots of headlines about it

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One of the ways we're actually trying to do

this is by answering your questions.

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made an incredible video about the history of unions

and why they didn't gain

more of a foothold in the service industry in the U.S..

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