Actual Vote for Civic Organizations

If your organization works on voting rights, government accountability, civic engagement, or democratic reform, Actual Vote may be a natural complement to what you’re already doing — and a way to offer your members something concrete and evidence-based.

How Actual Vote fits into your work

Many civic organizations spend considerable effort advocating for better election systems, stronger audit requirements, and greater transparency. Actual Vote lets you do transparency right now, without waiting for legislative change.

Rather than solely advocating for the principle of independent election auditing, your organization can participate in it directly — mobilizing your members to record poll tapes, generating real evidence about vote reporting accuracy, and pointing to published findings as proof of concept for the reforms you’re pushing for.

This isn’t a replacement for your existing advocacy. It’s a force multiplier. When you can say “we independently audited vote reporting in 15 counties and here’s what we found,” that carries a different kind of weight than “we believe elections should be audited.”

What a partnership could look like

Light touch: Promote and educate. Share information about Actual Vote with your members. Link to the Start Here guide. Encourage individual participation. America Counts handles everything else.

Moderate engagement: Coordinate volunteers. Organize a group of your members to use Actual Vote during the next election. America Counts provides training, materials, and analysis support. Your organization helps with recruitment and coordination. Published findings credit your organization’s contribution.

Deep partnership: Joint projects. Co-design an Actual Vote project targeting specific counties, races, or states aligned with your organization’s priorities. Joint branding on published reports. Shared press and communications. This is how Actual Vote scales — through organizations with existing infrastructure and reach.

For formal partnerships, see our Partnerships page.

Why this works for your members

It’s accessible. No training required, no cost, no special access. Anyone with a smartphone can participate. This makes it easy to offer as an activity to a broad membership base.

It’s non-partisan. If your organization works across the aisle or serves a politically diverse membership, Actual Vote is safe ground. The system produces honest evidence regardless of who uses it, and America Counts is a 501(c)(3) non-partisan organization. No one’s political views are implicated by participation.

It produces something real. Your members don’t just attend a rally or sign a petition — they generate independent evidence about election accuracy that gets published, archived, and can be cited in legal proceedings, policy advocacy, and media coverage.

It aligns with accountability principles. If your organization’s mission includes government accountability, transparency, or democratic integrity, independent auditing of vote reporting is a direct expression of those values.

Concerns we hear from organizations

“We don’t want to look like we’re questioning election results.” You’re not questioning results — you’re independently verifying them. Most Actual Vote analyses confirm that vote reporting was done correctly. That’s a positive finding that supports public confidence in elections. And when discrepancies are found, they’re investigated and reported factually, not sensationalized.

“What if the findings are politically inconvenient?” Actual Vote follows the evidence wherever it leads. If your organization is committed to evidence-based work, this is consistent with that commitment. America Counts publishes findings descriptively, without speculation about motive, and all underlying data is publicly archived so anyone can verify.

“We’re already stretched thin.” The lightest level of engagement — promoting Actual Vote to your members and letting America Counts handle everything else — requires almost no organizational bandwidth. Even moderate engagement (coordinating a volunteer group) is a one-election-cycle commitment that can be scaled up or down.

“How is this different from the ‘election integrity’ organizations that are really partisan?” Great question, and one we take seriously. We’ve written a detailed page about how to distinguish genuinely non-partisan election work from organizations using that language as cover. The short version: our methodology is peer-reviewed and endorsed by major nonpartisan organizations, our data is fully public, our findings are independently verifiable, and we welcome participants of all political affiliations.

What America Counts provides

• Training sessions for your members (virtual or in-person)
• Customizable materials for your communications
• State-specific research on poll tape access
• Analysis and publication of findings
• Co-branding on reports for partnership-level engagements
• A dedicated point of contact at America Counts

Get started

Contact us to discuss how Actual Vote could work with your organization. We’re happy to do a briefing call with your leadership, provide materials for your board, or jump straight into planning a project.