Wanna Vote

Wanna Vote is a new initiative from Democracy Counts that documents voter suppression — the barriers that stop eligible Americans from registering or casting a ballot — and turns those experiences into organized, verifiable evidence that lawyers can use in court.

The problem Wanna Vote solves

Every election cycle, eligible voters across the United States are prevented from voting. They’re purged from rolls without notice. They’re turned away over ID requirements they’ve met. They’re given false information about where or when to vote. They wait in lines so long they have to leave for work. They’re intimidated at polling places.

These experiences are real, they are documented in the academic literature, and they disproportionately affect communities of color, low-income voters, voters with disabilities, and voters in under-resourced jurisdictions.

When voter suppression happens, there is almost never a systematic, verifiable record of it. The cases that do surface — a wrongful purge challenged in court, a deceptive robocall traced to its source — are the visible exceptions, not the rule. A voter who was turned away goes home. Maybe they tell a friend. Maybe they file a complaint that sits in a queue. Maybe they don’t do anything at all, because what would they do?

Without organized evidence, lawyers can’t build cases. Courts can’t act. Election officials face no accountability. And the same problems happen again in the next election.

Wanna Vote exists to change that.

And the same approach can go further. The secure, witnessed process that documents suppression could, in a later phase, collect parallel votes — an independent civilian record of how people actually voted, compared directly against the official count. That’s a substantially harder problem: producing legally actionable results takes near-complete coverage of a precinct, which is why we’re documenting suppression first. But it’s the same machinery extended — trusted witnesses, encrypted records, evidence built to hold up in court — and we lay out both phases below.

How it works

Wanna Vote uses a process called the SWVIE — the Secure Wanna Vote Information Exchange — to collect suppression records from voters privately, securely, and in a form that has legal weight. Here’s how it works in practice: A trained canvasser approaches you near your polling place. Every Wanna Vote canvasser carries a Democracy Counts badge with a unique public ID you can verify in real time on our website. They explain what Wanna Vote is and ask if you’d like to participate. You are under no obligation — and the canvasser will say so explicitly.

You provide a phone number or email on the canvasser’s phone. A throwaway number or temporary email is fine — the system works either way. You watch the canvasser type it. You tap Send yourself.

You receive a private link on your own device. Within seconds, your phone gets a text or email with a one-time link that expires in 15 minutes. You open it on your own phone. The canvasser cannot see your screen.

You fill out a short form describing what happened, and submit. Your data is encrypted on your device before it’s transmitted — the server never sees it in readable form. The canvasser confirms your name to verify you’re a real person, but they never see your suppression record, your contact details, or any other personal information.

That’s it. Five minutes. Your experience is now documented, encrypted, and preserved as evidence.

What makes Wanna Vote different

A human witness at every step. Unlike automated reporting systems, every Wanna Vote interaction is supervised by a trained canvasser who can testify in court about exactly what happened. This makes the evidence admissible under the “accepted business procedure” doctrine — the same standard used for business records in federal court.

Privacy is structural, not just policy. The canvasser physically cannot see your suppression record — it’s encrypted on your phone before it’s sent. This isn’t a promise we’re making. It’s how the software is built. The canvasser sees your name (to verify you’re real) and nothing else.

Bipartisan key custody. Your encrypted data can only be accessed if key holders from both major political parties cooperate — no single political interest can act alone. This converts what would otherwise be an organizational trust problem into a structural guarantee.

What your record can do

A single verified suppression record from a single eligible voter is independently valuable evidence — regardless of how many other people participated. It doesn’t need to be part of a statistical argument. It is a fact: this person was eligible, they came to vote, and they were prevented.

Support legal challenges. Wanna Vote records can support claims under the Voting Rights Act, the National Voter Registration Act, and 42 U.S.C. § 1983. Named, contactable, individually verifiable complainants — from day one.

Reveal patterns. Ten records from the same polling place describing the same improper procedure is a pattern a court can act on. A hundred records clustered in predominantly minority precincts is the foundation of a civil rights case.

Create accountability. Published findings — including when everything checks out — create a public record that election officials must answer to. Even when no legal challenge is filed, documented evidence changes the conversation.

Preserve what would otherwise be lost. Without Wanna Vote, most voter suppression incidents produce no lasting record at all. Every submission preserves an experience that would otherwise evaporate.

Built on proven infrastructure

Wanna Vote isn’t our first initiative. America Counts has spent years building Actual Vote, an independent election auditing system that has independently audited hundreds of thousands of individual votes across multiple states with zero unexplained discrepancies. That track record — the technology, the methodology, the organizational credibility, and the commitment to publishing every finding — is the foundation Wanna Vote is built on.

Privacy and security

We take the privacy of participating voters seriously — not as a marketing claim, but as a design constraint that shapes every technical decision.

End-to-end encryption. Your data is encrypted on your own phone before it leaves your device. The server never sees readable voter data. Even if the entire database were stolen, the attacker would get only encrypted blobs they cannot read.

Data minimalism. We collect only what’s needed to produce a legally useful record: your name, zip code, a contact method, and what happened to you. Demographics and location are optional. You can use a throwaway phone number.

Automatic deletion. Your data is deleted on a defined schedule — duplicate detection hashes when the election is certified, identity data when the legal challenge window closes, suppression records within two years. You can also request deletion at any time.

The two phases of Wanna Vote

Phase 1: Voter Suppression Documentation — This is what we’re building now. Phase 1 documents the experiences of voters who were prevented from registering or voting. Every record is independently valuable. A single deployment in a single precinct that documents ten suppression incidents that would otherwise have gone unrecorded has already justified the effort.

Phase 2: Full Parallel Vote Audit — In the future, Wanna Vote will expand to collect parallel votes from participating voters, creating an independent civilian record of how people voted that can be compared to official results. Phase 2 requires near-complete coverage of a precinct to produce legally actionable results — it’s substantially harder, and we’re building the foundation first.

Phase 1 is not a stepping stone. It is independently valuable, and it will save evidence that would otherwise be lost starting from its very first deployment.

Open source and independently audited

The Wanna Vote codebase will be published as open source before the first production deployment. Any security researcher, lawyer, journalist, or citizen can read exactly what the code does. We also publish reproducible build hashes so anyone can verify that what’s running on our servers was compiled from the published source code without modification.

Before deploying in any real election, Wanna Vote will undergo an independent penetration test by a third-party security firm, a separate third-party review of the encryption implementation, and legal counsel review of the SWVIE procedure for admissibility in every target jurisdiction. These are commitments, not aspirations.

When Wanna Vote finds nothing wrong

Most Wanna Vote deployments will probably find that most voters were able to vote without issue. That’s not a failure — it’s a genuinely valuable result. A clean audit is affirmative evidence that the process worked as it should. In an environment where unfounded suspicion about election integrity is widespread, independent confirmation has real value.

We publish the results of every completed deployment — including clean ones — because a democracy where election integrity is demonstrated rather than merely asserted is a healthier democracy.

How you can help

Fund the development. Wanna Vote is being built by a small nonprofit with no corporate sponsors. Your donation directly funds the engineering, security auditing, legal review, and canvasser training that will make the first deployment possible.

Volunteer your skills. We need software developers, security researchers, lawyers with election law or civil rights experience, and people who can train canvassers. If you have professional skills that apply, get in touch.

Spread the word. The more people who know that a system like Wanna Vote is being built, the closer we get to the kind of broad participation that makes the evidence credible and the legal cases strong.

Frequently asked questions

“Is this legal?” Yes. Wanna Vote operates entirely outside official election infrastructure. Democracy Counts conducts a legal review of canvassing legality — including permissible activities and distances from polling places — in every jurisdiction before deployment.

“Is this a partisan project?” No. Democracy Counts is a 501(c)(3) non-partisan organization. The bipartisan key custody arrangement means no single political interest can access voter data unilaterally. Wanna Vote produces honest evidence regardless of who uses it or what they hope to find.

“What if I don’t trust this?” That’s a rational response, and we respect it. You are never pressured to participate. If you do choose to participate, you can use a throwaway phone number, decline all optional fields, and request deletion of your data at any time. We publish the full risk picture — we don’t hide the hard questions.

“Can the canvasser see how I filled out the form?” No. The canvasser sees your name (to verify you’re a real person) and nothing else. They cannot see your suppression record, your contact details, or any optional information you provided. This is enforced by the software architecture, not by policy.

“What happens to my data?” Your data is encrypted on your phone before it’s sent. It’s stored encrypted, analyzed in aggregate without decryption of individual records, and deleted on a defined schedule. You can request deletion at any time.

“I was suppressed. Can I participate right now?” Wanna Vote is currently in development. When it’s ready, we’ll deploy it with trained canvassers in target jurisdictions. Sign up for updates so we can let you know when Wanna Vote is active in your area.

Help us build something that hasn’t existed before. A civilian-run, independently audited system for documenting voter suppression — producing evidence that is admissible in court and available before the window to act closes. Donate to fund Wanna Vote development or contact us to get involved.