The Election Umpire Mindset

If you’ve ever looked at an election result and thought, “I guess we just have to trust it,” this conversation is for you. I sit down with Mark Gotz, known as the election expert, who has spent more than 20 years monitoring elections and wrote a practical guide on how to inspect, validate, audit, and enforce federal elections. We get specific about where modern elections feel weakest, especially as we’ve shifted from a single Election Day to a longer election month shaped by vote by mail.

We dig into what accountability actually looks like on the ground: signature verification, tracking how many vote-by-mail envelopes come in, and making sure those totals match the vote counts reported by election officials. Mark explains his “election umpire” idea, why being physically present matters, and why an audit isn’t an abstract concept. It can be as basic as reconciling the paper trail so the numbers make sense.

We also talk about voter roll maintenance, inactive voters, and what federal election laws say about enforcement. Mark points to the National Voter Registration Act and the Help America Vote Act, and he explains why “a person” can have the right to take action when something looks wrong. If you’re tired of online complaints that go nowhere, you’ll walk away with a clearer sense of what to learn, what to watch, and what steps can be taken quickly.

Subscribe for more honest, practical conversations, share this with a friend who cares about election integrity, and leave a review so more people can find the show. What’s one election process you’d want explained step by step? Get the book here: https://amzn.to/4xlpQl3

Transcript

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Welcome And Why Elections Matter

SPEAKER_03 0:00

Every conversation tells a story, and the best ones begin with honesty, courage, and a little curiosity. That's where Elsa Kurt comes in. She's an author, podcaster, and independent media personality, and this is where she brings real life to the table. Authors, thinkers, creators, leaders, everyday folks with extraordinary journeys. We sit down, we dig in, and we talk about what matters, what's messy, what's beautiful, and what just might inspire you to look at the world a little differently. So pour a cup of something good. Settle back and join me. This is Elsa Kurt Interviews, where truth has a stake. Everyone's welcome.

Mark Gotz On System Weaknesses

SPEAKER_02 0:42

Well, hello, my friends. Welcome back for another episode of Elsa Kurt Interviews. I'm very excited for our guest today because this is such a timely important topic that I think too many people have gotten a little bit apathetic about. And we're going to find out today why it matters. My guest is going to be Mark Gotz, known as the election expert. And he has spent more than 20 years monitoring elections, and he's the author of how to inspect, validate, audit, and enforce federal elections. I told you it's an important one. So without further ado, welcome to the show. How are you today?

SPEAKER_01 1:19

Thank you. I was doing fun. How about yourself?

SPEAKER_02 1:22

I am wonderful. And I think our audience is going to be even more wonderful after our conversation today because I, you know, like I said uh in the opening there, this is really so important and obviously such a headline conversation right now. So uh I thank you for coming on and sharing this information with us today.

SPEAKER_01 1:42

Not a problem.

SPEAKER_02 1:43

Um, you have spent more than two decades monitoring elections. From your perspective, what are the biggest weaknesses uh in our current federal election system? And I I know everybody in the audience is like raising their hand like they know, but you actually know. So give us a little insight, please.

SPEAKER_01 2:01

Well, over the years, our elections have changed. Uh it used to be a situation where you had election day 20 years ago, and that's when the election was basically settled, except for 2000 when you had Bush Gore, and I was very involved in Bush Gore in Broward County, and uh saw how the process worked then and saw how it could be affected by legal issues. So uh we started following that, and then uh in 2012 we had the Alan West recount in uh in my county in Florida, which is uh St. Lucy County. And um at that recount, we began to look more at the what they were called then absentee ballots. Now, an absentee ballot is a is a ballot that comes from somebody who can't make it there, they're on vacation, or there's a problem. Uh, but they started in in 2014 working on vote by mail, and this is where the big problems uh really occur. So uh what we are trying to do is educate citizens on how to observe their elections and be basically election umpires. Because right now there's no accountability in our elections. There is no one who is behind that curtain to find out if the signatures match on those vote-by-mail ballots, or if they're actually from a true voter, um, or if the amount of vote-by-mail envelopes, which is where the votes come in from, match the vote-by-mail count that we get from our election officials. All of these things are the areas where questions can come up. And uh basically the uh uh Carter Baker uh committee back in the early 2000s identified that vote by mail would be the easiest place to cheat.

SPEAKER_02 3:48

Wow. Yeah. Yeah, and uh I I think there's quite a few people who would say that that is very apparent now after the fact, right?

SPEAKER_01 4:01

After the fact is very apropos because you have to get ahead of the game. And that's also what we uh instruct our umpires to do.

SPEAKER_02 4:09

I love that. So you actually you don't just point out, and this is what I especially love because everybody's so good at pointing out problems and and identifying the problem, but nobody ever has any real solutions um until you have some actual um um proposed solutions

How Citizens Verify Counts

SPEAKER_02 4:27

here. So, what are some realistic steps that could make elections more transparent uh and accountable?

SPEAKER_01 4:34

Well, it's it's you know, everybody believes it's their civic duty to vote, but they have to go a little bit further and make sure that their vote is counted properly and their election is free and fair. So uh the objective is to educate citizens both on the procedures uh and on the laws. Now, from the procedure standpoint, we teach uh pre-election, which is basically focused on the registrations. Because if you don't have a clean registration role, there are a lot of abil there's a lot of ability to uh find votes uh in what we currently have is on our registrations. And I'll get to that in a second. Um secondly, we work on election month, which it is now instead of election day as it was 20 years ago. Actually, in in some cases, like California, it's election two months. So uh uh that's a a focus uh on how to count the vote during election month. The key is you need to know how many votes have actually been cast in your election. Uh my my biggest uh item that I show to kind of uh prove that is if you went to a baseball game, nine-inning game, and the visiting team won five to three. And then the next day you're looking at the box scores in the newspaper, and the newspaper says that the home team won six to five. You wouldn't know the difference if you hadn't been to the game. So we have to have people at our election in our elections seeing the process and making sure that it works properly. And then the last thing we do is uh we talk about election audits. And that is basically counting the envelopes and matching that to the actual vote by mail ballots cast. That is the audit that we look at. Now that can go a lot further if there is a problem. Uh, if you have a total vote count of 100,000 and your election officials tell you that uh the count was 125,000, now you have to take immediate action because you have a problem with your election.

SPEAKER_02 6:40

Yes. What is so all right, let's say that you're somebody who is watching these things, you're keeping track of everything, you're just a you know, regular citizen, but you have access, we all have access to this information, correct?

SPEAKER_01 6:55

Well, not necessarily. Uh you have to you have to be there to see the game.

SPEAKER_02 7:01

Yeah. So you are somebody, let's just say hypothetically, you're somebody who has access to this information, you see the discrepancies. Um, what is your next actionable step? I mean, because everybody goes right to social media with everything, but by the time you know the word gets out that way, so I mean, is that the best way? Should you be going to your local? I mean, obviously you're going to your local officials, but in what way?

SPEAKER_01 7:25

Well, actually, uh, you you brought up a great point. And that point is, what right does a person have if they find a problem in their election? And

Using Federal Law To Act

SPEAKER_01 7:34

actually, the uh election laws that we focus on are the National Voter Registration Act of 1993 and the Help America Vote Act of 2002. Now, in the National Voter Registration Act, section 11, it is specific that a person, not a candidate, not a political party, not an elected official, but a person has the right to take action against their elected officials if they find a problem with their election. In the Help America Vote Act, section 402, it also allows a person, a person, to take action and get a hearing on an issue. And that hearing has to be done within 30 days. Okay. So this is why when you find problems with your election, let's say in vote by mail, which you begin to see coming in three days after they sent out, and vote by mail sent out 30 days prior to the election. But if you start to see problems there, you can take immediate action and basically contest the election that you have found a problem. And this is important because, as you say, if you can't take action, then everything you're looking at doesn't make any sense. But we have the right to take action. And finally, because standing is always brought in. Standing is a legal issue, and standing is uh an issue in civil uh cases, but this is uh a person against a elected or a uh governmental agency. And in the laws, both of those laws, a person has the right, and uh in addition to that, if you look at the First Amendment of the Constitution of the United States, we have the right to uh request redress of grievances from our government. That is the the fifth item in the first amendment of the constitution. So this will provide you standing. Uh I have a few cases going right now, pro se without an attorney. And uh and I've made standing in both of them.

SPEAKER_02 9:29

That actually led me to, I was wondering about that. Like, uh are there current cases or past cases of this and you know the the effectiveness of it? Has it overturned any um elections? Like I obviously I would be referring more to smaller local ones or anything like that. Is it just federal elections or or small local elections as well, like state?

SPEAKER_01 9:52

Well, we we uh we focus on federal elections. Okay, every state can run their elections any way they want to run them. Okay, uh that's that works. States have the concept that they also run federal elections. Well, they are a vendor to a federal election, you have to follow federal election laws. And one of the things that we uh talked about a little bit earlier was the voter rolls.

Cleaning Voter Rolls And IDs

SPEAKER_01 10:14

And one of the uh complaints, I'll call it, uh, that I have in Florida right now is with the Secretary of State because we have a list uh of inactive voters. Now, to become an inactive voter uh was asked to an attorney, and he said, Well, that's somebody who doesn't vote. Well, that's not quite how it works. Basically, an inactive voter is someone who the national change of address by the U.S. Postal Service has notified our election officials that this person has got a permanent change of address. So check with them on your election rolls. So in our state, we have 67 counties, and that list from the uh uh national change of address is given to our Secretary of State who divides it, divides it amongst the 67 counties. Now the supervisors in each county have to then send a return mail uh piece to the address that they have on record to see if that voter is still there. Now, what happens is most of these don't come back. I mean, we've tracked this with our election official in St. Lucie County. And basically, they are not removed from the voter rolls, they are put on as inactive voters. Now, this is basically someone who no longer is eligible to vote for the simple reason is you have to be 18, a citizen, and live in the jurisdiction that you're voting in. So if you've changed jurisdiction, you've lost that eligibility. Consequently, uh what I've got, and and this is pretty substantial because 15 to 20 percent of the registrations that are on the rolls are inactive. In California, it's five million people are on the inactive voter list. A great database if you want to play a game with an election. So we're trying to get that taken off, that the inactive voters list has to be taken off, and anybody who is an inactive voter list has to go and reapply uh to vote.

SPEAKER_02 12:14

Talk to me a little bit also about because this is uh of course one of the biggest topics going on right now regarding elections, illegal voting and of course the mail-in votes. Um I guess we have to take them separately because they are different. Um illegal voters. Uh are we going to see in the near future this this being stopped? I mean, I know the effort is obviously there, but what is your prediction with that if you if you have one?

SPEAKER_01 12:41

Well, only if election officials are going to enforce federal election laws. And this is the whole key. It's all enforcement. We've got the laws on the books. I mean, there are a lot of entities out there trying to change laws or bring in new laws or all of these other things. But we have laws on the on the books, uh, both in the National Voter Registration Act and Help America Vote Act. One of the biggest ones that that I like that is not uh implemented in states is that if you vote by mail, you're supposed to include a valid current photo ID. This validates if the vote came from uh somebody who is the voter because the voter's name is on the outside of the uh uh envelope. So this isn't done anywhere. And and this is part of the Help America Vote Act, uh, section 303. So following the law is the key. Now, with uh people who are here illegally who are trying to vote, uh to vote, you're supposed to get to show either a driver's license or the last four digits of your social security number to prove who you are. Unfortunately, the law, which is the National Voter Registration Act that was passed in '93, has a provision that if you don't have either, you can still get a unique identifier number. This is another case I have at the district court in DC because the uh Election Assistance Commission, who oversees elections, federal elections uh nationwide, has a standardized form for online registrations. And it has this clause that says I don't have either, and they can still get a unique identifier number. So right now, and I've had this going on for about nine months now, uh, we're trying to get them to take that off of their registration and also notify all states that if you have this I don't have either box to check, take it off. And also that anybody who is registered checking that box be removed from the voter rolls.

SPEAKER_02 14:44

Wow. You you are offering so much citizen education here that it's just wild. And it, I'm so, I'm so pleased that your book covers so much in the way that you explain everything, it's so clear and concise. I because I, you know, I'm the first one to admit I I don't know nearly enough. And and I also at the same time agree that, you know, as a as a voter, as a as a citizen, it's it's important for us to know these things, to understand um our our role in all of this. Um, because I I think we do get very, we have gotten very, very passive. Um, you know, we can like I mentioned before, we complain on social media about all the things that we're hearing that are wrong. But, you know, I think that's kind of where it stops. Like we kind of get to that point of, well, I well, I can't do anything about it or I don't understand it. So I I love that right now with your book, there's very little excuse to to be able to say, I can't do anything about it. I don't know anything about this stuff. So uh I think it's wonderful that that you're doing that. Um if someone listening, go ahead.

SPEAKER_01 15:52

In addition, uh we I have a 35-minute uh basically uh video that's on our website, which is theelectionexperts.net. That's going up on the website, I believe, today. And anybody can get on that. It's free, and they can see the 35 minutes of uh early voting, uh, I mean uh uh the pre-election process, election month process, and the audit process. Uh that's all on that video to educate people so that they can uh either buy the book or listen to the video, or they can contact me at theelectionexpert at gmail.com if they have a question.

SPEAKER_02 16:30

I love that. If there was uh one just one practical um action that someone could take today, you know, they're seeing something's wrong or they're they're sensing that something's very wrong here. Uh, what's one practical, actionable step that they could take today to get involved and help right some of these problems?

SPEAKER_01 16:51

Well, the first would be, uh, and this is why we call them election umpires, the first would be to understand the laws. Because the laws are the things that are being uh not being followed, and but nobody's pointing it out. I mean, there's no accountability in our elections. We believe that our election officials give us the number, and that's the true number. And of course, uh our uh our government would never lie to us, so uh that's an understandable situation. But being able to verify and force them to prove that the numbers they have are correct is the key. And that's the responsibility, the civic responsibility of every citizen in this country.

Apathy, 2020, And Watching Closely

SPEAKER_01 17:30

I mean, if you look at voting, and you're right, we're very apathetic on our voting. Take Mandami in New York, who's uh who we hear so much about. Well, if you look at the amount of vote, he only got 15% of the vote in New York City. I mean, he got a little over a million votes, and there's eight million voters in uh in in New York City. So where are all the people who are supposed to be voting?

SPEAKER_02 17:50

Yeah, yeah, great question. And and it goes right, like you said, right back to the the apathy. People have um come under the belief that their vote doesn't matter, you know. And I think you you hit it right on the head. It's because so many of us don't truly understand how elections work, how any of this uh works. And I and I suspect that quite a bit of that is deliberate, you know. I I think that apathy is actually um fed to us in a way, right? So a lot of us will stay home and they just get the people that they, you know, wink, wink, nod, nod, want to vote.

SPEAKER_01 18:25

Um this this is this is a big problem because basically we can't have a republic without our citizens being involved.

SPEAKER_00 18:31

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 18:32

And the situation where it seems to be that everything is uh not correct, that there's the violations in our laws, that our votes don't count, makes us stay home and not vote. And that is the worst thing that can happen because that's how we slip into despotism by not electing the people that we want to represent us in Congress.

SPEAKER_02 18:53

Absolutely. Yep. You can't you can't complain if you don't get involved, if you don't vote, right? There's a lot of uh lot of crowd couch critics out there that have a lot to say online, but you know, when you ask them, did you vote? You know, are you involved? Are you what do you know about your local candidates? And if the answer is no and nothing, then you can't complain because you're part of the problem, right? And I I have at a period in my life been a part of the problem. So, you know, and then I love this education process uh uh of learning all of these things. Um I I have to ask, you know, so you've uh you know, a couple of decades at least for you uh in this. Uh does anything going on now surprise you, or did you see this coming down the road?

SPEAKER_01 19:40

I think uh we saw problems coming down the road, but I think 2020 they exploded. Yeah. Because in 2020, uh we were uh visually seeing the in the primary now for the 2020 election, we were seeing the signature match process, which is a very simple process, anybody can do because uh uh bank tellers do it all day long, and they match signatures all the time. So we were in there and I happened to see 32 uh vote-by-mail ballots go through with nothing in the signature block. And the signature on the our uh election officials uh program also had nothing in the signature block. So a blank in a blank equals a signature match. Consequently, that is what kind of fired it up to find out wait a second, you know, we've got some serious problems. And uh, you know, I could go on about what happened after that, but the key is it's litifier and uh education is primary. Knowing the law is primary, knowing what rights you have as a citizen is primary. You learn that, and now you have probably more knowledge than any uh election attorney that's out there and your election officials. So when you can go in and point to the law, which is in the book, uh basically and say, you know, you're not following this section of federal law. At that point in time, they do have a problem. And the big key is as we uh educate these election umpires, it's not only the service and and the focus that they are that they're looking, but the key is that election officials now realize that somebody's looking. My analogy on that is very simple. I drive on this on the uh highways of Florida and I've got a pretty heavy foot. And I'll be going 70, 75. You know, I'm going over the speed limit, but I'm not in the fast lane because people are going by me going 100. But it's amazing if there is a highway patrolman out in the distance that you see that's in the median, it's amazing that by the time we get to that highway patrolman, we're all going 70.

SPEAKER_02 21:52

Yes, yes.

SPEAKER_01 21:54

So the key is very we need light on our elections, and the only people who can shed light on our elections are the citizens of this country. No think tank, no elected official, no uh no uh uh people in government can do this. Only the citizens. We the people.

SPEAKER_02 22:11

Absolutely.

Resources, Book, Video, Closing

SPEAKER_02 22:12

What's one thing you hope readers take away from your book that will leave them feeling uh more informed and empowered than frustrated, like we've all been feeling?

SPEAKER_01 22:24

Oh, absolutely what you mentioned that there's a solution to the problem. And here's the solution. I mean, this this book is nothing more than an educ education piece. It's it's not a big read, it's uh only about 25 pages. And you know, it it's right to the fact. And if you have any questions in it, I'll just you can contact me. But you know, solving the problem, as you said in the beginning, everybody talks about the problem, but nobody has a solution. That's what keeps me awake at night.

SPEAKER_02 22:51

I mean we need more people like you.

SPEAKER_01 22:53

Well, we can have them. All they have to do is either get on my website, theelectionexperts.net, and spend 35 minutes or purchase the book which is available to Amazon. And then if you we also have um Zoom meetings, uh we've been having them Monday, Wednesday, and Friday. Uh, but now we're gonna put this all online so people can learn at their own pace at their own time.

SPEAKER_02 23:16

Wow, that is so wonderful. Mark, thank you so much for what you do and and coming on the show and sharing all this with everyone. Um again, I can't state it enough how how important this is. If you, you know, care about your country, if you care about um the the legacy and the future that we're leaving to our children, this is imperative for us to learn and understand and of course get involved and and be vocal and um you know and just be a part of the process. So thank you again for for sharing with us today.

SPEAKER_01 23:46

Oh, also thank you so much for uh having me on. I appreciate it very much.

SPEAKER_02 23:50

Absolutely. My pleasure, guys. All of the links that you need will be in the show notes, so you'll be able to click right on his book and get to the website and all of those good things. We thank you guys for watching today, and we'll see you in the next episode. Take care.

SPEAKER_04 24:03

You've got a story worth sharing. Now it's time to tell it well. Whether you're an author, entrepreneur, influencer, or podcast guest, stepping in front of the camera or microphone can feel overwhelming. On the other side of the mic is your practical, encouraging guide to becoming a confident, authentic, and engaging interviewee. Written by media personality and best selling author Elsa Kurt. This book blends real world wisdom from hundreds of interviews with a touch of humor, grace, and heart. It's more than a how to. It's a roadmap to presence, professionalism, and peace in every conversation.