Trust In Elections Archives

Report

What We Learned from Evaluating the Impact of Our Election Security and Confidence Investments

July 29, 2022

In the fall of 2021, Democracy Fund commissioned an evaluation of our Election Security and Confidence portfolio – the major focus of the Elections & Voting Program’s Trust in Elections strategy – to summarize our investments, activities, and impact and help us make informed decisions about future investments. Here, we reflect on the history of our election security work and share key findings from the evaluation. For a deeper dive, we invite you to read the full report.  

History of the Election Security & Confidence Portfolio

The 2016 U.S. Presidential Election was a turning point for election security following attempts by foreign actors, namely Russian, Chinese, and Iranian groups, to disrupt the election with cyber-attacks. After the election, as information surfaced about how foreign actors scanned – and in a few cases gained entry into – several state and local election networks, it became clear that election security was now a national security concern. In response to these events, the Democracy Fund Elections & Voting Program added a body of work in 2017 to focus on improving security and confidence in our elections. With an emphasis on election security, this portfolio aimed to fortify the election system to prevent further foreign interference and counter cybersecurity threats by investing in tools and training for election officials. As part of these efforts, we also launched the Election Validation Project, which focused on expanding the use of post-election audits, and Democracy Fund Voice supported coalitions that advocated for, and secured, federal funding for elections in three straight years – 2018, 2019, and 2020 – which was the first funding for elections since the passage of HAVA in 2000.

The Elections & Voting Program’s initial landscaping and research led to the development of four core areas for grantmaking to prevent election interference based on the threats posed by foreign actors and vulnerable security infrastructure. These core grantmaking areas included:

Fortifying the field with workable solutions and best practices
Empowering election officials to advocate for funding to strengthen election cybersecurity
Researching verification practices and resiliency efforts
Public messaging on the legitimate risks to election systems

Evaluating the Portfolio’s Impact

An evaluation of the portfolio’s impact, conducted by Fernandez Advisors, focused on identifying the impact, growth, and sustainability of our investments to improve both election security and confidence in election outcomes. The report found that our investments in election security resources and tools that increased the capacity of state and local election administrators to identify and manage security threats were among the most valuable. In particular, government agency partners noted the critical role that Democracy Fund played by acting quickly and early to take the financial risks necessary to develop and pilot new election security resources (e.g., trainings, tools, technical assistance, and playbooks), which were eventually adapted by local, state, and federal government agencies once the proof of concept had been established.

Our early investments in election cybersecurity contributed to the successful execution of the 2020 election. These investments in enhancing election cybersecurity through training and tools and the push for additional federal funding for elections helped create the conditions for what the U.S Department of Homeland Security called, “one of the most secure elections in history.”

Summary of Findings & Key Takeaways

Despite our work on election security and cybersecurity, public trust in the election system is dangerously low. When we started our work in election security, we believed that investing in election cybersecurity would protect the system from foreign interference, which would lead to increased public trust in elections. The first part of the hypothesis proved accurate—states and the federal government have adopted many of our grantees’ election cybersecurity training and tools, freeing election officials to turn their attention to other issues in the system. However, hyperpartisanship and threats of authoritarianism have further reduced public trust in elections and – in ways that were simultaneously unexpected and should have been anticipated – exposed new elections vulnerabilities including viral mis-and dis-information, the spread of unproven ballot review techniques, and attacks on election officials.

When we began investing in election security, it was still a young field with few philanthropic players. Democracy Fund played a role in catalyzing new approaches to improving election security, many of which are now embedded in the election system and the work of election officials. The 2016 election was a wake-up call that exposed the security vulnerabilities of our election system, and the system responded by shoring up the infrastructure. We are proud to have played a role in that initial response, and still believe that a resilient system is essential to ensuring free, fair, and equitable elections in this country.

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Toolkit

Knowing It’s Right: Limiting the Risk of Certifying Elections

Tammy Patrick

May 22, 2020

Every election we ask ourselves, what motivates voters to participate? Could it be the love of a charismatic candidate? The dislike of a less-than-desirable one? Passion for a specific ballot initiative? Do voters show up to the polls out of habit? The answer is as varied as the voting population, as is the reason voters do not participate.

Research shows that while voters’ confidence in their own vote being counted accurately remains relatively constant, their belief that results at the national level are correct is in decline. As we work through reestablishing trust in our elections following Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s 22-month long investigation, the threat of interference in our elections by another nation-state remains.

The American public wants to believe that when they vote it means something—we are teaching elections officials about a new way to audit our elections and check for the accuracy every voter deserves. As with most election administration processes, implementation success lies in preparation—and Risk Limiting Audits (RLAs), which some proponents often refer to as the “cheap and easy” method to check the accuracy of the results, are no exception.

Democracy Fund recently launched the Election Validation Project to increase trust in elections through rigorous audits, standards, and testing. Part of this project is the release of Knowing it’s Right—the first Risk-Limiting Audit report which serves as a summary to capture where we currently stand on risk-limiting audits; an overview of what policymakers need to know; and as a guide or workbook on how practitioners can prepare to implement. The materials demonstrate the rigor that a jurisdiction needs to go through in order to conduct a meaningful audit, the decisions that need to be made along the way, and what to contemplate as this relatively young procedure continues to evolve.

The what and the how of an RLA are not well understood by many, which is why we created guidance for elections administrators to save time, money and ensure that the correct candidate won.

The idea is simple, although not many people have heard of a risk-limiting audit. Risk-limiting audit is a post-election audit that takes a random sample of voted ballots and manually examines those ballots for evidence the originally reported outcome is correct. An RLA limits the risk of certifying a contest with the wrong winner.

We are proud to support Jennifer Morrell, a nationally recognized election official with over eight years of experience managing local elections, to lead the Election Validation Project and spearhead the outreach on this guidance. Morrell’s work in Colorado was instrumental in the successful implementation of the first statewide risk-limiting audit and she has since spent time traveling across the country working on post-election audits. This report is the cumulative documentation of her effort.

We believe sound election administration policy and its practical application can ensure the American electorate is well served and that our democracy is strong. We are dedicated to that work and appreciate all who strive for that ideal along with us.

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Key to Trusted Elections: Understanding the Voter Experience

Natalie Adona

October 18, 2018

Democracy Fund’s healthy democracy framework identifies voting as the cornerstone of our democracy. The elections process ought to be free, fair, accessible and secure; give voters the information that they need to make informed choices; and must “provide voters with confidence in the integrity of election outcomes and assurance that they have a voice in our democracy.”

We know that the public’s trust and confidence in elections provides the basis for a healthy election system and a healthy democracy. However, prior to heightened concerns around elections cybersecurity, we were surprised to find that there are not many people studying this dimension of public opinion. In the spirit of learning and dialogue, we decided to examine data collected from 2008-2016 via the Cooperative Congressional Election Study to better understand the public’s views on our elections process.

In collaboration with Paul Gronke of Reed College, I am excited to share our findings in a new Democracy Fund report, “Understanding the Voter Experience: The Public’s View of Election Administration and Reform.” This report offers insight into the individual-level decision to vote or not, the public’s’ knowledge and application of voter registration requirements, the over all voter experience, and the public’s trust and confidence in U.S. elections.

The Good News

In Understanding the Voter Experience, we find that the public generally perceives that elections are run with integrity, understands most of what is required of them in order to vote, and have a good experience when voting. When compared to other institutions of in trust, election administration ranks well.

Other encouraging findings include that many people realize that they are responsible for registering and updating their registration; most respondents provide good or excellent job performance ratings for their poll workers and their state and local election officials; and majorities of the folks we surveyed are confident that their own votes and votes across the country are counted as intended.

Areas for Improvement

Our report also shows that the public can benefit from ongoing educational efforts—especially in states that have recently implemented modernization reforms or that have recently changed identification requirements. Significant numbers of our respondents were confused or unfamiliar with their state voter identification requirements pre-election, and our data indicate that they learn about these requirements post-election.

We also found a significant number of people did not know whether online voter registration is available in their state. In fact, nearly 50 percent of the respondents did not know whether their respective states offered online voter registration, and over 17 percent answered incorrectly as to whether their state offered it.

Our report also examines the public’s heavily reliance on the internet for basic election information, which is important because we find that a lack of information may keep people from voting, especially down-ballot races. The data shows that approximately 30-40 percent of respondents consistently felt they did not have enough information to vote on key races like state attorney general, secretary of state, and state senator races.

We hope that “Understanding the Voter Experience” will help election officials, lawmakers, advocates, and others better understand attitudes of the American people toward one of their most-cherished rights, and will encourage more probing of public attitudes about our election system. As you read the report, we welcome your questions and feedback. Please do not hesitate to email me at nadona@democracyfund.org.

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Increasing Trust in Elections: Democracy Fund’s Election Validation Project

Tammy Patrick

May 29, 2018

What motivates voters to participate? The love of a charismatic candidate? The disgust of a less-than desirable one? Passion for a specific ballot initiative? Habit? The answer is as varied as the voting population, as is the reason that voters do not participate. Research shows that while voters’ confidence in their own vote being counted accurately remains relatively constant, their belief that results at the national level are correct is in decline. The threat of interference in our elections by another nation-state has heightened this sentiment.

At Democracy Fund, we believe that our election system can remain both accessible and secure. We invest in organizations working to bolster public confidence in our elections through modern, voter-centric election administration and registration, as well as other projects that are helping to identify and elevate best practices and protocols to improve the American voting experience. With these goals in mind, Democracy Fund is launching the Election Validation Project which aims to increase trust in elections through rigorous audits, standards, and testing.

Jennifer Morrell, a nationally recognized election official with over eight years of experience managing local elections, has joined Democracy Fund as a consultant to lead this project. Jennifer’s work in Colorado was instrumental in the successful implementation of the first statewide risk-limiting audit and she has been an outspoken advocate of implementing election audit standards beyond just post-election audits and has a vision of creating uniform audit and testing standards for all critical components of the voting system.

According to Jennifer, “Many states do a tremendous job testing voting equipment and performing post-election audits, but the scope and method vary. Improving trust in elections requires a uniform set of audit standards that go beyond auditing ballot tabulation equipment.”

The Presidential Commission on Election Administration (PCEA) called for the review of testing and auditing being done by the states in their 2014 report as well as the need to replace aging voting equipment—another reason why testing and auditing is so critical. Jennifer has been a proponent of testing and audit standards as the next iteration of guidelines to boost confidence and trust in our elections—and the election administration profession. In her experience as an election official, PCEA served as the foundation for collaboration amongst the profession and transformed it into a field of public service.

As states purchase new voting equipment and implement improved audit requirements, our hope is that we can provide information and guidelines about risk-limiting audits tailored to election administrators as well as policy makers and the voting public through our work. Jennifer’s work will include:

Creating a collaborative of election officials and subject matter experts to identify best practices for pre- and post- election audits, standards, and testing.
Completing an assessment of the current state of post-election audits and outlining a path towards risk-limiting audits.
Meeting with election officials to illustrate the pros and cons of different types of audits and providing a plain language explanation of what a risk-limiting audit is and how it works.
Most importantly, Jennifer will be working directly with a handful of states that can benefit from observation and informing their auditing and testing policies.

This new project comes at a critical time in election administration, and Jennifer understands what needs to be done to be successful, “This is a complex project that will take some time and some trial and error before it is successful. But starting the discussion is the first step. I am optimistic that election professionals at all levels will be willing to collaborate and lend their ideas and expertise to this endeavor. The table for this discussion needs to be large. We need researchers, we need technologists, we need policy experts and statisticians, but most importantly we need election officials who understand the complexity of running a successful election.”

Democracy Fund is thrilled to engage with Jennifer on this project and to be able to offer additional tools and guidance for election officials to use. We are confident that the collaboration will serve to inform the field and make certain that our elections continue to demonstrate the validity and integrity of the Great American Experiment.

If you are interested in working with Jennifer, she is available to work with states and present at association meetings on these topics. For more information, reach out to jmorrell@democracyfund.org.

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Brief

Voter Sentiments On The U.S. Election System

Natalie Adona and Paul Gronke

December 2, 2016

The 2016 election was one of the most hard fought and divisive in recent memory. The Democracy Fund continues to be troubled by some of the rhetoric regarding the “hacking” and “rigging” of the American election system, two topics that animated so much discussion from across the ideological spectrum this cycle. We believe the long-term impact of these messages undermines the legitimacy of the election system and further erodes public trust in our political system.

Our new infographic is based on a national survey of voters after the 2016 election that was designed to provide the Democracy Fund a snapshot of public opinion about our election system and the possible effect of the rhetoric around election fraud. This data demonstrates that while most voters had a pleasant voting experience, deep concerns exist about the integrity of American elections.

Most Americans had a pleasant voting experience and expressed confidence in the outcome.

Let’s start with the good news: most Americans had a pleasant voting experience. When asked, 85.3 percent of voters said the best description of their voting experience was that it was “pleasant.” This is consistent with other surveys that capture voter opinions about election administration. For example, the Cooperative Congressional Election Study (CCES) has found the majority of in person voters report having “excellent” or “good” interactions with poll workers and are generally confident that their own ballots were counted as intended. Results from the CCES also indicate that a majority people think that election officials are fair most of the time. (1)

Because public opinion about elections can be influenced by one’s political associations and candidate preferences, we broke down these results by party identification. It turned out that party differences were minimal. The percentage of Republicans who reported a pleasant experience (89) was higher than among Independents (83.6) and Democrats (82.5). Still, 4 out of 5 voters who cast a ballot for Hillary Clinton reported a pleasant voting experience.

Overall, these results show that election officials ensured not only that voters can participate in the political process, but also that voters can feel good about participating. To anyone who has ever worked in an election office, this is very encouraging. A positive voter experience is never guaranteed—it has to be earned. A significant portion of the report from the Presidential Commission on Election Administration (PCEA) focused on the positive benefits that would accrue from a “customer service” orientation. A great level of detail and care is required to successfully administer an election and we want to take a moment to recognize and appreciate the hard work of election officials.

Many are concerned about voter fraud in national elections.

But let’s not get too far ahead of ourselves – just because most voters walked away feeling good doesn’t mean that there isn’t more work to be done. Hearing claims that the election could be “rigged” or that other countries might “hack” the American election system may have heightened concerns about voter fraud. Even though there is virtually no evidence that voter fraud occurs at a scale large enough to sway electoral outcomes, confidence in vote counts decreases significantly the further removed the vote total is from the local jurisdiction. Survey data has consistently shown that respondents are less confident in state- and national-level ballot counts than in local counts. (2)

Lower confidence in national-level outcomes may make the public vulnerable to claims that the election system is “rigged” or that results could be “hacked.” As shown in the infographic, 39 percent of voters were “very” or “somewhat” concerned that an electronic security breach or hack impacted national vote counts. A slightly lower but significant percentage of voters (38) had similar concerns around parties and candidates changing election results to create false or inaccurate totals. Of that group, 35 percent of Trump voters and 40 percent of Clinton voters answered that they were “very” or “somewhat” concerned that the parties or candidates changed election results.

Minority communities and younger voters were more likely to report problems and distrust with voting.

Other concerns emerged from our survey. Twenty-three percent of African Americans and 18 percent of Hispanics said that they felt fearful or intimidated voting, or had problems voting, compared to 12 percent of white voters. More than half of Hispanic respondents and 58 percent of African Americans expressed answered they were “very” or “somewhat” concerned that an electronic security breach or hack impacted vote counts, compared to 32 percent of white voters. Hispanics and African Americans were also more likely than whites to answer that they were “very” or “somewhat” concerned that a candidate or party changed the election results to create false or inaccurate vote counts.

The data revealed that age may also shape opinions about fraud. Twice as many younger respondents were “very” or “somewhat” concerned that a candidate or party changed the election results (49 percent compared to 24 percent of respondents 55 and over). It turns out that this pattern is nearly linear across smaller age cohorts, across all items, something we hope to explore in the future.

In one respect, it is encouraging that older voters, who presumably have more experience with voting, are more confident. But this also implies that younger and less experienced voters may be especially susceptible to claims about election fraud, and this could dissuade them from voting. To take just one example, we discovered that 17 percent of respondents under 55 reported that they felt fearful or intimidated, or had problems voting, compared to just 11 percent of respondents 55 years and older.

Distrust in the election system is unhealthy, and it’s notable that younger and minority voters overall were more likely to report fear and intimidation while voting and were more likely to express concern about election integrity. Given the sometimes brutal tone of the campaigns this election cycle, we felt it was important to highlight these data points as worthy of further examination.

Building Trust in Elections

Despite fears around voter fraud, polling place security, and calls for an increased number of poll watchers from the campaigns, local election officials successfully served the voting public. As we look through our data, we are very encouraged by evidence that voters are more likely to think the outcome was fair when educated about key security features. Our survey data confirm that independence, transparency, integrity, competence, and fairness translate into higher levels of public approval of the elections system.

Election officials, advocates, and others should think about how they talk about election security with voters and look for opportunities to foster trust in the system. Our data shows a need for increased voter education in three important ways:

First, the fact that certain minorities were more likely to report some kind of problem with voting should raise concerns about election conduct and hopefully will lead to meaningful ways for election officials and others to address problems in particular communities.
Second, because younger voters were also more likely to express concerns about election security and are probably less experienced in voting, election officials and advocates should focus their educational efforts on younger voters as well.
Third, voters from both sides of the political aisle have concerns about election fraud and are receptive to the information and rhetoric that they hear about election processes, which opens up an opportunity for election officials to show voters how their offices address these concerns.

We will continue to explore our data and are looking forward to sharing our findings as they emerge. One of our takeaways from this survey is that, even with all the good work that’s been done, voters need our help to understand election security and integrity and will listen when they’re given correct information. We hope that these survey results will trigger productive conversations between voters, election officials, advocates, and others about the processes currently in place that keep elections secure.

About the Authors

Natalie Adona is a Research Associate for the Elections Program at the Democracy Fund. Paul Gronke is a professor of political science at Reed College and serves as an academic consultant to the Democracy Fund’s Elections Program. He is also the Director of the Early Voting Information Center in Portland, Oregon.

Endnotes

(1) The Cooperative Congressional Election Study has been administered in each federal election since 2006. The data are available at http://projects.iq.harvard.edu/cces/home.

(2) Michael W. Sances and Charles Stewart III. “Partisanship and Confidence in the Vote Count: Evidence from U.S. National Elections since 2000.” Electoral Studies 40 (December 2015): 176–88. doi:10.1016/j.electstud.2015.08.004.