Today we are pleased to unveil a new and improved electionline — America’s only politics-free source for election administration news and information.
In January 2018, we announced that electionline had become a project of Democracy Fund’s Elections program. We felt then, as we do now, that it is a vital platform for finding trusted news and information about the people and processes that guide our nation’s elections, and for sharing tools, best practices, and innovative ideas for improving the voting experience. Our simple goals for redeveloping the site were to enhance its capabilities and expand content — but our long-term plans are to create a place where readers are exposed to new ideas, opportunities for continuing education, and relationship building.
To do this, we started by thinking long and hard about the site’s current audience and their needs. Starting today, election administrators, academics, voting advocates and other regular readers of electionline will find new items of interest on the site, including:
A calendar of national, state and other field-relevant events;
A directory of organizations and their areas of expertise;
Reports, trainings, tools, guides, and other materials;
A marketplace featuring job openings in the elections field and information on used election equipment for sale; and
Better search functionality throughout
Electionline remains the only place on the internet to find state-by-state curation of daily election administration news. In addition to publishing the classic electionline Weekly newsletter, we will also begin sharing original reports and exclusivecontent from leaders and experts in the field — making the site a must-read for local election officials, civic organizations, and journalists who cover elections.
While redeveloping the site, we learned two really insightful lessons that might be helpful for others who are developing virtual spaces for information sharing and engagement.
First, collaborate with your audiences and include some “outsider” perspective. As our team weighed important decisions about the look and feel of the website, we were grateful to receive insight and direction from many readers who already trust and rely on electionline.
Second, reflect your values. Redeveloping or creating a new platform is an opportunity to reinforce essential characteristics that inform readers who your organization is, and what they care about. For us it meant focusing on authenticity (even if it means publishing unflattering stories about ourselves or our partners); transparency about who we support with resources in the field; and cultivating greater interest for under-covered areas of importance like voting trends for overlooked communities.
Through this process, we hope we were able to successfully incorporate the feedback we heard from current readers. We also hope that the new electionline website more deeply resonates with all those who are interested in elections in America. We’re excited to hear your thoughts and reactions as you explore the new website. Please visit www.electionline.org and let us know what you think!
Washington, D.C. – Today, Democracy Fund, in collaboration with Reed College Professor Paul Gronke, released a new report on Understanding The Voter Experience: The Public’s View of Election Administration and Reform. It shows that while most Americans approve of the job their election officials are doing and trust the results of the election, confusion about voting processes and lack of information about candidates are the top reasons people decide not to vote. Recognizing the information gap between voters and local and state election officials, Democracy Fund is also proud to announce the relaunch of electionline.org—a crucial resource for trusted, politics-free news and information about the people and processes that guide our nation’s elections.
“Understanding the experiences that American voters face during an election cycle is key to improving the electoral system and increasing voter turnout,” said Natalie Adona, Senior Research and Learning Associate with Democracy Fund’s Elections Program. “Our data provides insights into the voter journey from beginning to end: individual level decisions to vote or not, general awareness and familiarity with voter registration requirements, and the public’s trust and confidence in U.S. elections.”
Highlights from Understanding the Voter Experience, include:
The public ranks election administration well in terms of trust when compared to other institutions—outranking Congress, the Executive Branch, and the Press. In 2016, 95 percent of people gave a good or excellent job performance ratings for their poll workers and nearly 60 percent gave high rankings to their local election officials.
87 percent of respondents were confident that their own ballot was counted as cast in 2016, but only 71 percent were confident in the national vote count.
In general, people understand they are responsible for their voter registration, but nearly half of the respondents were confused or unfamiliar with their state voter identification requirements.
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.
“Far too many respondents felt that they did not have enough information to vote,” said Adam Ambrogi, Director of Democracy Fund’s Elections Program. “Democracy only works if the American public understands how to vote, has enough information to make informed decisions, is confident in our election process, and trusts the results.”
As part of Democracy Fund’s commitment to fostering a modern, trusted, voter-centric election system, it is also unveiling the new and improved electionline, which continues to be the only place to find state-by-state curation of daily election administration news. In addition to publishing the classic electionline Weekly newsletter, the website will also share original reports and exclusive content from leaders and experts in the field—making the site a must-read for local election officials, civic organizations, and journalists who cover elections.
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ABOUT DEMOCRACY FUND
Democracy Fund is a bipartisan foundation created by eBay founder and philanthropist Pierre Omidyar to help ensure that our political system can withstand new challenges and deliver on its promise to the American people. Since 2011, Democracy Fund has invested more than $100 million in support of a healthy democracy, including modern elections, effective governance, and a vibrant public square. To learn more, visit www.democracyfund.org or follow @democracyfund.
ABOUT ELECTIONLINE
Electionline is America’s only nonpartisan, non-advocacy clearinghouse for news and information about the people and processes that guide our nation’s elections and a hub for sharing tools, best practices, and innovative ideas for improving the voting experience. A project of Democracy Fund, electionline aims to support voter-centric elections that are accessible, fair, and secure. To learn more, visit www.electionline.org or follow @electionline.
This report provides insights into the state of public opinion about election administration and reform. The findings are primarily drawn from the 2008–2016 Cooperative Congressional Election Study (CCES), a survey conducted each federal election year since 2006. i We hope that the findings contained in this report, and suggestions for future research, will help election officials, lawmakers, advocates, and others understand attitudes of the American people toward one of their most-cherished rights.
The takeaways in this report include:
Deciding to Vote
A significant number of nonvoters choose not to participate because they do not like the candidates, and some may be generally unenthusiastic about participating.
Lack of information may keep people from voting in certain contests, especially down-ballot races.
Navigating Voter Registration
Many people know that they are responsible for registering and updating registration. Most know where to register and that a move requires them to update their information. Most people are likely to rely on internet searches for registration information.
Many people could benefit from ongoing education about how the voter registration process works in their states, especially states that have recently implemented modernization reforms.
The majority of people support online voter registration but might not know whether it is available in their state. Some continue to prefer to use the paper registration form. The public does not currently express strong support or opposition to automatic voter registration.
The Voter Experience
There is not one most-preferred method of voting. Many like the convenience of early in-person and absentee or vote-by-mail voting. Absentee or vote-by-mail voters are more likely than early in-person voters to say that they distrust certain aspects of the voting process. Not surprisingly, voters provide compelling reasons to continue to vote in the way they have done before.
People express a higher tolerance for waiting in line when they are told that the wait is 15 minutes. Tolerance decreases as the anticipated wait time increases. i More about the CCES is offered in the Survey Methodology section of this report and on the project’s website at: https://cces.gov.harvard.edu.
Significant numbers of people are confused or unfamiliar with their state voter identification requirements. Many appear to learn about these requirements during election cycles, suggesting the need for ongoing education.
Overwhelming majorities of people provide good or excellent job performance ratings for their poll workers. Most people like that poll workers are polite and knowledgeable and demonstrate other signs of excellent customer service.
Trust and Confidence Measures
Election administrators enjoy higher levels of public trust when compared to officials in other public institutions. State and local election officials should continue to enjoy high public approval if they are viewed as nonpartisan experts.
Levels of voter confidence are influenced by the voter’s polling place experience, partisanship, and support for the winner (sometimes referred to as the “winner’s effect”). Most are confident that their own votes and votes across the country are counted as intended, though there is a noticeable gap between individual and national level confidence. There was a dramatic up-tick in voter confidence levels among Republicans and Trump supporters in 2016.
Perceptions of voter fraud, electoral integrity, and electoral fairness are deeply intertwined and powerful indicators of a healthy democracy. Most people believe that our elections are run with integrity and that outcomes are fair, but perceptions about the prevalence of voter fraud raise concerns.
We hope that readers find this informative report as interesting as we do. Thank you for reading!
Democracy Fund, in partnership with Reed College, is excited to announce a new survey of local election officials (LEOs) on issues relevant to election administration, integrity, and reform. Beginning the week of May 7, 2018, participants will be chosen randomly and will receive an email invitation to complete the survey. Below, we explain our goals for the DF-LEO survey, provide a sneak peek into its content, and explain why we think it will be a valuable resource to local and state election officials, policy experts, advocates, and others interested in American democracy.
We have two main motivations for the survey. First, we want to better understand LEO’s views about the roles, responsibilities, and challenges of their work. By tapping into their experience and deep knowledge of election administration, we hope to uncover new ideas to improve the capacity and quality of elections, and address LEOs’ most urgent needs.
Second, we want to amplify the voices of LEOs in national, regional, and state conversations about election administration, integrity, and reform. Far too often, these conversations don’t consider the “street view” realities of election administration. The insights of LEOs from across the country are vital and should be considered in the national dialogue about improving and securing our elections.
We’ve purposely kept the DF-LEO survey brief (only 10 minutes long) and easy to complete. The survey is conducted using Qualtrics, a state of the art, secure platform for survey administration. The survey covers several topics that include:
Changes in election administration over time, and whether these changes have made the elections process easier or more difficult for local election officials and voters;
The role of technology and whether the integration of tech improves elections overall;
The impact of voter registration modernization policies; and
The availability of financial, human, and other resources needed to make elections run smoothly.
DF-LEO was inspired by previous efforts to better understand the views and needs of the LEO community. Over ten years ago, the Congressional Research Service and the Government Accountability Office surveyed LEOs about their perspectives on the implementation of the Help America Vote Act of 2002 (HAVA), among other things. Most readers know HAVA’s requirements 1) to designate a state official responsible for the creation and maintenance of a statewide voter registration database; and 2) to replace old voting equipment—specifically punch card ballots—with newer forms of voting technology, had a long-lasting impact on the conduct of elections at the local level. The CRS and GAO surveys helped us understand how local election officials were adapting to the new law.
We also relied on the survey work that MIT Professor Charles Stewart shepherded for the Presidential Commission on Election Administration (PCEA) in 2013. The PCEA was prompted by President Obama’s call to promote the efficient administration of U.S. elections. The PCEA’s mission was to make public new recommendations for improving our elections—which it did in a 2014 report. The PCEA sought to include LEO input in crafting their report and recommendations, and we continue in the same spirit of inclusion.
Democracy Fund is committed to supporting election officials through grant making, research, and educational activities—especially in the lead up to an election where the integrity of our election system remains under close scrutiny. The best way to meet that commitment is to listen to their opinions, perspectives, concerns, and needs. DF-LEO is an important part of this effort.
In constructing the survey, we’ve consulted experts including local election officials, state election directors, and scholars who are experienced in survey research. These reviewers have provided us with constructive feedback on the survey questionnaire and are committed to working with us on interpreting and reporting the results.
We hope that you are as excited as we are to see the results of the survey. All individual responses to the survey will remain confidential, but broad findings from the DF-LEO will be published this summer. We look forward to sharing the results with policy experts, researchers, and advocates so they will better understand the perspectives of election officials and can collaborate alongside them to ensure a modern, secure, and trustworthy election system for the American people.
For those with questions and comments about DF-LEO, please feel free to reach out to:
NATALIE ADONA, JD/MPA
Senior Research and Learning Associate, Elections Program at Democracy Fund nadona@democracyfund.org
202.420.7931
PAUL GRONKE, PhD
Professor of Political Science, Reed College
Director, Early Voting Information Center paul.gronke@reed.edu
503.517.7393
Democracy Fund Senior Advisor Tammy Patrick issued the following statement in response to the dissolution of the Pence-Kobach Presidential Advisory Commission on Election Integrity:
“From nearly the moment it was created, the Commission was the source of bipartisan concern. Its unprecedented demands for voter information were rebuffed by Secretaries of State and other election administration officials from both parties in dozens of states across the country. These officials deserve credit for standing up for the privacy of voters in their states in the face of the Commission’s dramatic overreach and minimal transparency.
“Our democracy depends on citizens voting and on every ballot being counted accurately. Voters should know that states are working hard to ensure we have a secure election system. But we must remain vigilant in keeping it that way.
“We hope that any future presidential commissions in this area return to the successful, bipartisan model employed by the Presidential Commission on Election Administration and similar past efforts. These efforts were guided by research and the facts, not personal agendas.”
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Democracy Fund Senior Adviser Tammy Patrick is available for further comment on the dissolution of the Pence-Kobach Commission. Please contact Josh Dorner at jdorner@skdknick.com to schedule.
Tammy Patrick co-authored this piece with Stacey Scholl.
At Democracy Fund, we believe that Americans deserve modern, voter-centric elections as a part of a responsive political system. As a grantmaker, this means investing in other organizations, projects, and platforms that support the spread of good information and foster dialogue. At times, it can also mean developing and creating our own internal efforts. In that spirit, we are excited to welcome electionline.org as a Democracy Fund project and to continue working with Mindy Moretti as the site editor.
Electionline.org is the nation’s only nonpartisan, non-advocacy clearinghouse for election administration news and information. Over the last 17 years, former editor Doug Chapin and current editor Mindy Moretti have provided a unique place where election administrators can find news relevant to their work — apart from political horse races and partisan campaign rhetoric. Daily and weekly content illustrates the routine business of our American elections and features stories ranging from serious issues with ballots to lighthearted moments with poll workers.
Democracy Fund has been a long-time supporter of electionline.org, providing significant financial support since 2014. As the partnership grew, we had the space to consider what the future could look like for both organizations — and an agreement was made to bring the project within Democracy Fund. Over the next year, Democracy Fund will work with Mindy to manage and grow the site. It will continue to operate through a strictly nonpartisan lens and with a commitment to transparency about the role our organization plays. Our goal is to ensure the site remains a trusted source of the latest news, tools, and best practices for accessible and secure elections.
Over the years, several organizations who care about the quality of American elections have contributed to building and sustaining the electionline.org website, including The Pew Charitable Trusts and the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation. We value their contributions and they cannot go unthanked for their vision for the site. We also remain so grateful to Doug and Mindy for their pioneering work. Doug explained that the site grew bigger and better than he ever expected. He’d originally hoped that the site would prompt national and local media outlets to take on election administration as a routine beat after a few years, making the site unnecessary over time. That hasn’t happened, but electionline.org has outlasted his initial prediction as a result, becoming a truly one-of-a-kind place for the elections community.
Part of Mindy’s passion for the site is that “there is a story behind every vote cast. There is a story behind every new innovation or piece of equipment purchased.” And while electionline.org might have started as Doug’s baby, it has been Mindy’s unruly teenager and she’s glad that the site now has a home and “co-parent” with Democracy Fund.
While we’re working on what the future holds, not much is going to change immediately. Regular electionline.org readers will see Democracy Fund’s commitment to disclose when weekly articles cover our grantees or other work in the field. As always, the site will have a curation of daily news and a weekly feature about the election world. And Mindy will work with Democracy Fund’s Elections team to grow the network of readers and enhance the types of information available on the site.
For those new to electionline.org, we hope you will check out these posts and research:
As a systems change organization, Democracy Fund is committed to learning, iteration, and partnering in ways that strengthen both our work and the field at large. We understand that addressing challenges in our elections system will take patience, persistence, and a deep partnership with administrators, officials, and advocates across the United States. For this reason, we anticipate that changes and updates to electionline.org will be a collaborative process. We plan to relaunch a new design for electionline.org after evaluating how it can be even more useful to the election administration community. Please email us at elections@democracyfund.org with your thoughts and feedback.
For language minority voters, poll workers can make or break the success of their voting experience. Well-trained poll workers will know how to properly interact with language minority voters – providing proper customer service and care in assisting the voter experiencing language barriers to ensure they are able to cast a proper ballot. Poll workers who are less aware of the rights of language minority voters and/or who treat language minority voters with suspicion or in the worst case, hostility, can turn language minority voters away from voting.
Though they recognize the benefits of quality poll workers, elections officials face difficulties in recruiting enough of them and, as a result, have a limited pool of trusted, well-equipped poll workers each election. There has been a critical national shortage of poll workers, with up to a 500,000 worker deficit at any given time in the two last decades. When it comes to bilingual poll workers, the deficiencies can be even greater. In response to this problem, jurisdictions are looking outside the box to devise innovative methods for to recruitment, which can be replicated across the country.
Tapping high school students has been particularly helpful in onboarding bilingual poll workers, because younger generations often serve as translators for their parents and family members. Democracy Fund staff reached out to election officials in Minneapolis, Minnesota about the state’s student election judge program, which recruits kids from public schools, charter schools, and private schools, as well as home schooled students. Through this program, Minneapolis has doubled the number of student election judges providing language support between 2014 and 2016, growing from 89 to 159 participants. Even though they only comprised 12 percent of Minneapolis’s total judges, they made up 30 percent of those with secondary language skills.
Montgomery County, Maryland has gone beyond working with high schoolers to mobilize middle school students too, bringing students as young as sixth graders into the polls through a program called Future Vote. Future Vote aims to increase future voter knowledge, by strengthening ties to specific participation and emphasizing the importance of participatory democracy. Dr. Gilberto Zelaya, Outreach Coordinator with Montgomery County, shared that since 2004, the program has worked with approximately 38,500 students and 21,500 families. These students have uniquely bolstered the county’s language support overall. For the general election, a third of the students who served had language capacity in another something other than English, helping to cover 68 languages.
Jurisdictions can complement and expand the reach of traditional outreach methods such as engaging community-based organizations and ethnic media, by leveraging social media platforms. Harris County, Texas utilizes Twitter and Facebook to promote it’s #StepUpToServe campaign, which is geared toward recruiting Election Day poll workers, especially bilingual English, Spanish, Chinese, and Vietnamese speakers. The effort, which targeted civic-minded professionals, and retirees, but namely high school students and their parents, has had over 100 students apply to help with this year’s election. Harris County officials, Hector DeLeon and Kristina Nichols, confirmed that meeting their language coverage was a top priority. “In particular it was hard to find people who speak both Vietnamese and English, but high school students are able to fill this role in a unique way, because they more readily available than college students and they’re excited to make a little money,” said Kristina Nichols. Incredibly, most of the students who applied spoke a language other than English. Harris County officials have been thrilled with the results and continue to rely on social media and visits to local high schools to spread the word for more recruits in 2018.
The elections official’s own internal community – city and county government workers – is another ripe source for recruiting bilingual poll workers. For example, in Maricopa County, Arizona, officials created an online survey to solicit poll workers from county departments as well as from the staff of the municipalities and school districts in their borders. Maricopa County designated the time to work on Election Day as civic duty pay so employees do not have to use personal time off. The simple act of emphasizing civic duty within their own ranks provides support across departments and has leveraged the professionalism of their own employees, many of whom have bilingual skills. This has been a tremendous resource of individuals who already have a lot of the training needed for providing bilingual services to the community.
Finally, some jurisdictions have turned to the legislative process to expand the pool of potential bilingual poll workers. In California, community advocates worked to pass a bill, with key support from the California Secretary of State and the California Association of Election Officials, to have legal permanent residents (LPRs) become eligible to become poll workers. The bill was even expanded to include high school students who are LPRs. In 2013, Los Angeles County conducted a pilot project and they were able to recruit 200 bilingual poll workers that are legal permanent residents.
Poll workers play such an important role in our elections – they can inspire confidence in our election system, which is sorely needed today as apathy and lack of confidence abound in our elections. But they can only do so when properly educated, trained and prepared to address the needs of voters at the polls. This is particularly the case for voters experiencing language barriers, who may find the process and materials very confusing and daunting. To have a set of quality poll workers at your polling locations, jurisdictions must have a proactive recruitment plan in place and must look at innovative ways to encourage people to serve as poll workers. Many jurisdictions have already done some good thinking and work on this front and others should replicate these methods for future elections.
What makes Americans trust the electoral process? How can Democracy Fund work to build trust? We spend a lot of time thinking about these issues, since trust in elections and institutions more broadly are essential to healthy democracy. In order to inform our work on trust and election administration, we partnered with Reed College and the 2016 Cooperative Congressional Election Study.*
Our survey of 1,000 Americans turned up two important results in the ‘trust’ framework. First, confidence in vote-counting depends in part on who wins or loses. At the same time, competent poll workers may help bolster voters’ trust in elections.
One way to measure trust in elections is to ask respondents about “voter confidence” – a measure of whether people feel confident that their own ballots were (or will be) counted as intended. (You can read about other measures here.) In order to help us find correlates of change, we asked about voter confidence both pre- and post-election.
Winner’s and loser’s effects
The table below reveals clear evidence of what political scientists call the winner’s effect. As far as we know, this is a psychological boost from seeing a preferred candidate win. Going into the election, only 65.9 percent of Trump supporters were “very” or “somewhat confident” that their votes would be counted as intended. Post-election, that changed to 93.2 percent — an increase of 27 points.
Other studies point to a loser’s effect. We did not find much of one in 2016. 86.3 percent of Clinton voters reported being “very” or “somewhat confident” after the election, a decline of only four points.
The importance of competent poll workers
We also found that people who rated their poll workers highly tended to express higher confidence. For example, 62 percent of respondents rated their poll workers as “excellent,” and 63.4 percent of those people were “very confident” in the counting of their votes.
Going a step further, we used logistic regression to test the relationship between the polling-place experience and change in one’s voter confidence. This analysis also accounted for age, race, gender, education, income, and vote choice.
On average, respondents who said their poll workers did an “excellent job” were less likely to report lower confidence post-election than those who said “poor job” – 4.5 times less likely among Trump voters and 2.5 times less likely for Clinton voters.
What made people rate poll workers highly? One factor stood out in our data: a perception that poll workers “knew the proper procedures.” 60.7 percent of respondents who reported that perception also said they were “very confident” that their votes had been counted as intended. This relationship held in a logistic regression controlling for age, race, gender, education, income, vote choice, and a raft of other potential reasons for rating poll workers highly (e.g., politeness, tending to voters waiting in line, et cetera).
Given the prevalence in 2016 of rhetoric about “hacking” and “rigging” —as well as other, more specific worries across partisan and racial groups—we were pleased to find that competent poll workers likely boost trust.
Based on analysis captured in our Elections & Public Trust systems map, Democracy Fund supports several organizations working on ways to raise the quality of election administration and improve the voter experience at polling places. The Caltech/MIT Voting Technology Project, for example, offers a set of tools that election officials can use to reduce voter wait times and efficiently allocate polling-place resources. Other good examples come from the Center for Civic Design, which provides election officials with field guides that, among other things, include instructions on providing clear materials for poll worker training and making in-person voting a pleasant experience.
We hope these data and the good work being done by these and other grantees spark a larger conversation about the importance of recruiting and training poll workers. Americans rely on poll workers to understand and help voters navigate election processes. To further promote trust in elections, election officials and advocates can and should continue to support poll workers’ success.
This is the second in a series of blog posts that showcase our findings from the CCES, and we look forward to sharing more in the coming months. This post was first published in November 2017, and was updated in February 2018.
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* YouGov administers the Cooperative Congressional Election Study (CCES), which includes Common Content and invites participation from up to 50 academic teams. The Reed/Democracy Fund pre-election survey was administered to 1,000 respondents, and our post-election data includes answers from 845 respondents. More information about the CCES and its methodology is available at the Harvard Dataverse, found at: https://cces.gov.harvard.edu/data.
Paul Gronke is the Principal Investigator of the Reed College/Democracy Fund team module. Natalie Adona is the Research Associate for the Democracy Fund’s Elections Program and manages the roll-out of these findings, with support from Jack Santucci, the Elections Research Fellow. Please direct any questions about these survey findings to nadona@democracyfund.org.
Democracy Fund is proud to announce a new grant to the Center for Democracy and Technology (CDT). With demonstrated expertise in data privacy and a deep understanding of the unique challenges of election administration, CDT is positioned to be critical bridge builder to help experts and policymakers better communicate, collaborate, and respond to threats to our election system.
Before I describe CDT’s voter registration and campaign data cybersecurity project, I’d like to offer a small window into our thinking about the importance of this line of work and how it supports Democracy Fund’s strategic priorities.
Voter Registration & the Increasing Challenges for Data Security
Increasing access to the Internet, the growing civic tech community, and improved technologies have paved a path for states to modernize voter registration systems. These modernization policies are appealing to many legislators and election experts who view them as a step toward cost-efficiency and an improved voter experience. For the last 15 years, states have been modernizing voter registration systems by offering online voter registration to citizens, facilitating collaboration between election officials and government offices covered under the National Voter Registration Act, and joining state-driven efforts like ERIC to keep voter rolls clean and identify eligible voters. As our systems map shows, these changes to registration systems help make voter lists more accurate, which leads to better election planning, and fewer problems experienced or perceived by voters on Election Day.
From an administrative perspective, modernizing voter registration improves the voter experience by allowing the voter to type in his or her own information into a database and streamlines the transfer of registration data between government agencies and elections departments. Registration data also helps political campaigns better understand the electorate and strategically reach out to potential voters. As these modernization policies are implemented in the states, election officials and other managers of election data have the enormous responsibility of maintaining these digital systems and protecting them from cyber-attacks—all while operating on limited budgets, preserving voting rights, and protecting individual privacy.
Election Integrity, Trust, and the 2016 Election
The tone and tenor of the 2016 presidential campaign raised our concerns about public trust in elections. While it is not unusual for the public to be concerned about possible voting fraud, the allegations from both presidential candidates that the election system was “rigged” or “hacked” in favor of a particular candidate or outcome felt atypical and worrisome. Irresponsible campaign rhetoric may have created (or reinforced pre-existing) misconceptions about the way elections are run. After the election was over and as fears about foreign interference in our elections were mounting, matters were further complicated by the NSA’s apparent documented evidence that the Russian government attempted to infiltrate voter registration systems in several states.
Calling into question the legitimacy of the election outcome without evidence of actual wrongdoing is harmful to the public’s faith in government and undermines our democracy. To reiterate: public concerns about election integrity are not unique to this past election cycle. However, public misconceptions about the way elections work and the real threats of foreign interference make the cybersecurity risks faced by campaigns and election officials even more significant. We must work toward sustainable solutions that give election officials and others the tools needed to protect the voices and votes of the American electorate.
Though difficult, it is not impossible to allay the public’s concerns. The increasing use of technology in election management makes the system more complex than ever before. It requires listeners to understand very technical administrative processes and makes it difficult for the news media to report about. However, election officials play a key role in shaping the public’s understanding of election process, and voters are very likely to listen. For these reasons, it is vital for stakeholders to balance the need to be responsive to public concerns with the needs of under-resourced election departments that could benefit from doable, sustainable best practice recommendations from the cybersecurity and civic tech communities.
Why We Invested
At Democracy Fund, we believe that every eligible American should have an equal opportunity to vote in elections that are free, fair, accessible, and secure. A healthy democracy requires election administrators and other government officials provide voters with confidence in the integrity of election outcomes and assurance that they have a voice in our democracy. Data-driven policies and new technologies can help reduce barriers to voting and improve the efficiency and security of our election system.
Based on analysis captured in our Election Administration & Voting System map, Democracy Fund invests in organizations and projects that are focused on expanding modern and secure voter registration systems; supporting voter-centric practices and tools in election administration to improve the voter experience; and fostering the public’s trust in elections by supporting a system that’s worthy of their trust.
We invested in the Center for Democracy and Technology because technology experts and election professionals need a reliable and trusted cybersecurity resource. With our support, CDT will:
Conduct a 2-year research effort to identify opportunities and challenges with cybersecurity in state election offices and national political campaigns;
Generate a set of best practices for election officials and the public; and
Distribute “campaign data hygiene” recommendations for all political parties.
Convene experts and stakeholders to learn from each other and co-create solutions to election security challenges.
You can learn more about these efforts in CDT’s press release announcing our grant and the project.
Political professionals should be able to keep discussions about campaign strategy internal; election officials should have the tools necessary to combat any type of outside interference; and voters should feel confident that our elections result in legitimate outcomes. We believe Joe Lorenzo Hall and the CDT team will fortify the field with research that deepens our shared understanding, create opportunities for learning and collaboration, and equip election officials and the managers of voter data with the solutions they need to protect voters and encourage participation in future elections.
Democracy Fund’s Elections Program is excited to share our Election Administration and Voting systems map! The map, which was a collaboration involving advocates, academics, election officials, and policy experts, informs our thinking about American elections and our strategies for improving them. Below, you’ll read about our mapping journey, about potential leveraging opportunities within the system, and a request for your help as we continue to learn.
Though many aspects of the past election cycle were unique, there are ongoing challenges in election administration that pre-date 2016, as well as emerging opportunities for change. We hope that our work in elections will inform and support election officials, policy experts, advocates, peer funders, and most importantly—the American electorate.
Before diving in, our team would like to recognize all our colleagues who provided valuable feedback, and poured their time, energy, and perspectives into pulling this map together. Our collaboration stretched across the political spectrum, which generated robust conversations that inspired us as we created the map and used it to plan our strategy. We extend special thanks to Professor Paul Gronke, who provided support and academic consultation that was vital to the completion of this map.
Mapping the Election System
In December 2014, we convened a group of elections and voting experts to help us more deeply understand the U.S. election system. We began with the framing question, “to understand the election system in the United States, you need to understand…” A core story and key dynamics that drive the election system emerged through several follow up workshops, small group conversations, and internal research.
Because our initiative focuses on election administration, as well as the difficulty of comprehensively describing every aspect of the system, we predicated map construction on two assumptions—that mistakes in election administration:
Are indicative of actionable problems, for which election officials require strong support to resolve; and
Have serious downstream impacts on voters, who do not always have the time or knowledge needed to address issues before Election Day.
As shown in our core story, when elections are run ineffectively, there’s high potential for decreased public trust in the system, either because a voter heard about or personally experienced a problem. Sometimes those real or perceived barriers to voting have a deterring effect on voter engagement. These factors—“effective election administration,” “public trust in elections,” and “decision to vote”—appear relatively larger on the map because they are the key factors that drive the system and inform our work.
Low public trust in elections and low turnout increase pressure on lawmakers to change election laws and processes. Sometimes, those proposed changes lead to laws that, when well-implemented and voter-centric, improve elections. However, election administration is uniquely prone to election law gamesmanship, i.e., political actors who attempt to manipulate the rules or pressure officials to act in a partisan fashion. If policy changes are either intended or perceived to influence an election outcome or otherwise shift political power, then such changes can be caught up in a vicious cycle of gamesmanship—ultimately leaving election officials stuck with policies and processes that do not lead to better run elections.
The rest of the map illustrates the key dynamics that drive the core story. Key dynamics appear in 11 cyclical loops, which are:
Voter Registration
Election Official Education
Election Management
Technology Innovation
Voting Equipment
Integrity and Security
Ease of Voting
Voter Engagement
Education About Elections
Barriers to Voting
Election Law Gamesmanship
We binned each of the factors (i.e., dots) within these loops into one of four major categories:
Politics, law, and policy (green),
Elections process (light blue),
Voter engagement (yellow), and
“Other” (orange) for any one factor that does not neatly fit into any of the above categories.
We invite you to take a closer look at our map and its narrative, here and in Kumu – the tool we used to visualize the map. While reading the map, please note that pluses (+) and minuses (-) on connections (i.e., arrows) represent an increase and a decrease of that factor, respectively; the direction of the connections provides more information on the relationship between factors. (For example: when looking at the core story—as effective election administration decreases, public trust in elections decreases.)
From Map to Strategy
Our election and voting process can and should be improved; many election officials and voter advocates are already heading in that direction. After consulting with experts in the field and through much deliberation, we found several bright spots and potential points of leverage in the election system that could avoid political gamesmanship through bipartisan appeal and which present a high potential for impact, including:
Reducing stress on voter registration systems: States are rapidly adopting online voter registration and are becoming members of the Electronic Registration Information Center. There is also significant momentum around improving registration processes at motor vehicle departments and other state agencies. Improving voter registration systems could potentially result in tens of millions of newly registered, eligible citizens.
Improving the quality of election planning and execution: The growing community of civic technologists seeking to improve elections presents new opportunities for collaboration. Cost savings generated by new technology allows election officials to solve complex problems with few funds. Improving election processes has the potential to have positive downstream impacts on the voter experience, increasing the public’s confidence in election outcomes.
Increasing election officials’ capacity to adopt and implement new technology: Adoption and evaluation of tech tools that support election officials are gaining momentum. There is increasing interest among election community leaders in using and iterating these tools. Improving support for election officials using technology could have a transformative effect on the way elections are administered and on the way voters interact with the system, and without feeling overwhelming for the election official.
Increasing the public’s trust in elections: unsubstantiated allegations of widespread voter fraud are damaging and undermine the legitimacy of those in elected office. To foster trust in the system, voters must, at minimum, have a better understanding of the system’s key security features. Increased attention to security presents an opportunity to educate the public about election processes and to show how their election officials protect the integrity of the ballot. Given the new concerns about attempted interference in our election system by foreign actors, policy and practice must allow for officials’ ability to defend against potential attacks.
It will not be easy to improve the election system, nor will challenges be solved by any one organization alone. We understand that officials, advocates, experts, and voters all play a role in improving and promoting a healthy election system. Now that we have a framework, we can more easily identify where actors and activities occur within the elections and voting ecosystem, and have a better sense of where we should address problems.
How You Can Help
The map reflects our current understanding of the elections system in the United States and we hope that it captures key cyclical patterns that occur at the federal, state, and local levels. Of course, we are not able to capture every aspect of the system; we hope that we can rely on our larger community of stakeholders (you!) to help. As you navigate the map, please feel free to provide us with any feedback, questions, or comments by emailing us at electionsmap@democracyfund.org.
Thanks for viewing! We look forward to hearing from you.
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