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Of Post-Election Audits and Plaudits

Adam Ambrogi

June 21, 2013

Provisional ballots allow the parties a chance to continue the Election Day fight well into November and December—they’re ballots that can only be counted later in the election process, after the identity or qualifications of a voter have been confirmed. It’s clear that in many elections—especially local elections, the race can come down to provisional ballots—so they’re important. That said, their frequent use—or overuse—can slow down the process, result in longer lines, and result in incomplete preliminary count outcomes. A recent audit by Philadelphia City Controller’s office sheds some light on how provisional ballots are being used and where problems can arise from their improper use. The audit was prompted by the fact that provisional ballots cast in Philadelphia in 2012 more than doubled from the last similarly situated election in 2008. Little had changed with the City’s election procedures and population, so officials wanted to understand what was going on.

According to the audit report, there were multiple causes for the high number of provisional ballots issued:

Pollworker error. The Controller estimates that 4,899 voters cast provisional ballots due to pollworker error. These were voters who were registered in the right precinct and were properly listed in the poll books. According to the Report: “Poll workers should have located the names in the books, which would have permitted these voters to cast their ballots using a voting machine, rather than casting a provisional ballot. This error should be the easiest to fix—and to the extent that jurisdictions have the ability to move to electronic poll books, the enhanced search capability should mostly eliminate this problem. Better training or review protocols might also have made a difference.

Problems in printing the ‘supplemental poll books.’ About 4,827 voters were forced to cast provisional ballots because their names were not printed in the poll books or supplemental poll books. This is the perhaps the most challenging of the problem to fix on election day, since there’s no knowable proof at the polling place that the voter is properly registered.The key finding from the audit is that the flood of last minute registrations caused a number of legitimate voter registrations to be bumped from the PA Department of State’s approved poll book. These voters should have been included in supplemental poll books, but were not. Unfortunately, the audit could not determine who was to blame for these errors because the auditors could not recreate the problem. Apparently, the City and state did not save the parameters that were used for making the books. For the purposes of audits and identifying errors, maintaining the parameters used would seem to be a necessary step in election integrity. Since this particular problem may be more challenging to fix at the poll location, it’s important to provide accountability for the system by making the parameters available, and retain those parameters for a reasonable time after the election to attempt to determine flaws in the system.

Registered voters at the wrong polling place. The third reason for provisional ballots being issued was that about nine thousand voters tried to vote at an incorrect polling location. These were properly registered voters who, due to misinformation, or other error, went to the wrong polling place. It is unclear whether Philadelphia properly notified those voters of their correct polling place.

There were some smaller problems identified by the audit that also pose unique election administration problems:

Teenage wasteland. Many groups, including Fair Vote have promoted pre-registration, which allows individuals under 18 to pre-register—who will automatically be qualified when they turn 18. It seems to be a useful policy development—so all potential voters can get registered in high school. However, that benefit was limited when the City failed to run a critical “Update Underage Voters Utility” program prior to printing its poll books.

It’s all in the family. In other cases, provisional ballot were voided improperly. For example, in one case, a pollworker voided a provisional ballot because he or she believed that the voter had already voted on a machine. On closer inspection, the auditors realized that the provisional ballot was actually cast by the daughter, and “personnel from the City Commissioners Office wrongly identified the voter’s signature in the poll book. Had they checked the dates of birth, they would have realized the signature was that of the voter’s mother, who had voted on a machine.” Obviously, it’s more than possible that a family would vote in the same polling place—this is an error that should be caught in the canvass period for provisional ballots.

In short, while a formal review of an election process can take a significant amount of time (and be a touch arduous), the results and recommendation for the reform are incredibly useful in planning future elections in the locality, and for reforming local pollworker training and requirements. There has been a push for serious post-election audits of voting systems in the last few years, and that seems to be a positive step. What this thoughtful, well-organized examination from the Philadelphia Controller’s office indicates is that officials should not stop at the voting systems themselves. Regular, independent reviews of the provisional ballot and the regular ballot systems can lead to positive lessons learned, and a chance to correct errors prior to the next election. It seems that the independence of this review is also important—no one loves an external critique, but governments and businesses of all sizes are subject to periodic, external audits—it’s time to consider that elections follow suit. It strikes me that using the Philadelphia model might be a good start.

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“We’re going to fix that.”

Adam Ambrogi

November 4, 2014

In his 2013 State of the Union address, President Barack Obama brought national attention to ongoing problems in election administration and most notably long lines at polling places on Election Day with the quote above. What came next was the creation of the temporary Presidential Commission on Election Administration (PCEA).

A year later, the PCEA released a report that recommended policies addressing some of the bigger problems in election administration. Since the release of the report, members of the PCEA have traveled the country speaking to audiences of election officials, lawmakers, and the public, hoping that its recommendations would catch on and find willing agents for implementing its changes.

In states and localities where election officials took the lead on implementing some of the recommendations, today’s midterm elections will be the first time voters experience new policies. The election community will be watching closely as the effects of three big recommendations—new online voter registration (OVR) systems, interstate exchanges of voter information, and mandated adoption of PCEA’s resource allocation tools for use at the local level—are tested.

The PCEA made it clear that the value of OVR cannot be overstated. At the time of the report, states with OVR experienced a reduction in voter information errors, which led to an increase in the accuracy of voter rolls and reduced wait times for voters. States also experienced a decrease in the number of provisional ballots issued, which can indicate problems with voter rolls. And now, with the addition of Illinois, Delaware, and Georgia, 20 states have OVR. Will these states see the same improvements, what else will they encounter?

Beyond the OVR benefits for voters who traditionally show up to vote, there are broad higher-level questions of how OVR affects voter confidence and turnout overall. Does the experience of registering to vote online translate to showing up to vote on Election Day, voting early, or casting an absentee ballot? Do online registration services such as provided by TurboVote or Rock the Vote employ other mechanisms for informing and engaging voters? These and other questions will be answered over the months and years to come.

The PCEA also recommended states participate in an interstate exchange of voter registration information. The Electronic Registration Information Center (ERIC) allows member states to check voter rolls against lists from other member states, in addition to state DMV records, the National Change of Address list, and the Social Security Administration. ERIC’s data matching program helps state election officials more confidently determine which voters should be removed due to a move out of the state, or death. All voters benefit from accurate rolls, and the goal of ERIC is to ensure that no voters are removed improperly.

ERIC also identifies potentially eligible individuals who have not yet registered to vote. ERIC member states are required to mail registration information to these individuals. The question to be answered: how many will register as a result and show up for this midterm? Pew’s initial responses show great promise for the ERIC system, but the impact and effectiveness will grow as the number of participants grow.

Long lines on Election Day 2013 were a major catalyst for the PCEA, but now there are several practical tools that local election officials can use to give voters a better, faster experience and do so with limited resources. A new toolkit includes a series of calculators that help estimate the appropriate ratios of volunteers, check-in stations, voting booths, and machines so that voters do not experience long waits.

In 2014, the Ohio Secretary of State’s office issued a directive requiring local Boards of Elections to create a plan for election administration. As part of this plan, administrators are strongly encouraged use the Election Toolkit to make resource allocation calculations.

Many in the election community are especially interested in the data and experience this will generate in Ohio because of the potential broad use of the tools. Will the tools effectively account for all of the variables of voter behavior and the environment of all varieties of polling places? Will other variables outside of an administrators control (length of the ballot, voter confusion, etc.) still cause long lines on Election Day? The answers will be here soon enough.

Finally, perhaps the greatest experiment occurring this Election Day in thousands of jurisdictions may answer the question that so many have been afraid to ask: will aging election equipment function properly through yet another election? Some jurisdictions are using Diebold Equipment even though Diebold is well out of the business of manufacturing voting systems. When will the threat of an election technology meltdown prompt a better way of voting?

If there was one warning that the PCEA issued, it is that election equipment purchased in the early 2000s is now nearing the end of its life cycle and yet, jurisdictions are still relying on it to meet high voter demands. It’s unclear how much longer these systems can be maintained by local election offices. It’s clear that there are innovative start-ups and that leading jurisdictions (LA County, CA and Travis County, TX) are working with their voters to imagine next-generation voting equipment. Where will elections look like in 2016? 2020?

In many ways, these questions are not going to be answered today, but will be determined by state & local election officials, advocates, voters and politicians who all share the goal of quality elections. We hope to work in collaboration with those who want to improve the process of making elections something worthy of our country’s history, encourages a process the gives every eligible voter a chance to cast that vote, and have that vote counted correctly.

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Restaffed EAC Advances Voting Systems in First Meeting

Adam Ambrogi

February 25, 2015

At its first meeting on Tuesday, the new quorum of the U.S. Election Assistance Commission (EAC) took an important, much-awaited step toward making the work of election officials easier and improving the voter experience around the country. For four years, the lack of a quorum of Commissioners blocked the accreditation of new voting system test laboratories, which meant only two facilities in the country were able to review the quality and accessibility of voting systems. Yesterday’s accreditation of a third test laboratory promises to help alleviate the looming risk of major voting machine problems that have worried many smart observers.

Federally accredited labs commonly test products we use everyday, from toasters to children’s toys, to ensure they are safe. Similarly, to protect the legitimacy of our elections, the Help America Vote Act (HAVA) requires the EAC to put voting machines through rigorous testing and certification. The law puts the EAC in charge of creating voting systems standards and overseeing the certification process to ensure machines (and any upgrades or patches) are reliable, accessible, and secure. As the EAC relies on neutral test facilities to review the systems, how the Commission accredits test labs is very important. For example, labs must be entirely independent from the vendors developing the machines so that there is no gamesmanship or undue influence on the rating of a particular system.

One result of the lack of a quorum of EAC commissioners had been that no new labs have been accredited. Until yesterday, only SLI Global Solutions and NTS Huntsville were certified by the EAC. No matter how many machines and modifications were waiting in line to be tested, only those two labs could test the systems. The resulting waiting periods have created a few significant problems.First, the wait time discourages vendors from introducing new and innovative voting machines to market, and second, states that can only purchase only federally-certified systems may be forced into buying out-of-date systems or into continuing to use old-generation existing machines that received certification a while ago.

More than three years ago, EAC staff invited Pro V & V, a team of specialized voting technology experts. to apply to become a federal test lab — and there Pro V & V figuratively sat, waiting. The head of Pro V & V, Jack Cobb of Huntsville Alabama, drew attention to his company’s predicament, indicating he had potential employees he wanted to hire and that his company could provide extra capacity to put machines through testing. He repeatedly asked the Senate to move on appointing EAC Commissioners, but it wasn’t until last December when the Senate acted that Mr. Cobb could see the end to the long wait in sight.

Shortly after the Senate’s confirmation of the three new Commissioners, the EAC held their first meeting in February 2015 and unanimously voted to accredit Pro V & V as a test lab. This means that more voting machines – some important existing modifications and next generation innovations – can now be tested, reducing the amount of time vendors and election officials wait in line for voting machine certification. While there are other problems with the testing and certification, this is a decisive first step, demonstrating that the EAC wants to move quickly to support election officials, vendors, and voters. After a long break in this type of EAC activity, their swiftness should be applauded.

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Rock the Vote Today…and Everyday

Adam Ambrogi

November 5, 2015

In the penultimate scene of the movie O Brother Where Art Thou, the fictional musical hit group of the 1930s—the Soggy Bottom Boys—are unmasked at dance hall as a bunch of escaped prison convicts. Attempts to cart them away are foiled when the raucous crowd, loving the musical session, rises up and pressures the Governor to pardon the Boys so they can keep on playing their hits.

Thus is the power of celebrity and culture, where sports stars, actors, and musicians are essential to changing opinions or promoting some desired behavior (good or bad). Is it possible to use our love of culture and icons to get more people, especially younger Americans, to engage in the democratic process?

Enter Rock The Vote, which emerged out of a battle over censorship in music in the early 1990s and refocused to create awareness, attention, and excitement about voting. This year they celebrated their 25th Anniversary by sticking to their roots. At an event in DC’s famous music venue Black Cat, Rock the Vote President Ashley Spillane hosted some of the original key players in the history of the organization: 2 Live Crew and Run DMC. The evening was not only a throwback to the 1990s, but if you’ve ever heard their music, certainly a celebration of anti-censorship activity.

Motivating young voters to be aware, informed, and engaged is no easy feat. There are policies we should promote to encourage fairness, transparency, and ease in the voting process, but policies alone don’t generate interest. CIRCLE, a Democracy Fund grantee and research organization examining young voter participation, indicated that the 2014 Election youth turnout—19.9% of 18-29 year olds—was the lowest registration and turnout rate ever recorded. Education about why government (and therefore voting) is relevant to their lives is essential. Also essential is a national conversation about why voting is important and, dare I write, cool.

Rock the Vote is the best known national organization combining culture and civics to inspire folks to vote—and is one of the best chances to engage people where they’re at. For example Kendall Jenner’s video of her registering to vote using RTV online tools was shared with her vast social network, which today sits at about 37 million Instagram and 12.6 million Twitter followers. Most candidates and issue organizations can only hope to have that kind of megaphone.

On Election Day 2015, NASDAQ invited Rock the Vote to open the tech markets in honor of their 25th annviersary. Betsy Wright Hawkings from the Democracy Fund was there in Times Square to help celebrate with our partners in this work. We will continue to look for all levers to excite new voting communities; we are thrilled to support Rock the Vote in this politically exciting year to come.

Photo Credit: @NASDAQ

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Tackling Challenges in Election Administration and Voting Using an Ecosystem Approach

Adam Ambrogi

September 11, 2017

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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Local Officials Working to Make Your Vote Secure

Adam Ambrogi

November 6, 2018

As the nation gears up for what could be one of the most historic mid-term elections, it’s important to separate the misconceptions from realities when assessing the safety and security of our elections. A new cohort of nonprofits have emerged to focus on promoting election security and election access for the voting process. Election officials at the local and state level, as well as national officials, have worked incredibly hard since 2016 to identify and respond to foreign probing and cybersecurity breaches—and we believe that despite increased risks, our elections are safer than they have ever been.

The U.S. election system is not run by a single body or office—rather they are administered by approximately 10,000 local jurisdictions nationwide – which makes it difficult to coordinate an attack on the election process or rig the system. Even within the same state, different jurisdictions use different technologies to administer their ballots, making a successful attack even more difficult. There are problems that need ongoing attention; and it is certainly true that foreign interference is a real threat—but federal, state, and local authorities remain vigilant as they protect our democracy.

To secure an election, local election officials test machines in the lead up to the election to detect problems early and ensure things run smoothly on Election Day. In addition, all 50 states and 1,000 local election offices share information with U.S. Department of Homeland Security to prepare for potential cyber threats. Additionally, Congress has worked to provide state and local government with funds to aid them in securing this election.

To keep voting machines secure, they are held under lock and key with additional protections in place to ensure that nobody without proper credentials can access the devices undetected—typically with multiple layers of physical security such as fencing, key card access, locks, and seals, as well as observational video surveillance. Together, these serve as a check and balance to prevent tampering with the machines and to catch any errors in the count.

Similarly, it is very unlikely that anyone could ever change a vote tally. Ballots are cast at tens of thousands of polling places across the country. Changing an election result would require advance knowledge of likely results, numerous perpetrators working together to go completely undetected by communities, election officials, and law enforcement, including the FBI.

It’s also important to keep in mind that 80% of Americans vote on paper, and almost all states require a post-election review to validate the results. If a discrepancy exists, reviews and recounts are ordered, and the paper records are used for the official record. Even if an individual machine were compromised, the official result would be based on the paper record. And most states are considering a move to a post election audit that’s based on the difference between the the candidates, sometimes known as a “risk-limiting audit.” Furthermore, local election officials are the best resource in any election cycle. You can learn about how they secure the election systems, machines, and other equipment on their social media accounts. If there are problems getting attention from your poll worker or the head of your polling place, there is an effective national hotline, 1866-Our-Vote

Finally, instances of people voting multiple times or voting if ineligible are an incredibly rare occurrence, and this does not occur at a scale that has ever been shown to impact or change an election result. The registration rolls and voters reporting their identity both serve as a check, and the massive criminal penalties for voter fraud operate as a major deterrent. The likelihood that a scheme of voter impersonation would change a particular race is incredibly small.

While Congress needs to do more work to solve this problem-and fund a solution, they’ve started the process. Earlier this year, they appropriated $380 million dollars to the states, to be used to promote greater security of elections. All of the states and territories requested this money, received it, and many states are now using the money to improve security and voting systems. Overall, our elections are as secure as they’ve ever been—certainly compared to 2016. There are diligent public servants on hand to address security concerns that do arise in the 2018 midterms so that each state can understand the challenges and feel equipped to prepare for the 2020 presidential election. While I am optimistic, the need to better secure our elections and provide voters has never been greater, and Congress must provide a regular stream of funding to the states to deal with the rising threats—as the states and localities cannot match the magnitude of threats alone.

To find your polling place, learn about the candidates, or find other information about your local election from nonpartisan organizations like the Voting Information Project and Vote411.org—and find out more about your state’s recount process here. You can also talk with family and friends about the election. And to learn more about our work, check out the website www.democracyfund.org, including new research on the public’s view of election administration and reform, found here, and state-level news about elections on www.electionline.org.

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New Rules and Select Committee Create Opportunity for a More Effective Congress

Chris Nehls

January 14, 2019

Last week, the congressional reform community scored some major wins: new rules in the House of Representatives to support ethics and transparency, and the creation of a Select Committee with real potential to promote further reforms.

New Rules Lay the Foundation for New Results

The set of rules that the House of Representatives adopts each Congress often sets the tone for the next two years of legislating. Judging from the rules the House adopted in the first few days of this session, the 116th Congress is positioning itself to aggressively address challenges to its legislative capacity.

Current House rules tilt control of the chamber in ways that make it much harder for members to find bipartisan consensus on key problems that voters sent them to Washington to tackle. The select committee will examine ways that changes to how committees operate and how bills proceed to final passage can empower individual members to inject their expertise in the process and negotiate across the aisle. The Congressional Institute and Bipartisan Policy Center Action (a grantee of our sister organization, Democracy Fund Voice) have explored extensively what such changes could look like.

New Committee Promises Change and Accountability

The House overwhelmingly approved the creation of a Select Committee on the Modernization of Congress in a remarkable bipartisan vote of 418-12. This committee, to be chaired by Rep. Derek Kilmer of Washington, will suggest changes to House rules and procedures to encourage more bipartisan cooperation on bills and allow members to have more of an impact on the legislative process. It will also look into how Congress can adopt better workplace technology to become more innovative and examine challenges to recruiting and retaining a diverse and highly talented workforce. Membership on the committee will be split evenly between Democrats and Republicans.

Building Congressional Staff Capacity

Although changes to procedural rules may open new avenues for bipartisan legislation, the effects of these reforms will be limited as long as the working conditions, capacity, and resources of congressional staff remain stagnant. Fortunately, the broad mandate of the Select Committee allows it to address these foundational issues as well. As Democracy Fund grantees have highlighted, the level of support the institution provides its most essential personnel has reached crisis status. In a 2017 Congressional Management Foundation (CMF) survey, only 6 percent of congressional senior staff said they were “very satisfied” with the technological infrastructure of the Congress in supporting members’ duties and only 15 percent were very satisfied with the level of knowledge, skills, and abilities of fellow staff.

Our grantees like the Congressional Management Foundation (CMF), the Legislative Branch Working Group, and Demand Progress have demonstrated how low pay, inadequate professional development opportunities, and high turnover can lead harried staff to rely increasingly on the perspectives of lobbyists and advocacy groups to inform legislation. Demand Progress, Lincoln Network, and TechCongress have noted that Congress suffers from a lack of staff with scientific and technical expertise—which might amount to just a handful of employees—to make sense of highly complex policy areas touching on nearly every aspect of American society. OpenGov Foundation and Lincoln Network, meanwhile, have explored how the information technology and digital communications systems serving congressional offices are inadequate for the world’s most powerful legislative body.

As the Select Committee begins its work, its members can rely on Democracy Fund grantees for impartial expert information on the state of congressional legislative capacity and ideas for modernizing the institution. Lincoln Network and Demand Progress, for example, have teamed up with a bipartisan coalition of civil society organizations, think-tanks, and academic experts to launch Future Congress, a resource hub to help improve the institution’s understanding of science and technology.

Fostering a Congress That Looks More Like America

The rules package also created a new Office of Diversity and Inclusion, which will develop and implement a plan to address Congress’ long-standing challenge of recruiting and retaining a diverse workforce, especially among senior staff. As Democracy Fund grantee the Joint Center for Political and Economic Studies recently demonstrated, less than 14 percent of top-level congressional staff are people of color. This lack of diversity presents an urgent legislative capacity issue, as Congress lacks staff perspectives that reflect the demographic composition of the nation.

The Office of Diversity and Inclusion can look to the Staff Up Congress initiative, a project of the Joint Center and the National Association of Latino Elected and Appointed Officials, for best practices in developing a pipeline of diverse candidates and hiring and promoting in an inclusive manner. The Joint Center is holding the freshman class of the 116th Congress accountable by tracking new hires of staff of color to senior positions.

The Select Committee and the Office of Diversity and Inclusion are just two aspects of a broader package of reforms that will strengthen ethical and transparent conduct of House members. The rules package also establishes a whistleblower office for congressional staff, strengthens institutional support for ethics investigations of members, and forces members to pay out of their own pocket for employment discrimination lawsuits.

Change in Washington requires patience and preparation to be ready to seize opportunities for reform when they arise. The rules reform package validates our strategy of long-term investment in organizations that provide a vision of what a modern Congress should be. In partnership with congressional stakeholders, those organizations are poised to begin a historic undertaking in the new Congress, strengthening its ability to fulfill its constitutional obligations and restoring public trust in the institution.

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Press Release

Digital Equity & Opportunity Initiative (DEOI)

June 29, 2023

The Digital Equity and Opportunity Initiative’s mission is to jumpstart the building of a lasting civic infrastructure. DEOI will provide core funding support to state broadband coalitions with broad-based community engagement and that have the mobilization capacity to maximize the opportunity and drive equitable outcomes in digital access.

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Toolkit

The Journalism DEI Tracker

Democracy Fund

October 18, 2019

The Journalism DEI Tracker is a regularly-updated online database that identifies organizations, news outlets and projects, and educational institutions working to support DEI in journalism across the country. It also collects resources related to diversity, equity, and inclusion in journalism.

Foundations can use the Journalism DEI Tracker as a first-step guide for identifying prospective grantees, as well as to find useful resources to share with current grantees. Journalism organizations and other stakeholders can use it to find opportunities for professional development, recruitment, collaboration, and resources to improve their coverage.

The Journalism DEI Tracker includes:

Professional organizations that support women journalists and journalists of color
News outlets and projects led by and serving women journalists and journalists of color
Professional development and training opportunities for women journalists and journalists of color (grants, scholarships, fellowships, and leadership training)
Academic institutions with journalism and communications programs to include in recruitment efforts to ensure a more diverse pipeline (Historically Black Colleges and Universities, Hispanic Serving Institutions, and Tribal Colleges)
Resources for journalism organizations to promote respectful and inclusive coverage (industry reports, diversity style guides, curricula, and toolkits)

We hope you will use the Journalism DEI Tracker to inform your work and share these important resources with your colleagues. We want to make sure this resource remains up-to-date, so please let us know if you have additional resources to add, information about resources that are no longer up-to-date, or suggestions for improvement. We welcome your participation in making sure this resource is as useful as possible.

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Report

What Comes Next? Lessons For The Recovery Of Liberal Democracy

Rachel Kleinfeld and David Solimini

October 31, 2018

Democracy in America suffers from a decades-long pattern of institutional decline. The candidacy and election of President Donald Trump is a symptom as well as an accelerant of this institutional degradation, catalyzing reactions from other institutions, parties, and voters. On the positive side, President Trump’s brazen disregard for the longstanding norms of American governance has drawn attention to long-running problems, creating new interest in what the United States might learn from the experience of other countries in similar situations.

What can we learn from other democracies that have faced executive degradation1 of preweakened democratic institutions, particularly countries with polarized populations? Based on the trajectories of other nations, what damage might we expect to see by the end of the Trump administration? Are there lessons for renewal that can be applied the day this administration exits the scene?

Few countries are directly comparable to the United States. As the world’s oldest continual democracy, the United States has far more established institutions than most other states. And yet the laws protecting the checks and balances of our government are older and thinner than those of most modern democracies, creating the impression of a strong state that has in practice relied more on norms than law to maintain its institutions. America’s implementation of federalism is deeper than in most other countries and is a significant buffer against executive overreach. On the other hand, its population is deeply — and often evenly — polarized by identity-driven divisions that do not lend themselves to compromise. For both sides, every political fight is an identity battle and each battle is potentially winnable. The temptation to engage in undemocratic behavior is significant.

In declining order of direct comparison, we looked at cases of democratic decline and subsequent renewal in Italy under Silvio Berlusconi, Colombia under President Álvaro Uribe, Louisiana during the Huey Long period, Argentina during the populist regimes of Carlos Menem and the Kirchners, South Korea’s President Park Geun-hye, Peru during the reign of Alberto Fujimori, and India under Indira and Rajiv Gandhi. We also looked at the similarities and differences between these states and countries that faced executive degradation and have not yet recovered, particularly Hungary, Poland, Turkey, and Venezuela.