Election Integrity in Focus: Navigating 2024's Challenges

Inside the fight to improve and secure our electoral process amid rising threats, misinformation

We are heading into the busiest season of an election year that has the potential for all kinds of ugly surprises. Super Tuesday is less than a week away, and the bulk of local elections are held in March, April and May. That’s the busy. A January poll shows one-third of U.S. adults believe President Biden was not legitimately elected in 2020. That’s the ugly.

This week’s TL;dr shares a few looks at the nature of the threats to our electoral processes and what’s being done to counter those threats. Good Government Files believes restoring faith in our elections is one of the most critical challenges we face in the business of governing. I’d personally recommend a schedule of prayer and fasting, but we try to respect the separation of church and state here at GGF.

Let’s jump into this week’s articles.

Domestic Disruptions are Equal Risk to Foreign Interference in 2024 Election, Experts Say

Carl Smith, senior staff writer at Governing, addressed the complex challenges facing U.S. elections in a Feb. 8 article. Experts at UCLA Law’s Safeguarding Democracy Project discussed the evolving landscape of election security in a webinar titled, “What Can We Do to Have a Fair and Safe Election in 2024?”

Here are the top three takeaways.

1. DHS Cites New Threat from Domestic Actors. Last election cycle, the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) warned about what Iran, Russia and China might do to sow “discord, division and distraction” around the presidential election. These concerns remain in 2024, but domestic actors with a range of motives are playing an increasing role, cultivating distrust of election processes and antagonism toward the people who administer elections. These threats include physical violence, cyber-attacks, and disinformation campaigns aimed at undermining the democratic process.

2. Impact of Social Media and AI on Disinformation: Advances in artificial intelligence and changes in the social media landscape since 2020 pose new challenges for controlling the spread of election misinformation. The proliferation of decentralized platforms and potential legal rulings on content moderation could exacerbate the issue, making it difficult to manage misinformation effectively.

3. Necessity of Public Education. Ensuring election integrity requires not only advanced security measures but also public education about the election system’s security layers. The chart below illustrates why you need to be delivering educational information to multiple channels. Also, strengthening communication between election workers and law enforcement is crucial for addressing threats and harassment against election personnel.

Source: Pew Research Center.

Election Leaders Debut New Standards of Conduct, Aim to Build Trust Ahead of Key Races

A Feb. 8 article in Route 50 looks at the increased scrutiny on election officials through their eyes. A group of secretaries of state recently gathered in Washington D.C. to talk about what they can do to increase trust in our electoral system. Here are our takeaways.

1. Increased Scrutiny is an Opportunity for Education. The increased scrutiny on elections officials following the false claims about the 2020 election is seen by some secretaries of state as an opportunity to educate the public about the election process. Love that attitude. Elections officials should be “proactive” in explaining their procedures to the public, quickly owning any mistakes they make and being as transparent as possible. Amen. The surest way to build credibility is to fess up ASAP when mistakes happen. Because they will happen.

2. Introduction of Enhanced Standards of Conduct. Election officials have introduced new enhanced standards of conduct to build trust with constituents. These standards, proposed by The Election Center (National Association of Election Officials), include commitments to adhere to the law, follow proper procedures, be transparent, act nonpartisan, and not use the office for personal or partisan gain.

3. Challenges Facing Election Officials. Election officials are navigating numerous challenges, including ensuring sufficient polling locations, dealing with political pressure and law changes, and, in some cases, direct oversight from higher authorities. One said it is “getting harder and harder” to work with legislators in his state, as he has fewer allies and more lawmakers who question election results. Another said he has “made some headway” by building personal relationships with lawmakers in his state, but still must “bust through” more fringe theories and beliefs about the work he does.

GGF readers, let’s do everything we can to support those secretaries of state fighting the good fight on election integrity. Now, more on those challenges they face …

Feds Preach Vigilance Amid Multiple Physical, Cyber Threats Against Election Officials

Reporter Chris Teale’s Feb. 23 article in Route 50 gets right to the challenges.

Recent research from the Brennan Center for Justice found that officials across state and local government, including elections officials, have received all manner of abuse including insults, harassment, threats and physical attacks.

My top takeaways from the article are:

1. Rising Threats to Election Security. Beyond the abuse cited above, elections officials face a wide range of threats including cybersecurity risks, ransomware attacks, and the potential misuse of artificial intelligence in misinformation campaigns. Notably, incidents of abuse toward officials and physical threats, such as suspicious letters containing fentanyl sent to elections offices, underscore the severe challenges in ensuring election integrity and safety.

2. Federal Support Doesn’t Include Funding. Federal agencies like the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) and the Postal Inspection Service are stepping up to support state and local election officials with enhanced protection efforts and advisory roles. That’s the good news. The bad news is additional funding from Washington should not be expected, heightening the importance of non-monetary assistance from federal agencies (see below) in safeguarding elections.

3. Preparation and Vigilance. The emphasis on readiness for worst-case scenarios and constant vigilance among election officials highlights the critical state of election security. Efforts to prepare for and mitigate threats, including the screening of mail-in ballots and strategic responses to cyber and physical threats, are vital as the U.S. approaches future elections with heightened awareness of potential disruptions.

CISA, the lead federal agency entrusted with securing the nation’s elections infrastructure, recently announced the launch of the #Protect2024 website, which provides a consolidated set of free resources for state and local election officials. CISA is placing particular focus on support to local folks to help them strengthen their security posture.

I’m not an election official nor do I play on one TV but it’s well-designed website chock-full resources. It looks particularly helpful to those in smaller jurisdictions new to their increasingly important (and fraught) positions.

In Other’s Words

Pot, meet kettle. From the Feb. 15 edition of The Morning Dispatch:

Republican Rep. Mark Green of Tennessee announced Wednesday that he won’t seek re-election at the end of his third term. The 59-year-old lawmaker currently serves as the chair of the House Homeland Security Committee and spearheaded the House GOP’s effort to impeach Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas. “This place is so broken,” Green told Axios. “It feels like a lot of something for nothing.”

From a recent Wanderland column by Kevin D. Williamson on presidents getting too much credit/blame for the economy:

How policy gets made is complicated, how it is implemented is even more complicated, and measuring the effects over the long term is insanely complicated. It is easier to just pay attention to the one guy we hear about in the news every day and then correlate his presence in the Oval Office with a couple of relatively simple metrics, whether GDP growth or gasoline prices or unemployment or inflation. That is so crude as to be meaningless for any purpose other than political propaganda, but that’s what we do. … On many metrics, the economy of the Obama years looked a lot like the economy when Gerald Ford was president—but not because Obama and Ford were similar presidents or had similar ideas or similar economic priorities. The U.S. economy keeps looking like the U.S. economy because the United States does not stop being the United States when we change presidents or change presidential parties. 

Congrats to Trophy Club, Texas, and Brandon Wright, its new city manager. The quote below is from a profile of Wright earlier this year in Community Impact. Wright was asked what he learned at his previous gig in DeSoto, Texas, that would help in his new role.

The value of a strategic plan—a long-term vision for the community that is developed with the input of the community. When you think about how towns and cities function from one election cycle to the next to the next, if you don’t have an overarching plan for how it is that this community continues into the future, what ends up happening is you go from election to election changing focus to what you’re doing and how you’re doing it. What I saw there was the value of having that long-term strategic plan in place, on creating consistency among election cycles and among residents.

Onward and Upward.