Election Officials Under Attack

Over the past few months, the Brennan Center for Justice, the Bipartisan Policy Center, and Harvard Kennedy School’s Ash Center for Democratic Governance and Innovation explored this question, interviewing and hosting conversations with nearly three dozen election officials and over 30 experts in democracy, election administration and technology, cybersecurity, disinformation, international elections, behavioral science, and criminal procedure. We identified four overlapping areas of concern that threaten the integrity of election administration in the United States. Each one represents a separate section of this report: violent threats against election workers and their families; disinformation about election administration; partisan and political interference; and challenges to keeping and recruiting talented workers committed to fairness in elections.

We summarize some of the most important findings and recommendations in this report below:

Finding 1: Violent threats against election workers reached an alarming level in 2020 and continue in 2021.

A survey of election officials commissioned by the Bren-nan Center and conducted by Benenson Strategy Group this spring found that one in three election officials feel unsafe because of their job, and nearly one in five listed threats to their lives as a job-related concern.

Key Solutions:

• The Department of Justice (DOJ) should create an election threats task force to work with federal, state, and local partners to prioritize identifying, investigating, and prosecuting threats against election officials and
  workers.
• States should pass new laws and appropriate funds to provide greater personal security for election officials and workers. Such measures should include providing
  greater protection of personally identifiable information, grants to purchase home intrusion detection systems, and funds for training and education related to maintaining greater personal security.
• States should prioritize implementing processes to coordinate swift investigation and, where appropriate, prosecution of those responsible for threats to election workers.

Finding 2: Disinformation has made election officials’ jobs more difficult and more dangerous.

In 2020, political actors ramped up the lies about election processes to try to influence election outcomes, often on social media. This disinformation has indelibly changed the lives and careers of election officials. Indeed, 78 percent of election officials surveyed by the Brennan Center said that social media, where mis- and disinformation about elections both took root and spread, has made their job more difficult; 54 percent said they believe that it has made their jobs more dangerous. Internet and media companies have a great deal of work to do to stem the amplification of disinformation. Here, we list a few key steps that they, along with the federal and state governments, can take to empower election officials in this struggle.

Key Solutions:

• The Department of Homeland Security’s Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA), working in conjunction with others — including the U.S. Vote
  Foundation, the Election Infrastructure Information Sharing and Analysis Center (EI-ISAC), the Election Assistance Commission (EAC), and state and national election official associations — should facilitate the creation of a directory of the more than 8,000 election officials who are authoritative sources on the elections they administer. Internet companies should work with officials in those organizations to correct falsehoods and better ensure accurate content.
• States should clarify rules that govern party-appointed monitors and require training and accountability. In 2020, some party-appointed monitors who served as observers before, during, and after Election Day became sources of disinformation, at times unwittingly.
• Internet companies — namely, social media platforms and search engines — should develop and consistently apply transparent rules that respond to the problem of repeat mis- and disinformation spreaders, including prominent users. In severe cases, platforms should automatically delay the publication of posts, providing time to review them before countless users have a chance to see them.

Find­ing 3: Elec­tion offi­cials increas­ingly face pres­sure to prior­it­ize partisan interests over a fair, demo­cratic process.

The notori­ous recor­ded phone call during which Pres­id­ent Trump pres­sured Geor­gia Secret­ary of State Brad Raffen­sper­ger to “find 11,780 votes . . . because we won the state” is only the most well-known and most flag­rant effort to pres­sure an elec­tion offi­cial in 2020 to prior­it­ize partisan interests over a fair demo­cratic process. In our discus­sions with elec­tion offi­cials, many shared their own stor­ies of partisan actors attempt­ing to inter­fere with the conduct of the elec­tion or pres­sure them to favor candid­ates of a partic­u­lar party.

Key Solu­tions:

• States should explore struc­tural changes to elec­tion admin­is­tra­tion to insu­late elec­tion offi­cials from polit­ical inter­fer­ence, includ­ing changes that estab­lish a protec­ted scope of author­ity for elec­tion offi­cials over­count­ing and certi­fy­ing elec­tions and guar­an­tee a minimum level of fund­ing. Citizen-sponsored ballot initi­at­ives may be required to make these changes.
• Elec­tion offi­cials should develop a robust code of ethics to help guide discre­tion­ary decision-making and avoid poten­tial conflicts of interest.
• States should ensure that elec­tion offi­cials have adequate legal repres­ent­a­tion to defend against polit­ic­ally motiv­ated lawsuits and invest­ig­a­tions, and elec­tion offi­cial asso­ci­ations should cultiv­ate and organ­ize pro bono legal assist­ance to the extent that states fail to do so.

Find­ing 4: Despite their found­a­tional import­ance to our demo­cratic system, local elec­tion offi­cials carry an unsus­tain­able work­load compared to other profes­sional staff.

Large numbers of elec­tion offi­cials have resigned in the past year, rais­ing alarm bells. But the wave of depar­tures could soon turn into a tsunami. As of 2020 almost 35 percent of local elec­tion offi­cials were eligible to retire by the 2024 elec­tion, and it is not clear who will replace them, nor whether those will­ing to take the job in the future will share the commit­ment to free and fair elec­tions that was so crit­ical in 2020. While elec­tion offi­cials cited many reas­ons for leav­ing the field, the unsus­tain­able work­load came up repeatedly in our inter­views.

Key Solu­tions:

• State and local elec­tion offi­cials should adopt creat­ive staff­ing solu­tions, includ­ing estab­lish­ing rela­tion­ships with colleges and univer­sit­ies, to ease work burdens and create a talent pool for future recruit­ment.
• State legis­lat­ors should consol­id­ate elec­tions so that they occur concur­rently rather than repeatedly through­out the year.
• Local elec­tion offi­cials should use exist­ing profes­sional networks (such as state and national elec­tion offi­cial asso­ci­ations) to improve work­ing condi­tions and to better empower elec­tion offi­cials to impact elec­tion policy. They should also hire staff to coordin­ate with these networks and focus on educa­tion, lobby­ing, and commu­nic­a­tions.