Feature
In Swing States, Rest Assured: Election Officials Are Prepared for Anything
In a climate of growing distrust surrounding elections, election administrators play a pivotal role in safeguarding the integrity of the electoral process.
Feature
Beyond the Ballot: Ensuring a Transparent, Secure, and Fair Election in 2024
Election integrity is under the microscope as we near the 2024 Presidential Election, and many Americans are apprehensive about election security, the timeframe of learning the results, and how peaceful the transfer of power will be.
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Election integrity is under the microscope as we near the 2024 Presidential Election, and many Americans are apprehensive about election security, the timeframe of learning the results, and how peaceful the transfer of power will be. No one is bearing the weight of these concerns more so than election administration officials across the country, especially in key swing states.
To learn more about how states are preparing to conduct safe, secure, and transparent elections this November, the Ash Center hosted a webinar this month where participants could learn more straight from the source: election officials from the swing states of Arizona, Michigan, North Carolina, and Pennsylvania.
Throughout the conversation, the panelists asserted that while it may take some time to certify the results – as Karen Brinson Bell, Executive Director of the North Carolina Board of Elections, says “getting results to a county board of elections or any kind of central place doesn’t happen instantaneously. This is not Cup-of-Noodle,” — they are committed to protecting the democratic process.
Election officials are…
Prepared for all contingencies and are committed to upholding free and fair elections.
“The bottom line is we’re all going to be working in a transparent, secure, and efficient way, tabulate every valid vote and only valid votes…we’ve been building partnerships on all fronts, and we recognize that the best defense against the potential for violence is to be well prepared and committed to ensuring not just a peaceful transfer of power, but also a peaceful elections process,” says Michigan’s Secretary of State Jocelyn Benson.
“There has been a constant effort of testing the system to try to identify vulnerabilities where bad faith actors may attempt to undermine confidence in the results or prevent certification from taking place. We are also working to protect voters’ rights and ensure that their voices are heard,” explains Al Schmidt, Secretary of the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania.
“What we do in elections in North Carolina is we prepare, and we dot the “I’s” and cross the “T’s” and follow consistent, methodical procedures. We’re ready to pivot if a crisis comes…a lot is going on in North Carolina, but the reality is that we don’t stop elections. And at the end of the day, we are committed: Every North Carolinian who wants to cast a ballot is going to be able to,” ensures Karen Brinson Bell, Executive Director of the North Carolina Board of Elections.
Determined to maintain transparent measures to rebuild national confidence in a system that’s fraught with deep distrust.
“We had an election denier lose in the Governor’s race. We had an election denier lose the Secretary of State race. We had an election denier lose the Attorney General’s race,” states Adrian Fontes, Arizona’s Secretary of State. “We get the basic job done repeatedly, as we’ve seen in all our court challenges, we are successful in making sure that folks know that we are still running great elections in Arizona, and I think across the United States of America.”
“The megaphone of people spreading mis and disinformation is a lot louder and is certainly a lot louder than mine in the Pennsylvania Department of State, but we’ve got to do what we can to always tell the truth in the face of all these lies. Seeking to undermine confidence in the results, seeking to prevent voters from casting their vote and have their vote counted as frustrating as it sometimes is,” describes Schmidt.
“We’re practicing what I like to call radical transparency here in Arizona… observers can sit in this room and watch through the windows all the ballots, moving from the point where they are opened, verified, and tabulated through the process,” comments Fontes.
Embracing their newfound roles as “Explainers-in-Chief.”
“The real key is to become a poll worker, go to the meetings, do things to get involved, to understand these processes and all the layers that are in place to make sure that people’s votes count and are counted accurately,” asserts Brinson Bell.
“I think folks are paying attention to us because we have the receipts. We’re the ones with the evidence. We’re the ones with the trusted information to push out there to the public. I think we are breaking through, but it’s going to be a slow drip,” discerns Adrian Fontes.
“Many of my colleagues here have that boots-on-the-ground experience, and I think that’s becoming such an interesting facet of the work that we’re doing and how we’re able to speak to these processes and how we are so confident in our processes and the certification is because so many of us now, it is a profession and a field of study and work,” observes Brinson Bell.
Seeking additional avenues to expand democracy and access to voting information.
“Since the new constitutional amendment in 2020, we’ve seen back-to-back records for the highest turnout elections in our state’s history. It turns out all the policies that we study — from election day registration to the ability to vote from home or vote by mail, or the ability to vote early in person – translate into more engagement among citizens,” reflects Benson.
“I think sometimes we forget that our judicial system held fast in the face of an avalanche of litigation seeking to prevent our voters’ votes in Philadelphia, cast by eligible voters on or before election day, from being counted or to prevent certification,” discerns Schmidt.
“We’ve also had provisions in our laws for decades where people can be at the polling places on election day to see the opening and see the closing of those polls. So, there are many avenues for people to see those processes taking place,” says Brinson Bell.
The above excerpts, edited for clarity and length, are taken from the remarks of the speakers.
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