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Deterring Threats to Election Workers: Recommendations for the DOJ task force

July 20, 2022

False claims of a stolen election in 2020 shook U.S. democracy to its foundation, seeding ideas and establishing behavior that will reverberate in elections for years to come. The unprecedented number of false claims alleging election fraud in 2020 ignited a barrage of threats against election workers in what had traditionally been a very low threat environment.The right to vote cannot be protected unless election officials are permitted to do their jobs free from improper partisan influence, harassment, and abuse. If perpetrators of threats face no consequences for their actions, many of the workers who safeguarded the most secure U.S. election ever, according to the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA), may choose not to work in future elections, risking election integrity.To help protect election workers from threats—and the foreseeable consequences of such threats on the integrity of future U.S. elections—the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) established an Election Threats Task Force last year that included members from the Criminal Division, the Civil Rights Division, the National Security Division, and the FBI. The Task Force has been notified of hundreds of threats, but progress on investigations and prosecutions has been too slow.Threats against election officials and the January 6th insurrection embody dire threats to our democracy, and both deserve the full attention of the DOJ.

Preparing for Ballot Paper Shortages in 2022 and 2024

June 6, 2022

The U.S.-China trade war, the COVID-19 pandemic, and the Russia-Ukraine war have spurred upheaval and uncertainty in an increasingly interconnected global market. Product shortages and soaring prices are fixtures in national news headlines; American voters rate the economy as their top concern for the 2022 midterm elections. Supply chains won't only be on the ballot this November, they'll also shape how and when Americans get their ballots to begin with.Paper is foundational to American election administration. Yes, the paper needed for our beloved "I Voted" stickers—but also the paper that is used to create ballots, ballot envelopes, voter registration forms, and other essential elections collateral. Voter-verified paper ballots, the gold standard of secure elections, typically require high-quality paper types. Ballot materials demand specialized production, intentional delivery, and secure storage.Long-term trends, exacerbated by recent market factors, have put the supply of paper for the midterm elections at risk. Paper orders that once took days or weeks are now taking months. Costs have increased by 40% or more.This report by the Bipartisan Policy Center Task Force on Elections outlines three challenges for election administration created by the global paper shortage: supply, timing, and cost. Within each category, the task force offers actionable recommendations for election officials and policymakers on how to administer secure elections amid supply chain disruptions both in 2022 and future elections.

Policy to Advance Good Faith Election Observation

January 10, 2022

This report outlines policy best practices for election observers and challengers. The set of recommendations is unanimously endorsed by the Bipartisan Policy Center Task Force on Elections, a diverse group of state and local election officials from across the country. Election officials have the best perspective for how election policy works when put into practice. To secure the integrity of the 2022 and 2024 elections, we need look no further than the dedicated professionals long committed to our democracy.The recommendations made in this report stand to ensure accountability and transparency in the administration of elections. For maximum effectiveness, the recommendations should be considered as a unified set. Election administration is a complex ecosystem: Changes to one policy have upstream and downstream impacts for countless other parts of the process. This set of recommendations anticipates those impacts and works cohesively to address them.

Bipartisan Principles for Election Audits

November 8, 2021

This report aims to outline what a secure, precise, trustworthy audit of an election should look like in every state. Recommendations in the report include that audits should take place before the results are certified, that election officials must maintain custody of the ballots during audits, and that audits should be open to the public for observation. Extralegal investigations in Arizona, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin do not meet most of the unanimously endorsed recommendations put forward in the report.

The 2018 Voting Experience

July 9, 2020

This report documents the results of a nationwide study that the Bipartisan Policy Center and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology conducted in 3,119 individual polling places across the country to measure wait times at the polls during the 2018 midterms. It provides the type of fine-grained analysis of voters' reality as they waited to cast ballots that survey data cannot replicate.