Ann Arbor, MI – Top election officials from six battleground states described the safeguards in the elections system to an audience of leading national reporters at a daylong September 19 meeting. Hoover’s Volker Distinguished Visiting Fellow Benjamin Ginsberg helped organize Ballots and Battlegrounds: Ensuring Election Safeguards event at the Gerald R. Ford Presidential Library.
Top statewide and county election officials from Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Pennsylvania, North Carolina, and Wisconsin described the robust safeguards and checks and balances throughout the voting process. Each of the fifteen officials said their state’s November 5 vote result will be accurate and reliable.
“Those of us who work in the election space, we are dedicated to following our oath, and I will follow my oath," said Brad Raffensperger, Georgia secretary of state. “I will make sure we have fair and honest elections and we honor our founding fathers and our founding principles.”
The officials spent over five hours detailing their preparations and processes for safely and securely administering the upcoming election. The officials directly engaged with the media and the public through three educational sessions: Safeguards Throughout the Voting Process; Safeguards for Voting—Mail (Absentee), Early, and Election Day; and Vote Tabulation and Post-Election Verification Process. Before a public audience at an evening Ask Me Anything Town Hall, the election officials answered questions about the accuracy of the voter rolls, non-citizen voting, election security, how voters are verified, authentication procedures for mail ballots, checks on the accuracy of voting machines, audits throughout the election process, and the certification of election results.
Journalists from the Washington Post, the New York Times, CNN, NBC, ABC, CBS, USA Today, Politico, PBS, NPR, Associated Press, Reuters, Bloomberg, the Boston Globe, the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, the New Yorker, and Votebeat, as well as local Michigan outlets, had the opportunity to question the election officials and learn about the efforts to safeguard the 2024 vote.
The election officials also described efforts to debunk election misinformation by being transparent about the way ballots in their jurisdictions are cast, counted, and certified and continuing to offer verifiable, truthful information to the public in the weeks leading up to November 5.
The event received support from Hoover Institution’s Center for Revitalizing American Institutions, Pillars of the Community (which Ginsberg cochairs with Democratic lawyer Bob Bauer), Keep Our Republic, and the Gerald R. Ford Presidential Library.
Participants spoke of the continued need to educate the electorate on the electoral process, including the steps taken to secure ballots from the minute they are collected to the end of post-election audits.
They also spoke of the value of allowing citizens to inspect ballot-counting areas and other parts of each jurisdiction’s election infrastructure. The officials urged voters, especially those with doubts about elections’ reliability, to sign up to be poll workers to see how the process works.
With polls showing over 30 percent of voters doubting the reliability of election results, the day concluded with an Ask Me Anything Town Hall, where election experts addressed questions from a diverse public audience on widespread concerns related to election integrity and public confidence in the system.
“As rhetoric about elections’ reliability ramps up before November, the officials from these battleground states demonstrated a willingness to answer all questions and explain the numerous safeguards that can give the public confidence in election results,” Ginsberg said. “Reporters and members of the public present got an unprecedented opportunity to kick the tires of the election system with the people who will be at the center of running November’s elections in the most contentious jurisdictions.”
The meeting is part of the Improving American Elections initiative and builds on a conference Ginsberg convened at the Hoover Institution in January 2024, where election officials, academics studying election disinformation, and others met to discuss what steps can be taken to safeguard the 2024 vote.
Election officials who attended the September event:
- Lisa Marra, Arizona State Election Director
- Stephen Richer, Recorder, Maricopa County, Arizona
- Joseph Kirk, Bartow County Election Supervisor, Georgia
- Brad Raffensperger, Georgia Secretary of State
- Jocelyn Benson, Michigan Secretary of State
- Lisa Posthumus Lyons, Kent County Clerk and Register of Deeds, Michigan
- Justin Roebuck, Ottawa County Chief Election Officer, Michigan
- Karen Brinson Bell, Executive Director, North Carolina State Board of Elections
- Tim Tsuji, Forsyth County Elections Director, North Carolina
- Chet Harhut, Deputy Division Manager of Elections, Allegheny County, Pennsylvania
- Lamont McClure, Northampton County Executive, Pennslvania
- Al Schmidt, Pennsylvania Secretary of the Commonwealth
- Kim Pytleski, Oconto County Clerk, Wisconsin
- Lisa Tollefson, Rock County Clerk, Wisconsin
- Meagan Wolfe, Administrator, Wisconsin Elections Commission
