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A playbook for balancing pandemic safety and election security

Jeff Plungis
By Jeff PlungisOct 09, 2020
Jeff Plungis

Jeff Plungis is editor of Election Dissection.

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Election Dissection contributor David Levine of the Alliance for Securing Democracy put out a comprehensive guidebook for securing the vote in 2020. The report shows that the innovative ways officials in the United States and Europe are making voting more accessible during the Covid-19 pandemic come with some security risks. On top of that, the persistent risks of foreign interference, cyberattacks and disinformation continue.

Levine addresses everything from added infection-prevention costs to poll watching to post-election audits.

Here's the conclusion:

As countries' authorities and election management bodies make changes to their election processes in response to the coronavirus, they must carefully consider the election security risks such changes introduce, while ensuring that elections carried out during the pandemic are accessible, secure, and legitimate. Doing otherwise risks making elections more vulnerable to adversaries and undermining public confidence in the democratic process.

Read the full report.

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The election went remarkably well. Here's how to make the next one even better.
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The election went remarkably well. Here's how to make the next one even better.

We haven't yet seen evidence that would cast doubt on the legitimacy of the 2020 presidential election — even with the unprecedented challenges of a global pandemic, the threat of foreign interference, civil unrest and greater turnout than any time since 1900. That counts as a resounding success.

Once the final tallies are certified, we need to thank the election administrators and poll workers whose heroic efforts preserved American democracy. After that, we need to assess what worked best and what needs to improve, so we can identify achievable steps to make future elections even more secure.

Based on what we know so far, here are five things that should be on the U.S. elections to-do list:

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On Dec. 14, the Electoral College will cast its votes. Barring any unforeseen outrage, a majority will vote for Joe Biden, the popular vote winner in the general election, to sighs of relief. Many may conclude the creaky Electoral College works most of the time, and that any fixes are just too hard to worry about.

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Hold the champagne: The 2020 Election Season isn't over just yet. Neither of Georgia's Senate races resulted in a victor on Election Day, sending both contests to January runoffs that will likely determine control of the U.S. Senate. And while many folks are understandably focused on the political repercussions of these races, I'm pulling for a different candidate: democracy.

While Georgia will likely conduct a risk-limiting audit and recount of the presidential election later this month, the state appears to have done a good job administering the 2020 presidential election. As a former election administrator and expert on the integrity of elections, my assessment is there is no reason to question the integrity of the election outcome. If any concrete evidence suggesting that wrongful disenfranchisement has or will affect the accuracy of the outcome, that assessment could change. Right now, there isn't.

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The nation has a new president-elect, Joe Biden. At the same time, there is no official president-elect, because the electoral process itself hasn't yet reached that point.

How can both these assertions be true? And if they are, how are Americans supposed to understand that? Most importantly, how can Americans of opposite parties get on the same page, so that we can move forward together as one country, as our new president-elect in his impressive victory speech is urging us to do?

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