Skip to content
Search

Latest Stories

Top Stories

Legal network provides pro bono support for election workers

Christine Gibbons

Christine Gibbons has relied on the Election Official Legal Defense Network to help fight what she says was an unwarranted dismissal from her job as registrar of Lynchburg, Va.

Justin Ide / for The Washington Post via Getty Images

Nevins is co-publisher of The Fulcrum and co-founder and board chairman of the Bridge Alliance Education Fund.

Since 2020, election officials across the country have endured threats, harassment, intimidation, defamation and, in some states, exposure to criminal penalties, for simply doing their jobs of administering fair elections.

In this highly contentious environment, the Election Official Legal Defense Network serves an invaluable function of connecting election officials in need to qualified, pro bono attorneys who can provide advice or assistance.


EOLDN is a project of the Center for Election Innovation & Research, whose mission is to restore trust in the American election system and promote election procedures that encourage participation while ensuring election integrity and security.

One example of many election officials that EOLDN supports is former Lynchburg, Va., Registrar Christine Gibbons, who has endured multiple baseless claims of corruption and harassment since the 2022 election. She even woke up to a sign in her yard one morning that read, “Christine Gibbons Belongs in Jail. #LockHerUp. Resign Now.” Despite this harassment Gibbons nonetheless worked every day to administer fair and transparent elections in her county.

Despite Gibbons’ dedication, in 2023 the newly Republican-controlled Lynchburg Election Board informed her that she would not be reappointed to her position as registrar. In Virginia, registrars are traditionally reappointed as long as they maintain positive performance reviews.

Sign up for The Fulcrum newsletter

When the board declined to reappoint her, Gibbons considered her options. As she told Washington Lawyer, “Friends told me that maybe I should walk away, but I didn’t feel right about walking away because I know I did everything possible and within the law to ensure the integrity of our elections.”

When Gibbons decided she needed an attorney, she reached out to EOLDN for pro bono legal support and soon was on the phone with Stephen Pershing of Kalijarvi, Chuzi, Newman & Fitch, P.C. Pershing agreed to represent Gibbons in her lawsuit to be reinstated as registrar. Pershing said he believes EOLDN’s work is crucial to giving “nonpartisan election officials a way to fight back against hostile partisan takeovers of their functions.”

Gibbons, who has had to work as a substitute teacher to support her family, expressed her gratitude that EOLDN was able to match her with a pro bono attorney, saying, “I don’t know if I would have been able to sustain the case on my own.”

The issues that confront election workers are many. Some of the questions that election workers ask EOLDN attorney’s relate to:

  • Understanding how to deal with harassment and threats received.
  • Help in sending cease-and-desist letters or filing for a restraining order.
  • What to do when attempts are made to undermine their duties or how to respond to intimidation at work.
  • How to respond to instructions from election boards that may conflict with their legal duties.

Faith and trust in our elections is essential for the well-being of a democratic republic. Election workers are critical to the functioning of our democracy. In today’s contentious and partisan political climate it is critical that the work of election workers is protected.

Sadly, as partisanship and rhetoric have heated up in America, so have the threats. As citizens and patriots, we need to stand by our principles, our institutions and our fellow citizens. We cannot allow threats and harassment against election officials to undermine safe and fair elections.

In the coming months The Fulcrum will continue to report on all aspects of the election process, including the many intricacies of election law and procedures, so Americans can trust the results of the election whether their candidate wins or loses.

Read More

People voting
Paul J. Richards/Getty Images

Make safe states matter

Richie is co-founder and senior advisor of FairVote.

It’s time for “safe state” voters to be more than nervous spectators and symbolic participants in presidential elections.

The latest poll averages confirm that the 2024 presidential election will again hinge on seven swing states. Just as in 2020, expect more than 95 percent of major party candidate campaign spending and events to focus on these states. Volunteers will travel there, rather than engage with their neighbors in states that will easily go to Donald Trump or Kamala Harris. The decisions of a few thousand swing state voters will dwarf the importance of those of tens of millions of safe-state Americans.

But our swing-state myopia creates an opportunity. Deprived of the responsibility to influence which candidate will win, safe state voters can embrace the freedom to vote exactly the way they want, including for third-party and independent candidates.

Keep ReadingShow less
Map of the United States

The National EduDemocracy Landscape Map provides a comprehensive overview of where states are approaching democracy reforms within education.

The democracy movement ignores education races at its peril

Dr. Mascareñaz is a leader in the Cornerstone Project, a co-founder of The Open System Institute and chair of the Colorado Community College System State Board.

One of my clearest, earliest memories of talking about politics with my grandfather, who helped the IRS build its earliest computer systems in the 1960s, was asking him how he was voting. He said, “Everyone wants to make it about up here,” he said as gestured high above his head before pointing to the ground. “But the truth is that it’s all down here.” This was Thomas Mascareñaz’s version of “all politics is local” and, to me, essential guidance for a life of community building.

As a leader in The Cornerstone Project and a co-founder of The Open System Institute I've spent lots of time thinking and working at the intersections of education and civic engagement. I've seen firsthand how the democratic process unfolds at all levels — national, statewide, municipal and, crucially, in our schools. It is from this vantage point that I can say, without a shadow of a doubt, that the democracy reform movement will not succeed unless it acts decisively in the field of education.

Keep ReadingShow less
Hands making a heart and painted to look like an American flag
Chinnapong/Getty Images

A framework for democracy philanthropy

Stid is the executive director of Lyceum Labs, a fiscally sponsored project of the Defending Democracy Together Institute. The following is reposted with permission from his blog, The Art of Association.

It is challenging for philanthropic funders to get started and stay focused when it comes to strengthening democracy. The vagaries of our political system — really a complex system of systems cast on a continental scale — make it hard to know where to even begin. There are dozens of solutions that could be worthy of support. Alas, none are backed by dispositive evidence indicating that they are the single-best way forward. Then, every second and fourth year, elections reset the stage of democracy and reshuffle the cast of characters, often in unsettling ways.

Democracy's proximity to politics further complicates the philanthropic picture. The tax code bars foundations from backing or opposing candidates, parties and ballot measures. Many foundations take a belt-and-suspenders approach to this proscription on electioneering by avoiding anything that smacks of politics (as democracy-related causes frequently do). Other foundations, in contrast, push right up to the edge, seeking to exploit all the legal ways they can underwrite voter registration, education and participation, ostensibly on a nonpartisan basis, to further their political goals.

Sign up for The Fulcrum newsletter

Keep ReadingShow less
Red and blue figures pulling a map of the U.S. apart

Missouri Secretary of State Jay Ashcroft, who oversees elections, is running for governor this year.

filo

We can break the partisan cycle by unrigging the system

Sturner, the author of “Fairness Matters,” is the managing partner of Entourage Effect Capital.

This is the sixth entry in the “Fairness Matters” series, examining structural problems with the current political systems, critical policies issues that are going unaddressed and the state of the 2024 election.

We face complex issues, from immigration to the national debt, from Social Security to education, from gun violence to climate change and the culture war, from foreign policy to restoring a vibrant middle class by ensuring economic outcomes are more balanced and equitable.

Yet, neither party seems to be doing much about any of the political problems and policy challenges plaguing our nation. Instead of working on real solutions, our politicians spend their time and our national resources distracting and dividing us by using every tool at their disposal to retain power. Why is that? As Andrew Yang points out in a recent TED Talk (quoting a senator), “A problem is now worth more to us unaddressed than addressed.” It’s galling until you remember that the Democratic and Republican parties are private, gain-seeking organizations that exist to seek and retain power. As such, we should be wary of political parties because our interests and theirs are not aligned.

Sign up for The Fulcrum newsletter

Keep ReadingShow less