This post by By ERN Board Member Amber McReynolds and ERN VP of Programs Heather Balas originally appeared on TPM. Amid growing concern about the prospects for a free and fair election in 2024, last week brought a rare piece of good news: Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger, who famously stared down President Donald…
This post by ERN Executive Director Kevin Johnson originally appeared on The Fulcrum. As recent reporting has emphasized, elections in 2022 for secretary of state will feature well-funded “stop the steal” candidates who appear ready to undermine elections to help their side win. Similar threats are emerging at the local level, where most of the…
This post by Kevin Johnson and Al Vanderklipp originally appeared on The Fulcrum. Johnson and Vanderklipp are, respectively, the executive director and research fellow for the Election Reformers Network and the co-authors of “Nonpartisanship Works: How Lessons from Canada Can Reestablish Trust in U.S. Election Administration.” Wisconsin Sen. Ron Johnson has repeated the call for his state’s legislature to seize…
This post by Kevin Johnson, Miles Rapoport, and Larry Diamond originally appeared on The Hill. Two secretaries of state were honored recently by the Bipartisan Policy Center in Washington. Maggie Toulouse Oliver, New Mexico’s Democratic secretary of state, and Kyle Ardoin, Louisiana’s Republican secretary of state, received the organization’s prestigious Patriot Award on behalf of all U.S election…
This post by Kevin Johnson and Larry Garber originally appeared in The Fulcrum. Garber and Johnson advise The Carter Center, the global human rights and democracy foundation based in Atlanta, and helped create the Election Reformers Network, international election specialists who promote voting improvements in the United States. They are among the authors of the group’s September report,…
This blog post originally appeared on The Fulcrum’s Election Dissection. Last week, when President Trump complained about Attorney General William Barr’s failure to bring charges against his political opponents, the Justice Department lifted restrictions on election-related federal prosecutions. Let’s hope these developments do not presage a new kind of October surprise. Justice Department policy until…
This op-ed originally appeared in GOVERNING. Election specialists and national security experts have been gaming out scenarios for this November, assessing how candidates, supporters and media will respond if voting results are delayed or disputed. The 40 secretaries of state who are chief election officials also play important roles in these scenarios. Local-level officials handle ballot-counting and…
Washington, DC; December 13, 2019. Election Reformers Network has received an 18-month grant to support its work to address conflicts of interest at the state chief election officer level. “This is an important but complicated and neglected area of reform, so we are thrilled to have the support of an organization with the sophistication of…
Election Reformers Network has launched an intensive evaluation into the issue of conflicts of interest for state chief election officers. The project will assess the extent to which chief election officers competing for public office or publicly supporting a competing candidate or party threaten voter confidence in the election process. If the assessment concludes that…
