Election officials have one major goal ahead of 2024: Make Democracy Boring Again.
Election administration has faced an unprecedented amount of scrutiny — and tumult — since the 2020 election. Officials have faced death threats and unprecedented public harassment stemming from mis- and disinformation. Many workers are leaving the field.
Now, the Bipartisan Policy Center is out with a new report with 23 recommendations for election administration to turn down the temperature. The premise of the report, shared first with POLITICO, is to make behind-the-scenes improvements to how elections are administered in 2024 and beyond.
“Election officials do want elections to become boring again,” said Rachel Orey, the associate director of the BPC’s Elections Project and an author of the report. “We need to think more realistically about what it is that we actually need to do to improve elections.”
They might have their work cut out for them.
The explosion of election denialism, Orey says, has distracted “from the actual challenges that are undermining elections. If legislators’ attention is so focused on appeasing critics, they end up doing things that aren’t actually solving problems.”
One longtime recommendation they reup is to urge states to join or remain in the Electronic Registration Information Center — an interstate organization that helps states maintain their voter rolls — in an effort to make roll maintenance “a regular and uncontroversial part of the elections process.”