- Public confidence in our elections matters.
Securing our election,
is integral to protecting US democracy.
- I've always felt nagged by the gap
between democracy as it is,
and democracy as we wish it would be.
- In 2020, the stakes are high.
Facing unprecedented cybersecurity threats,
and a global health emergency,
Americans are anxious about the integrity of our elections.
- We have malicious actors around the world
working to thwart elections.
That is what we are fighting on a daily basis.
(mumbling)
- I've been an election administrator for 12 years.
I've never had anyone be as interested in what we're doing.
- Across America,
thousands of citizens are on the front lines
of our democracy.
Here's the work they're doing every day
to ensure voter confidence in the 2020 election.
Beth is one of thousands of election officials
across America whose full time job,
is to ensure that elections run smoothly.
- Ballots, mail in voting, polling locations,
I am responsible for all of that.
- In 2020, that job is more digital than ever before.
And the fight for election
cybersecurity starts long before election day.
- My name is Paul Pate and I am Iowa's secretary of state.
Our voter registration is the backbone of the system.
- The voter registration database
is a statewide digital record of citizens' voter data.
These databases are electronic and accessible
by even the smallest election offices.
Tampering with that data would be a cheap and scalable way,
to cause chaos on election day.
So preventing that nightmare scenario
is vital to keeping our elections running,
enter VoteShield.
- VoteShield is a tool for election administrators
to track changes to their voter databases,
using statistics and machine learning.
- Iowa was the first state
to start using VoteShield in 2018.
Today, 19 states are monitored by VoteShield.
- So there's voter registration activity daily
throughout the state, throughout the country.
In order to spot an anomaly,
we have to know what is that normal baseline.
- People move, people die,
people change their political party.
- But when unusual activity happens,
VoteShield flags it for users to investigate.
Usually the anomaly winds up being basic human error,
like an election mailer bouncing back
and incorrectly inactivating a hundred voters.
Those kinds of mistakes are easily and quickly corrected.
But with the system in place,
Heidi, Quinn and other users,
are confident that we're better protected
against more sinister threats like foreign interference.
- Hello Heidi, how are you?
- There's always gonna be a human element to this.
We have to pick up the phone.
We have to talk to the election administrator,
and see what's going on.
- In fact,
VoteShield leverages what could be a voter database's
biggest vulnerability - it's statewide accessibility,
and turns it into a strength by enabling a wide range
of election officials, academics and analysts
to collectively monitor the database.
- Cyber security is a race without a finish line,
but VoteShield can reassure the election administrators
and the voters, that the integrity of the system is intact.
- We lost a polling location.
- Which one?
- Holy Trinity, looking to try and find another location.
- So, I think we need to go to find that church--
- The church down the street, maybe we have to add
the fire station back in.
- All right, or resurrection maybe.
- Local election officials have the most direct effect
on our voting experience.
- But despite their outsized role in our democracy,
many local election offices have just a few full time staff.
And with limited budgets,
they struggle to access the technology and resources
they need to run a modern election.
Tiana Epps Johnson noticed their need,
and co founded the Center for Tech and Civic Life
or CTCL to help.
- We share tools, training
and professional development resources,
with election departments so that they're not working
to reinvent the wheel.
- CTCL offers courses on cybersecurity,
poll worker best practices,
building a user friendly election website,
effective messaging to voters and more.
Today, these resources are used by election offices
that serve over half the US population.
(upbeat music)
- All of their training is very topical.
They have like a crystal ball or something.
- As a result of the Covid-19 pandemic,
election offices are having to rapidly adapt their processes
for more people voting by mail.
- In March, CTCL took their courses online,
and added new resources to help election officials
through sudden changes brought on by the pandemic,
like handling a higher volume of early voting.
They're also offering Covid-19 response grants
to combat the unique funding gaps
many election offices are facing this year.
- We're really using all of the methods that we have
in our toolbox to make sure that election officials
feel like they have the support that they need
in this moment.
(upbeat music)
- Okay, so here's our new space,
lots of social distancing.
The voters will be coming in through these doors here.
My office will be over here.
Before we've always had a lot of walls in between us
and we couldn't see what was going on with early voting.
I can't tell you how much this is going to help us
do the best job we can with this election coming up.
(upbeat music)
- Beth was able to improvise,
and move her entire operation to a sports coliseum,
to provide voters the option of safe, in person,
socially distanced voting.
- When the pandemic first came, we were scared,
but we are a problem solving team.
This is just a new problem that we have to solve,
and people are stepping up.
- Thousands of people across America are working every day
so we can be confident that 2020 is a safe,
fair and inclusive election.
- Beth, Tiana, Heidi and Quinn are just a few of the folks
dedicated to building us a more resilient democracy.
- I have never met a group of people that are more committed
to doing a good job than elections people.
We know how to do this.
It's built into us.
(upbeat music)
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