2022 Copenhagen Democracy Summit Recap
This year, the OSET Institute was honored and humbled to receive five invitations to the 5th Copenhagen Democracy Summit, which took place on the 9th and 10th of June in Copenhagen Denmark. Due to some scheduling conflicts our delegation ended up including four of the Institute’s leadership in person and two more by remote video link.
This annual summit unites democratic forces to push back on the authoritarian tide, and promote democracy, which was the mission when the Alliance of Democracies inaugurated the summit series five years ago with (then Vice President, now President) Joe Biden as their inaugural keynote speaker.
While witnessing Russia's invasion and attempted destruction of Ukraine, the Summit gathered 500 of the world’s top pro-democracy thought-leaders in the battle for freedom and democracy. And from our delegation’s view there on the ground, it was nothing short of a moral imperative. The event provided a global platform and was attended by individuals from dozens of countries. There was an A-list of participants including former U.S. President Barack Obama, who among other activities, delivered a moving closing plenary keynote.
This was an amazing opportunity for the OSET Institute to send an entire delegation and broaden our outreach and participation, although a single representative from the Institute had attended the preceding four editions.
Thursday was dedicated to technology and democracy including a democracy and tech entrepreneur fellowship meeting. Friday focused on how to defend Ukraine, counter authoritarian powers, and to continue building an alliance of democracies. And threaded throughout the jam-packed two days were side meetings, hall-chats, and gatherings at every meal over the course of four days when counting the weekend.
Former U.S. President Barack Obama facilitates a panel
A Unique & Important Conversation
Most special to us was the honor of co-hosting an invitation-only side meeting with the Transatlantic Commission on Electoral Integrity (TCEI) to discuss the future of disinformation—for our part focusing on the threats to elections administration and election officials and workers. While we cannot disclose the participants in that Thursday evening meeting, we can assure you the some of the most amazing thought-leaders on the subject matter in the world we’re present for an engaging hour and a half conversation. Our own Board member, Eddie Perez helped open the conversation with opening remarks together with fellow OSET Institute board member William P. Crowell, which you can read for yourself here.
There were numerous take-aways and opportunities, going forward, to collaborate with a range of thought-leaders about ways to address the dangerous and persistent disinformation and misinformation—for us, especially with regard to the administration of elections. One consensus point: the imperative need to find ways to increase confidence in elections and their outcomes (coincidentally, our mission statement 🤓). Subsequent conversation following the Summit, are bearing one important theme: not only the need for standardized post-election audits of the results, but the need for standardized process audits. There is much agreement on the need for formal methods. Coincidentally, there is already emerging consensus state-side across the political spectrum such as this fine example of what one kind of formal audit might look like from our professional colleague, Dr. Alex Halderman in the form of a new paper to be formally released later this summer regarding issues in 2020 with Antrim County, MI; and a new paper from the Heritage Foundation by Hans Von Spakovsky about standards for election audits.
Reflections on the Mandate
This fifth edition of the Summit was the first year back in person due to the global COVID pandemic. And given all of the current events in democracies around the world, including the U.S., attendance was completely full with a wait list that was ultimately served by video link to some of the sessions. For the OSET Institute and TrustTheVote Project, several new relationships were established and several others were renewed.
The Institute’s mission is global in cause and our delegation were constantly reminded that many of the challenges we have state-side in election administration are present in other democracies as well. At the same time, the world continues to marvel at the miracle of our democracy – as the late President Reagan once characterized the orderly transition of power in America, which began with President George Washington from the start. And yet we must be candid in reporting that many from around the world were shaken by the post-election chaos of 2020 in the U.S. and the events of January 6th. Members of our delegation spent measurable time discussing this with attendees from around the world, reassuring them that our democracy held; it is strong; that we believe accountability will be had; and more importantly steps—legislative and otherwise—will be taken to further strengthen the process of orderly power transition.
At the heart of those conversations, however, was the issue core to the 2020 post-election fiasco, and what permeates our cause: trust in the machinery of election administration. To that end, several actionable introductory conversations resulted in new opportunities to assist with election technology innovation initiatives from the U.K. to Kenya.
This was an important and actionable event and relations development trip for the Institute’s global work and ever-increasing awareness and knowledge of the TrustTheVote Project. Our belief was validated that building the People’s Voting System is not just something for we, the people of the United States of America, but a solution sought by democracies worldwide. How awesome is that?
Considering on Our Part
The Copenhagen Democracy Summit is a valuable investment in the OSET Institute’s visibility and continued participation in important global pro-democracy efforts. Needless to say, all of the activities in the run-up, participation, and wind-down represent a considerable investment. The delegation and leadership believe the investment is worthwhile and clearly advances our mission – and we will continue to “right-size” the investment and continue participation in the future. It’s difficult to fully capture in a blog post the benefits of in-participation at an event like this; but we verified that they are appropriate and important. To state the obvious, it’s reasonable to ask, “Do we need to be there in-person to have maximum impact?” And with this, our fifth and largest attendance, yes, we firmly believe the answer is that it does make a difference, in terms of:
Raising awareness of the OSET Institute’s brand and mission (i.e., increasing confidence in elections and their outcomes through development and availability of public (open-source) election administration technology);
Increasing knowledge of what the Institute, as a public benefit organization does (i.e., designs and builds public=-benefit election administration technology; provides counsel on election cybersecurity; and educates the public on how elections and their administration actually works); and
Catalyzing consideration of supporting our organization (i.e., considering philanthropic investment in our work to deliver public technology—the “People’s Voting System”).
After a full day, time to network and converse
While it’s true that, in principle, some of our connections could also have happened virtually, in the international arena we have found that human nature is such that human interactions are far more memorable and impactful. So, there is enormous value that comes from simply being in the same venue with so many important thought-leaders and stakeholders from around the world. And that is already bearing fruit in the form of at least two new potential projects for the Institute that are complementary to, and can leverage existing work.
In summary, we will definitely be back, and we look forward to furthering our collaboration and support of the Alliance of Democracies. While our primary focus is, of course, on producing innovative publicly-owned voting and election administration technology to U.S. elections that is more verifiable, accurate, secure, and transparent than anything to date, we are rapidly realizing this work can be beneficial to all democracies worldwide. Several opportunities to bring public (open source) election technology to other countries already presented themselves over these three days. Accordingly, we’re convinced that an on-going partnership with the Alliance of Democracies, the Democracy Summit, and the Transatlantic Commission on Election Integrity, is a sound decision to advance that mission. We are deeply honored to have been invited back, as well as given the opportunity to participate at the level we did, and to support the conference and the Alliance as a co-sponsor.
