De-Weaponizing Voter Registration News

Settling into my new role here as a senior strategic advisor, I noticed a press release from the good folks in Nevada last week regarding what some might characterize as either interesting, concerning, suspicious or a nothing-burger about voter registration statistics post-midterms.  Anticipating that some mendacious minds may try to weaponize that, this became my first and immediate action: providing a little proactive clarification before those types  have a chance to go cray-cray on the reporting out of Nevada.

There’s no question about it, in the United States, elections are complicated, detailed beasts. Across the country, key numbers reportedly change frequently, and other times not frequently enough. To the curious and nervous alike, reports of voter registration fluctuations and delays in results can be erroneously flagged and turned into false information with merely a Tweet. The truth is often much more boring; elections officials are doing the daily, tedious work to ensure accuracy amidst a constantly changing environment.

To help dispel elections myths before they arise when new laws are implemented, transparency must be embedded at every step. And we need innovative tools that allow for such transparency without disrupting or delaying the work. As state legislatures convene to consider more changes to elections in 2023, the cost of administering change and doing so while embracing the public eye must be top of mind.

So, let’s have a look at the voter registration numbers out of Nevada recently showing a decline across the board. These figures can and do change after an election, and this is especially true if a state makes a quick, major change to their voting method. 

In Nevada’s case, the changes reflect a well-functioning agency dedicated to the accuracy of its voter lists.

Why? Honestly, it’s not clear without more context. A switch to voting primarily by mail increases voter contact and information sharing (through the mail) which, after investigation, can cause changes in registration status by an elections official. 

Couple that with the federal requirement to pause most list maintenance until after an election and you could get a substantial change in active registrants in the following months. Reviewing the duplicates, out of state moves, deaths, and other minutiae provided by from state, federal, and voluntary cross checking sources takes time and diligence. 

Rather than something nefarious, these changes reflect a likely rigorous, routine check-up.  

A perceived lag in elections results in some vote-by-mail jurisdictions during the 2022 midterms tells a similar story. Many states were processing ballots after the election due to changes in mail-in voting deadlines. As a result, more people were able to vote on time. But there aren’t easy shortcuts to checking signatures, verifying postmarks, and contacting voters with follow-up questions, nor should there be if we want to depend on routine, verifiable, and systematic procedures. Delivering trusted results of who governs your state, city, or country might take more time than a drive through order.

That’s not a bad thing, but the procedures involved in verifying ballots could be made clearer with consistent, reliable tracking technology, verifying when and how elections offices receive and count voted ballots. 

Counter Approaches

These instances and the many that will follow in 2024 show how easy it is to set fire to an election’s office’s behind-the-scenes due-diligence. Lawmakers must look beyond the next election cycle to meaningfully invest in change with the time and resources necessary for implementation. With any change, adding trust, security, and accuracy to the system means embedding voter-centric transparency tools along the way.  

Pandemic response aside, election law changes should be rolled out with time to engage voters, collaborate with the many election partners across the industry, and learn from other jurisdictions.

We need to pave the way for secure, tested software tools to invite the public into an evolving system and improve their data quality.  In a shameless plug, and one of the main reasons I joined the OSET Institute, open-source software such as the Institute’s TrustTheVote® Project voter registration security service, Vanadium, allows for public inspection of voter registration fluctuations with blockchain-class technology. Such a tool could shore-up trust during a time of change by allowing real-time investigation and review of voter record changes.  

Election technology innovation – especially public technology – can help restore belief in elections and their outcomes. We have a maxim here:

Trust is what black-box technology demands. Belief is what glass-box technology delivers.  

Replace “technology” in our maxim for “solutions.” It remains true for solutions to better explain processes or phenomenon like what appears to be a sudden drop in voter registrations.

We need to deliver solutions for clarifying information about things like voter registration rolls before the mendacious weaponize press releases.

To be clear, Nevada is doing the right thing, the right way, at the right time.  And their media advisory was an excellent opportunity to comment on what’s typically really happening behind the numbers… hopefully, before someone spins a theory and drops a tweet… in a world where a lie can circle the globe before the truth can find the keyboard.