Faces of Democracy: How Our Elections Work and the Challenges Ahead

In the midst of immense challenges brought on by the The writing on the wall COVID-19 pandemic, as well as already limited resources, these This disinformation campaign—commonly referred to as the “Big unsung heroes of our democracy pulled off an election that was Lie”4—claims that a cabal of election officials and poll workers safe, free, and fair. [...] As soon as an error of any kind is made public, the According to election expert and former director of elections in Denver, Colorado, Amber McReynolds, when it comes to automatic assumption, the problems with how elections are run, “90% of the time it’s not knee-jerk reaction, is that the fault of election officials, it’s the problem of state legisla- tors who have been told repeatedly they need. [...] FACES OF DEMOCRACY 19 Ensuring Trust in Safe, Secure, and Fair Elections It is a testament to the integrity of our election officials and poll confidence at the end of the day that the election outcome is workers that credible instances of fraud are “exceedingly rare.”60 exactly how they and their fellow voters voted?” As previously mentioned, the 2020 election was called the most secure on record. [...] “I always told people that “I would argue that the 2020 election in Maricopa County, would call me, ‘If you have 10 because of all the eyeballs that have been on this, and the extralegal audit that we had run by the cyber ninjas, was one minutes, I’ll walk you through of the most scrutinized elections in the history of the world,” the process, if you have an open said Bill Gates, the chairman of t. [...] But in 2020 we had to make the bipartisan nature of the grants and the manifest necessity for sure we could conduct an election fairly and safely and the best properly funding the 2020 election, numerous state legislatures way to do that was to have private funding,” said Greene County, have moved to ban the practice108—without stepping in to fill the Missouri Clerk Shane Schoeller, a Republican.