My Journey into Election Security Advocacy Kirstin Mueller League of Women Voters of Washington Election Security Chair

No background in advocacy whatsoever. Generally consider myself an introvert. No background in elections or cybersecurity. On November 18th, 2016 I read an op-ed in USA today detailing how most states fail to perform adequate post-election audits. First exposure to the term ‘risk-limiting audits’ Immediately drawn to the concept that statistics can be used to give us high confidence in our election outcomes That day I began to seek out more information…

Wanted to learn more. Found great resources: Broken Ballots: Will Your Vote Count? (Book) Securing Digital Democracy (Online Course, Coursera) Gentle Introduction to Risk-Limiting Audits (Stark et al paper) Evidence Based Elections (Stark et al paper) verifiedvoting.org

Began to write letters to election officials, secretary of state, legislators, local advocacy groups to outline benefit of risk-limiting audits (RLAs) Why aren’t we performing this type of audit?? We are a vote by mail state, over 99% of our ballots are returned on paper. Didn’t get any response for awhile…. League of Women Voters of Washington (LWVWA) responded with a lot of interest…. League has a great report on post-election audits: http://forum.lwv.org/sites/default/files/member-resources/report- electionaudits.pdf Began to work under the LWVWA’s Election and Democracy Chair for state level advocacy and lobbying as ‘Election Security Chair’.

Power of working with an organization: learn from those who have experience and background in advocacy. League of Women Voters established relationships with legislators lobbying experience and expertise The League does a lot of research, and takes a lot of time before arriving at a “position” on a topic. Policymakers know that if the League is advocating for risk- limiting audits, they have put in the time to really understand the issue. It can be helpful when writing letters to point to all the well respected national organizations who support risk-limiting audits.

Washington State had very outdated post-election audit laws. State laws detailed on Verified Voting: State Audit Law Database: https://www.verifiedvoting.org/state-audit-laws/ Difficult to convince my local election officials of pursuing something when they are constrained for time and money. In concert with LWV of WA, decided to pursue writing draft legislation and find legislator to sponsor. Washington is very similar to Colorado, so used Colorado law and rules as a base and modified. Found out a legislator was already working on RLA legislation, and was coordinating with election officials to get their support

Made the most sense to work with the legislator, provide feedback. Reached out to national leaders on post-election audits, they provided feedback as well. Contacted my state senator and arranged a meeting to educate him on post-election audits. He ended up sponsoring a companion bill in the Senate to help the legislation move faster. I provided testimony in support of the legislation for the LWVWA in house and senate committees. LWVWA provided a lot of guidance and support for how to testify.

Bill passed nearly unanimously in both houses Now awaiting rule formation by secretary of state. The law states that risk-limiting audits are “optional” for election officials, but this gives voters a great way to engage and put pressure on their election officials to perform this audit method. LWVWA was invaluable for arranging meetings with legislators, guidance with testimony, guidance with whom to contact when during legislative process, supporting the bill in their weekly newsletter and on their webpage.

Key reports and resources during the process: Center for American Progress Report on Election Security in All 50 States (2018) Common Cause & Verified Voting Report on Election Security in all 50 States (2012) Senate Select Intelligence Committee Report on Election Security The State and Local Election Security Playbook, Belfair Center (2018) electionaudits.org Put together a sample of actual races and how many ballots would initially be looked at for a comparison audit. This helped to show legislators how few ballots would need to be performed with many races. https://www.stat.berkeley.edu/~stark/Vote/auditTools.htm

Continued work to be done in Washington! Just held a joint Election Security public forum with LWVWA and University of Washington Center for Information Assurance and Cybersecurity Discussed Washington State vulnerabilities Wrote article about election security in Washington for LWVWA April 2018 newsletter: https://lwvwa.org/in-the-washington-news/6030950

Questions? kmueller@lwvwa.org