The World Health Organization characterized COVID-19 as a pandemic on March 11th, and President Trump declared a National Emergency on March 13th. Within a few days, states ordered the closure of nonessential businesses, and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention recommended practices of social distancing. In the midst of this, many election experts and administrators are planning for November’s election, exploring ways to expand vote-by-mail options and ensure in-person voting is safe for voters and election workers.

To support election departments amid the uncertainty of the pandemic, CTCL is doing what we do best — curating resources, convening experts, and delivering top-notch online training that meet the most pressing needs of the field.

Here are some of the ways we’re prioritizing CTCL’s work in response to COVID-19.

Training

We delivered a series of free, 1-hour recorded webinars that we developed in partnership with the Center for Civic Design and the National Vote At Home Institute earlier this year. The 3 webinars cover vote-by-mail topics including ballot envelope design, supplemental materials, and ballot tracking and reporting tools.

We offered free 90-minute training courses on communicating trusted election information. From election websites to social media pages, official election communication needs to be clear, accessible, and user-friendly. And during the COVID-19 pandemic, digital communication of accurate, up-to-date election information is more important than ever. In the past, we’ve charged $50 per person, per course for our 90-minute training. However, due to the urgency and importance of the moment we’re in, these 4 courses are offered at no cost to election officials in 2020.

We led a series of free 1-hour webinars on shared approaches to election administration during COVID-19. These 12 webinars supplement existing COVID-19 response FAQs & consideration documents, created as part of the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) Elections Infrastructure Government Coordinating Council and Sector Coordinating Council’s Joint COVID Working Group.

We partnered with the U.S. Election Assistance Commission to provide self-paced cybersecurity training nationwide.

We partnered with Facebook to produce a webinar on how election officials can leverage the social media platform to engage voters, including how to use new features like Voting Alerts.

Best practices

Social distancing guidelines are requiring everyone — including election officials — to rethink in-person events like conferences and workshops. Based on our experience leading online training, we published affordable online training resources and tips.

As election departments rapidly adjust how they’re administering elections, we organized a list of news clips that demonstrate the practical and creative ways election officials are responding to COVID-19.

As election offices recruit more poll workers to safely administer elections in November, we curated a list of poll worker recruitment success stories from across the country.

Curated resources

We’ve heard from election officials that there are so many resources, recommendations, and tools available that it can be difficult to quickly locate what they need. As we all sprint towards November, time is the most important resource. That’s why we published the most relevant, actionable material across a range of topics on a new website, resources.techandciviclife.org. This is a collection of free, curated, and practical election resources for safe elections.

If election officials still can’t find what they’re looking for, the website also includes a dedicated Elections IT Support Desk to field technical questions, large and small.

Grants

Finally, to ensure election offices have the resources they need to lead safe and secure elections in November, CTCL is providing grants to metro jurisdictions like the 5 largest cities in Wisconsin. And because there’s a need for safe voting options in jurisdictions of all sizes across the country, CTCL launched a COVID-19 Response Grant Program open call to every local U.S. election office.

Partnership and collaboration are in CTCL’s DNA. So, even while we stay apart we know that coming together to tackle this historic challenge is our best and only path forward. If you have ideas on additional ways CTCL can work with you or others to support U.S. democracy in 2020, let us know at [email protected].