On a day-to-day basis election officials are encountering persistent physical threats, growing pressure around access to election systems, and the strain placed on small teams expected to manage both. On January 22, the Election Security Exchange hosted a conversation with election experts, security specialists, and national partners to take stock of this current threat environment and what it will take for local offices to stay prepared in the year ahead.
Tina Barton, a Senior Election Expert at The Elections Group and Co-Chair of the Committee for Safe and Secure Elections, which provides physical security training and exercises to jurisdictions nationwide, described an environment in which personal threats toward election workers have become routine rather than exceptional. She and her group have been aware of trends in these threats for years.
“We are still seeing this high number of election officials facing personal threats,” Barton said. She pointed to harassment at public counters, intimidation over the phone, and individuals filming staff outside offices or waiting in parking lots. “The personal threats have not subsided.”
Bomb threats, in particular, remain a recurring operational challenge.
“We can record specifically over 250 of them that occurred in 2024,” she said, noting that even a handful of coordinated calls can disrupt voting and stretch local law enforcement capacity.
Rather than treating those incidents as rare emergencies, Barton said offices are increasingly planning for them as expected risks. Her organization emphasizes rehearsals and simple procedures that can be followed under stress.
“It’s our job to kind of think of what are like the worst things that could happen and how can we help you prepare for them in a matter of preparation and not paranoia,” she said.
That preparation often comes down to basics. Asked what every office should have ready, Barton’s answer was direct.
“Bomb threat protocol,” she said. “They should have a bomb threat checklist of exactly who would be the one to determine evacuation, what would be the circumstances that you would decide whether to evacuate or not, what happens to the ballots, what happens to the equipment.”
Clear chains of command and up-to-date contact numbers, she added, are essential when decisions must be made quickly.
The conversation then turned to risks facing election technology and equipment. Sara Cutter, executive director of the American Council for Election Technology, said offices are increasingly navigating requests for access from outside actors as well as concerns about insiders misusing legitimate access.
“The first are those external actors – the people outside your office demanding access to your election system,” Cutter said, cautioning that urgency can be misleading. “Pause and verify. Let me confirm this through official channels is always appropriate. It’s okay to slow things down. Legitimacy is patient.”
She also encouraged documenting every interaction and following established chains of command. “Don’t let this person’s urgency override your protocols,” she said, recommending that supervisors and legal counsel be involved before granting access. The same tactics that we’ve seen in email phishing attacks designed to create a false sense of urgency to trick people into acting hastily can also be used by these outside actors.
At the same time, Cutter emphasized that risk can come from inside an organization as well.
“Second are the insider threats who are people who already have legitimate access but exceed or abuse it,” she said, urging staff to document concerns as they arise and consult counsel before confronting a situation directly.
Beyond physical sites and systems, speakers stressed that workforce capacity is an equally important part of the security equation. Carolina Lopez of the Partnership for Large Election Jurisdictions said many offices are operating with limited staff, tight budgets, and sustained public scrutiny, conditions that can quietly weaken even well-designed controls.
“Security really isn’t just about locks and code. It’s really about the humans,” Lopez said.
She described how burnout and turnover create single points of failure when too much responsibility rests with a few experienced people.
“If your security posture depends on a few exhausted experts that never take a day off, that is not resilience,” she said. “That’s fragility.”
For Lopez, resilience means distributing knowledge across teams, cross-training staff, and embedding security practices into everyday workflows rather than relying on heroics during crises.
“Strong technical controls only work when you have people that know how to use them,” Lopez said.
Taken together, the perspectives offered a consistent picture of the 2026 landscape. Election security is not defined by any single tool or policy but by steady, practical measures: clear response protocols, deliberate verification practices, and teams that are supported and prepared to act. For many offices, the most effective improvements are also the most straightforward – defining who does what, writing down the steps in your response plans and processes, and ensuring no one person carries the burden alone.