Forming an Election Security Working Group (ESWG) is a highly effective method to reduce your risks, strengthen partnerships, and ensure help is ready when you need it most. The first three issues of our Planning Desk walked you through forming an ESWG with your election security partners, so now is a good time for a quick review and suggested next steps forward.
By now, the ESWG should:
- Know who they are.
- Supporting organizations should have been identified, including the names of their support staff/members who will be engaged.
- Outreach should have been conducted. If there are partners who need to be at the table but haven’t shown up yet, consider the following:
- Help them understand their role as an election security partner. Share why you might turn to them in an emergency.
- Present a win-win scenario. Demonstrate alignment by outlining the benefits of information sharing and emergency preparedness.
- Emphasize the collaborative framework – clear mission, consistent communication, trusted partners, enhanced incident response, joint training and exercises, etc.
- Introductions should have been made. Anytime someone new joins, introduce everyone and their role.
- Have an established meeting cadence and standard running agenda.
- Be holding meetings with an action plan: meeting minutes, follow-up action items, and reference materials, including key contact information.
Election officials should be tracking the risks they are facing, including cyber, physical, and operational risk.
Moving forward, the ESWG should be:
- Assisting with assessing the risks on an ongoing basis.
- Helping the election official prioritize those risks.
- Working with the election official to mitigate the risks.
- Receiving updates from the election officials about the resources available and needed to manage and/or mitigate the risks so this cycle can repeat itself.
- Planning how they will support election officials on election day.
- Conducting exercises and reviewing response plans can help find vulnerabilities and institutionalize improvements.
- Visiting polling places and ballot processing centers with the ESWG can help them better understand the risks to your equipment, people, and processes.
- Applying PACE can build resilience by preparing for cascading failures.
- Activating the team through a web-based emergency operations center allows for virtual chat and brief check-ins throughout the day.
Building and sustaining an effective Election Security Working Group supports incident response before, during, and after elections. Convening your trusted security partners early can optimize that response and the continuity of your election operations.
Need more tips? Check out our It Starts with a Team: Building Your Election Security Working Group guide as well as the Emergency Readiness Guide from The Elections Group.
Want help facilitating a meeting? Contact us at [email protected].
The Planning Desk is a running timeline of key election security tasks. You can find prior editions in the newsletter archive.