When the unexpected hits, it is critical to keep operations moving forward. Most organizations have an everyday operational plan and then a backup plan for disruptions. Too often, plans end there. When a disruption persists and the backup fails, operations can halt entirely if alternate solutions haven’t been identified in advance.
PACE is a planning principle to help you build election resiliency by anticipating disruption and preparing redundant backup capabilities. The acronym represents four tiers of capability–the first-line method plus three backups.
- Primary: The preferred and intended, most reliable method.
- Alternate: A backup method if the primary fails, common but less optimal.
- Contingency: A fallback method if primary and alternate fail, less ideal but still viable.
- Emergency: Method of last resort, used only when all others are unavailable.
Here are examples of applying PACE to:
Voter Check-in
- P: Electronic pollbooks.
- A: Paper pollbooks printed in advance.
- C: Ability to quickly print paper pollbooks on demand.
- E: Plenty of provisional ballot supplies.
Communications
- P: Office phone lines
- A: Cellular phones
- C: Messaging apps, SMS (text messaging)
- E: In-person runners, pre-designated meeting points
PACE can be applied even further throughout election operations, including but not limited to:
- Candidate Filing Results Reporting
- Incident Response Voter information alerts
- Logistics & Transportation Voting equipment malfunction
Organizations that understand and plan for cascading failures will be more resilient in the face of disruptions. You probably have several backup options for various functions but may not have documented and prioritized them.
Having one backup improves resilience, but PACE goes further. It builds a full chain of fallbacks so a single failure never stops operations.
- Step 1. Set aside 30 minutes to identify the critical functions of your office.
- Step 2. Brainstorm multiple alternate solutions if the primary option fails.
- Step 3. Use PACE to organize those options in order of precedence.
- Step 4. Build out this backup plan with your emergency partners to prevent a single failure from becoming a system-wide crisis.
The Planning Desk is a running timeline of key election security tasks. You can find prior editions in the newsletter archive.