Beyond the Ballot: Partnering for Safe and Secure Elections

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This content is brought to you by Travelers. Text: Citizen Travelers (service mark) at the Travelers Institute, A Series on Civic Engagement. A slide with the red Travelers umbrella logo reads, Citizen Travelers (service mark). Thank you for joining. The webinar will begin shortly. Three people sit around a coffee table on a stage, where a screen behind them displays the slide. Janice Brunner on the left wears a black suit. Stephanie Thomas in the center wears a yellow blazer. And William Senning on the right wears a dark suit. 

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JANICE BRUNNER: Welcome to Beyond the Ballot with Citizen Travelers. We are so thrilled to have with us today, Secretary of State of Connecticut Stephanie Thomas. And just a little bit about Secretary Thomas. She is Connecticut's 75th secretary of state. She was sworn in in January of 2023. And she has 30 years of experience in so many things. Nonprofit management, running a small business and state representative for the 143rd district. 

As secretary of state, she has led election reform within Connecticut, including the implementation of early voting and new critical voting machines, which I hope you'll talk about as well. So, thank you for coming today.

STEPHANIE THOMAS: Thank you for having me. Happy to be here.

JANICE BRUNNER: We are thrilled. And then we also have Will Senning, who we're so honored to have with us today as well. Will is the Election Security Advisor for the Northeast Region at the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency, CISA, which is a part of the Department of Homeland Security.

So he conducts-- he is a conduit between the federal security efforts and state and local officials. He supports cybersecurity, physical security and election operational guidance. So we'll learn more about that agency today as well. So I'm looking forward to a great discussion. To kick us off, Secretary Thomas, can you just tell us a little bit about what the secretary of state role is? It's a lot broader than I think a lot of people, including me, realize.

STEPHANIE THOMAS: Absolutely. Whenever I ask the question, who knows what the secretary of the state does, usually one person in an audience this size raises their hand. We do many, many things. The largest part of our operation, we run the business registry in Connecticut.

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Slide text: About Today’s Webinar. This webinar is supported by Citizen Travelers, the nonpartisan -civic engagement initiative of The Travelers Indemnity Co., for informational and educational purposes only. The views expressed by the speakers are their own and do not necessarily reflect the views of Travelers or any of its employees. Travelers disclaims responsibility for any publication or statement by any of the speakers. Please note that this session is being recorded and may be used as Travelers deems appropriate. The next slide reads, Speakers, and displays headshots of the three speakers above their names and titles. Text: Janice Brunner, Group General Counsel and Head of Civic Engagement, Travelers. Stephanie Thomas, Connecticut Secretary of State. William Senning, Election Security Advisor for Region 1, New England, Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA). 

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So if any of you know anyone who owns a business, you have filed with the Secretary's Office to start that business. Annual reports get filed. 

Just to give you a sense of the scope, 54,000 business formations happened last year. And we have over 400,000 that we keep up with. We also issue apostilles if anyone needs documents authenticated to use overseas.

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Slide text: Beyond the Ballot: Partnering for Safe and Secure Elections. Citizen Travelers (service mark). 

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We are the repository of records. So if you ever want to find that law that passed in 1813, we probably have it. 

And most people think of us because we oversee the administration of elections. But just to give you a sense, in our office, we only have 15 people in that department, and we work with over 500 town clerks and registrars of voters, all political candidates, political parties and, of course, members of the public who want to weigh in on elections, which is happening more and more these days.

JANICE BRUNNER: For sure, yes. So that's super helpful, and we'll talk a little bit more about some of those roles today. One thing that I think which got us started talking, which I love, is that you are really committed to promoting civic engagement and civics within Connecticut.

You have a couple great definitions on your website, which you describe civic education as understanding your rights as a citizen and civic engagement as participating in your community and helping the public by identifying issues and working to solve problems.

I love these concise definitions because they are so aligned with our mission at Citizen Travelers, and we're always looking to describe that in such a succinct way. So I may borrow those.

STEPHANIE THOMAS: Absolutely.

JANICE BRUNNER: But tell us a little bit about why civics is so important to you and why you've made that a focus in Connecticut.

STEPHANIE THOMAS: To answer that question, I hope you'll indulge me. I usually quiz every audience, and Travelers should be no exception. So I'm going to ask a really quick quiz question. If there's an issue happening and there's a public hearing in the General Assembly in Connecticut, and you want to testify, and you want to know how to sign up, when it's happening, where to go, do you check the calendar, the journal or the bulletin in the General Assembly? Does anyone know? Shout it out.

OK. This is exactly the answer I get in every room. One more quick question. Election Day is the first Tuesday in November, true or false? False. So there's no civic literacy. And I tell audiences, don't start feeling badly about yourself. It's because no one actually teaches us any of this stuff, what I like to call civics you can use.

So I ran for the office because when you heard what our office does, there is no statutory requirement for us to do any public education. There is no statutory requirement to teach people how the voting process works, how elections are run. There's no requirement. And therefore, there's no funding.

And I thought, when I was thinking about running, I thought it was a great opportunity to bring some intentionality around civic education because kids in high school have a half credit requirement. But if you missed out on that requirement because you're a certain age, and it wasn't required or you graduated from high school around the time I did, a long, long time ago, there's nowhere to really get any of this information.

So I have made that a major priority of our efforts. I call myself the Chief Civics Officer to try to bring civic education and therefore civic literacy back into the conversation, so that we can have a government that reflects our values.

I'll just say that when I travel around, so many people say government doesn't reflect me. I don't trust government. Government never meets me where I am. And some of that is because we don't know how to participate. So I think we can cure a lot that ails us these days just by increasing civic education.

JANICE BRUNNER: I couldn't agree more. I think that's really what underpins Citizen Travelers. And so I think it's amazing that you're doing that, and we really appreciate that.

STEPHANIE THOMAS: Thank you.

JANICE BRUNNER: One of the pieces that you have as part of your civics program is your Civically Engaged Organization, which you call the CEO program, which is a little different than how we think about CEO, but civics is a big priority of our CEO. So somewhat aligned.

And it encourages businesses and nonprofits to be civic ambassadors. We obviously believe in that at Travelers. Can you just tell us a little bit about that program and how the link with the business?

STEPHANIE THOMAS: Sure, when I first got to the Secretary's Office last year, I thought like, wow, we do all of these things, and none of them are connected. I owned a business before I got involved in politics, and I was thinking that I don't know any business that does not seek to become part of its community in some way, either philanthropically, via volunteers, or like Travelers, through both.

And I started thinking, how can we connect that with this goal to increase civic literacy? And I thought, well, why can't we ask businesses to help spread nonpartisan, factual information about how people can make their voices heard or understand how government operates?

So we put together this program. It's been fantastic. We've had over 200 entities sign up. And it's led to some really interesting partnerships, which I'm happy to share, or I can skip over that.

JANICE BRUNNER: Sure.

STEPHANIE THOMAS: It's really led to everything from a larger entity, like Connoisseur Media ended up giving us free PSAs for the election last year because turnout in municipal elections in Connecticut is only 34%. So we were trying to increase people's interest in going out and voting, and making sure they had all the information. So Connoisseur donated these ads.

I heard a newspaper in Kent, they were like, hey, we have writers. Let's create a voter guide for our town. So they wrote a voter guide for the first time in 20 years and put it out. And in fact, you may not realize it, but this conversation only happened because as we were casting about, like who would make a perfect CEO? I ran into someone from Travelers at an event, and I had their business card. We're like, hey, that's a big company. Let's reach out to them and see if they want to be a CEO. And then we learned all about Citizen Travelers, and here we are today.

JANICE BRUNNER: Yeah. That was great. I think I'm a big fan of private-public partnerships. So I think that program is amazing. One important aspect-- let's move a little bit to elections. One important aspect of the secretary of state role is, obviously, and a big piece of civic literacy, is elections. Can you just discuss a little bit about the state election laws and the significance of those and how our elections work?

STEPHANIE THOMAS: Sure, how much time do you have? So a lot of people don't understand, so election law in every state is definitely different. But it also differs town to town here in Connecticut. Unlike most states in the country, Connecticut's elections are administered on the municipal level, whereas most states are at the county level. And that creates some real differences.

One of the main ones being that our registrars of voters and town clerks are elected entities. As duly elected officials, a lot of people make the mistake of thinking they work for the secretary. They do not. They are elected in their own right, which means I cannot compel a local elected person to do anything except follow state and federal law.

Anything outside of that is outside of my purview, although I do try to charm them into certain activities sometimes. So this plays out because we'll get a call from someone in a town, like my registrar said they'd be in their office from 9:00 a.m. to 11:00, and I got there at 10:59, and no one was there. You have to make sure they work all their hours.

There is no statutory requirement for those hours. So I can't tell them to do anything in that regard. Those decisions are set at the town level. Also how they're paid, what they're paid, how they hire poll workers. We also have no investigatory powers. So people often will reach out and say, like I think this person did this thing wrong. And I'm like, you have to report it to the State Elections Enforcement Commission.

So it's really important that people understand the differences because how things are happening from town to town can vary, and it doesn't mean anything's wrong. It just can vary that way, as long as it's within the letter of the law. And nowadays, with the shrinking of local media, more and more people are tuning into national media sources.

I get emails all the time. Connecticut better not be connected to the internet or machines. And I'm like, by the way, our machines are so old, like they don't even have the capacity to be connected to the internet, and they never have been. We've always had paper ballots. But some states didn't. So it's really important to understand that there are differences, so not-- we have to compare apples to apples.

JANICE BRUNNER: That's interesting. I think that's a difference that a lot of people may not be aware of. And how much do you work with secretaries of state in other states?

STEPHANIE THOMAS: We work pretty closely. There's a national association. We convene a couple of times a year in person. I serve on the cybersecurity, the business services and the elections committees, which mean every week, I probably have one of those committee meetings.

I also serve on the executive board. So we have a lot of conversations. We work very collaboratively. So if someone’s seeing something in one state, we try to pass that along quickly if it's something problematic, and we share how we have solved problems.

Or Connecticut became the 47th state to adopt early voting. So all of my colleagues reached out, like one, it's about time. And two, if you need help creating your procedures, give me a call. So I appreciated that support as a new secretary.

JANICE BRUNNER: That makes a lot of sense. Super helpful. That's a good segue to bring you into the conversation, Will. Can you briefly describe what your role is for the Northeast region and how you're ensuring election security?

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William gestures with a stack of notecards as he speaks. 

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WILLIAM SENNING: You know, adding value to that process. I'm not sure I'm personally-- 

JANICE BRUNNER: Big order, right. 

WILLIAM SENNING: No, thank you.

JANICE BRUNNER: It's all on you, Will. Yeah.

WILLIAM SENNING: I am the Election Security Advisor for Region 1, which is actually the New England states. So I'm New England-focused entirely. And on a broad level, we advise state and local election officials on improving their security posture. And like you mentioned at the beginning, we divide that into three buckets of cybersecurity, physical security, which is becoming all the more important and the focus these days, unfortunately, and operational security just sort of procedurally.

We do a lot. We provide a lot of direct services to those state and local offices, such as cybersecurity assessments of their cyber systems, physical security assessments. And those I'll get into a little more detail about those later if we have the chance.

Also, we do a lot of training. I've trained, just over the month of September and October, first week of October, we provided de-escalation training across New England to over 1,000 local election officials in all six states. But the training takes a lot of different forms. We do tabletop exercises on incident response planning, training on how to handle suspicious mail packages, training on de-escalation, like I mentioned, continuity of operations planning.

So sort of we have a palette of training services that these local election officials can choose from, and we'll deliver whatever they feel is the greatest need on the ground. That's the second big bucket, the direct services, the training.

And then a lot of intelligence sharing, both classified and unclassified briefings as necessary as our federal and state partners gather intelligence about threats to election processes. We try and disseminate that information as broadly as possible and declassify as much of it as we can.

And also work with our partners at the federal level to get security clearances for election officials. That, unfortunately, has been a need over the last decade, and we've really expanded the number of election officials across the country that have security clearances and can go to those secure facilities and get that information.

Describing my role a little bit, it's interesting. If I could back out quickly for context and just so everyone-- I don't know the level of familiarity with the agency itself. So this is a pretty new federal agency. And it was in January of 2017, you might imagine why in the recent election history, this is when that occurred. But when election infrastructure itself was designated as critical infrastructure at the federal level.

Other examples of critical infrastructure, you all probably know things like the water systems, the power grid, schools, hospitals, chemical infrastructure. There's 16 in total. That's a sampling about 5 of the 16 that exist. When a certain area of infrastructure gets designated as critical infrastructure, then a certain agency under the federal government becomes what they call the Sector Risk Management Agency, the SRMA.

The federal government does have as many acronyms as you hear it has, and I'm going to try to limit those through the conversation today. But, so CISA became the SRMA, the Sector Risk Management Agency for elections. And my background, quickly to touch on, which we didn't mention yet. I was, for the last 10 years-- I only joined CISA in February. And for the 10 years before that, I was the Director of Elections for the state of Vermont, your neighbors up north.

So I worked in the Secretary of State's Office with a small team, like Secretary Thomas described. In Vermont, my team was-- I had four staff and myself that worked elections in the Secretary's Office. With a very similar model though, which is the same across New England, too, where it's really the secretary of state, their elections division, and then working hand in hand with the local town and city clerks across the state.

So I did that for 10 years. And the-- my experience with CISA as the election director for about, what would that be, about six years from 2017 to when I left earlier this year, was extremely positive. I had dealt with other federal agencies previously that were just a little less helpful.

CISA was very good at providing a broad palette of services, like I talked about. People don't just really don't understand or aren't aware of that coordination between the state and federal governments that I think CISA and that critical infrastructure designation has really facilitated.

So it's a non-regulatory agency, which makes it unique from other federal agencies. So we're not ever going in and telling secretaries of state or local election officials what they have to do, putting any mandates on them. But it's really providing information, providing guidance, providing services that they can choose from when and if they need to.

And really quickly, so CISA was the new agency, and the election security advisor position is the newest position created at CISA. They just announced creation of the position last summer, a year ago this summer. And there's one election security advisor for each of the regions. There's 10 regions across the country. So I have nine counterparts around the country that were also appointed, hired as election security advisors for their region.

And they made a real concerted effort to hire folks like me who had a lot of experience in election administration. So six of those nine of my colleagues are also former state level election directors and then some big former county directors as well, and a few IT elections directors.

So that really allowed us to hit the ground running, knowing a lot about election administration, really. That's what CISA was looking for. They do cybersecurity, physical security really well, had a lot of background in that, providing it to all those other sectors that I described. But they didn't have a lot of institutional knowledge about elections.

And the creation of my position was to sort of bring that to CISA and to provide a vector really. And I describe it as a two-way street, where I can speak in the language of secretaries of state and local election officials, describe what services CISA has, why they're of value to them.

And at the same time and almost more importantly, describe up to CISA what the reality of election administration is on the ground, why a certain training doesn't necessarily make sense, why there's a gap in the products that we need to fill that's a real need out there among election officials.

And the last thing, importantly, like Secretary Thomas described, the distinctions across the country. And she said it, the really unique nature of election administration, for example, here in New England at the town and city level. And a lot of CISA's products are designed to be implemented where elections are run at the county level with these big, sophisticated offices in Illinois, in Chicago. The county that runs the Chicago elections probably has as many voters as almost all of New England.

And so it's been-- the role I've really tried to play is bringing understanding up to CISA about how elections are run in New England and how we need to tailor our services to that mode of administration.

JANICE BRUNNER: That's so interesting. I think it's kind of amazing to think that before 2017, elections were not part of the critical infrastructure. I mean, 16 is a pretty long list, that it wasn't part of. So it sounds like it was well worth adding.

WILLIAM SENNING: So in that vein, I'm always tempted to tap back into my prior experience. But I've always said to people that how much election administration changed. I started as director in 2013 and left in 2023. And it's everything is before and after 2016. I describe it as the BC and AC of election administration essentially, night and day.

The profile that it gained before that time, nobody knew my job existed. You cast your ballot. You woke up the next morning and heard the result, and you moved on. And now it just couldn't be more different as you all experience on a day-to-day basis, where you wake up, you hear it on the radio. We work it all day. Then you think you're done. And you get in your car, and you hear it in the radio. You go home, and you turn on the TV, and that's all they're talking about.

STEPHANIE THOMAS: And then the emails start.

WILLIAM SENNING: It's really night and day.

JANICE BRUNNER: Yeah. I'm sure this is as we were talking when you came in. It's a really busy time of year because you're getting so prepared and getting a lot of feedback from everyone. So we're really appreciative that you made the time for us today.

STEPHANIE THOMAS: Absolutely.

JANICE BRUNNER: What is your office doing to prepare for the November election, and what are some kind of key concerns at this point, if you’re willing-- if you can share?

WILLIAM SENNING: Yeah, no. It's a lot of what I described. Getting those services and products out into the field. Over the course of the last three months, the number of, I call them products, really guidance documents on such a wide range of subject matter from, like I said, mail handling to how to deal with swatting instances.

Everybody out here know what swatting is? More and more people are becoming conscious of it. That's where a false threat gets called in to, in our case, an election official's home or to the local authorities with a false incident report stemming at an election official's home. We've had a couple examples of this across New England recently with secretaries of state.

And the idea is that then a swarm of authorities will come down on that person's house. So one example, one of the secretaries of state, it was that her husband had taken the children in the bedroom, was holding them hostage and had a gun to her head, and please send help. And this was the night before their primary election. And just meant to sow chaos and disruption.

So guidance on how to deal with that, which is basically communicate with your state and local police, make them aware of your address, give them a direct number to call you at when that kind of incident gets reported.

Cyber-related guidance. How to deal with DDoS attacks in the event that a DDoS attack were to happen. How to deal with ransomware attacks which are becoming more and more prevalent at the local level, even down to small towns in Vermont that have faced ransomware incidents.

So my method here in New England has been to leverage the secretary of states offices because they have such a good communication network with the towns and cities in their state. So I usually funnel these resources to their office once a week, once every two weeks. I'll be sending information out to Secretary Thomas' election team and having her disseminate that down to the town and city clerks across the state, providing the trainings that I was talking about, again, upon request.

So we did de-escalation training, like I mentioned before, at the annual clerks conference in September and the annual registrars conference, which I had to learn are two separate things. In Vermont, there's just a clerk that's the election official for each town. In Connecticut, there's two for each town. They have different, sort of split duties in election administration.

So we did-- and it's telling that that was the most requested training this year across the board, all six states, like I said. The local town and city clerks wanted to know how to deal with the potential for emotions at the polling place, I'll put it. And in a wide range, all the way from how do you deal with an active shooter to just how do you deal with someone agitated about the fact that they're mistakenly not on the voter checklist and need to get added.

That's been a really actively requested part of our training. That and incident response and continuity of operations training, which speaks to both the threats of violence, which are unfortunately just increasing every day, to the unstable climate we're now faced with and the threat of natural disasters, which we also talk about a lot. What about a snowstorm or a flood on Election Day that's taken out the power or flooded your storage of ballots or your new tabulators?

So a lot of incident response planning. And then the other one that I mentioned, just intelligence sharing, classified and unclassified briefings about what we're hearing out there from foreign malign influence. Everybody, sort of the three primary actors we're keeping an eye on now: Russia, China, North Korea, and Iran, really four. And updating the secretaries of state and the local officials on the nature of those threats that we're seeing out there.

And then also, domestic violent extremists and what the chatter is on those fronts. So it's really impressive the amount of coordination, I think, between federal agencies and down to the secretaries of state and state and local law enforcement agencies around election security.

You'd be just surprised how much is going on out there. In Connecticut this morning is a great example. We were meeting with the secretary, who all attend those meetings. FBI, the AG's office.

STEPHANIE THOMAS: State police, hazmat, Department of Emergency Services and Personal Protection, attorney general, State Elections Enforcement.

WILLIAM SENNING: Talking about communications plan for on Election Day. Where are we all going to be, how are we going to reach each other, what's the chain of command given the circumstance we're faced with. And it's really an impressive level of preparation going on.

JANICE BRUNNER: It sounds like it. Secretary Thomas, can you just weigh in a little bit about what's going on at the state level, just kind of you just alluded to, but just tell us a little bit more about what you're doing.

STEPHANIE THOMAS: Sure. I think the unique challenge that Will touched upon, but people don't really think about what it means, when we are administering elections at the municipal level, as Will said, that's everything from Hartford to Union, where a town may have 90,000 voters or 800 voters. Many full-time staff people to someone who works by appointment only, one day a month.

And trying to create uniformity in terms of expertise was something that I saw as a challenge from the day I took office. So we have spent all of this time trying to bring everyone to a playing field, starting line.

Just by way of example, when I first took office, I had an opportunity to speak with a lot of registrars. And I'm like, who knows what swatting is or doxing? And only a few hands went up. I asked, how many of you receive cybersecurity training from your town's IT administrator? Only a few hands went up. Or people would say, oh, yes, I've received that training three years ago. And I'm like, you know it changes, right?

So the good news is CISA and also Connecticut's National Guard started two years ago doing cybersecurity assessments in every town in Connecticut. So that was concluded last year. We were able to work with the Department of Emergency Services to-- and the state, other state agencies, to give the same cybersecurity training that we as state employees get to make it available to all election workers as well, so that they are kept up to date on the latest attempts of malware, phishing, etc.

We were able, through CISA, to push out all of that training, from de-escalation to active shooter, to mail handling, and on and on, so that every election worker could participate in it. I also have monthly calls with all the registrars and town clerks to keep all of these things top of mind, to make sure that we are building resilience.

My fear is always-- every town in Connecticut is mandated by law to have an emergency plan. But honestly, a lot of towns hadn't taken it out in years because no one had to. So I thought it was very important to start building resilience among local election workers.

So that group that we talked about, we also dedicated-- every year the governor hosts an emergency preparedness drill for our emergency workers. But this was the first year ever it got dedicated to elections. So that allowed every town across Connecticut to get together with all of their local emergency responders.

And we did scenario planning. Like what happens if someone tries to-- well, I'm not supposed to repeat what the scenarios are. But what happens if many different types of things happen? And we also, it's happening this week, just because we work so collaboratively. We thought, hey, law enforcement, local police officers often don't know election law and what is and isn't allowed. And when an issue comes up at a polling place, they don't know how they can intervene.

So we're doing a training, not we, but law-- state police is doing a training with them this week. So everyone's on the same page. So before I got into this job, and maybe it actually wasn't happening before I got into this job. But I think every voter in Connecticut should feel assured that there is so much happening behind the scenes, that never makes the headline because it's not sexy, to secure not only everyone's right to vote but also all election workers, their physical security and honestly, their mental health. Perception is reality. The perception out there is election workers do not feel safe, even in the absence of any credible threat in Connecticut. But we're all in this news cycle where they feel like something could happen. So we also spend a lot of time trying to make them feel good about doing their job.

JANICE BRUNNER: Yes, I think that's a very sad state of affairs if people don't feel safe working at the polls. But it's interesting, you told an anecdote when we were chatting at the beginning about someone who felt that way.

STEPHANIE THOMAS: Yeah. We have a great program for college students. We receive some federal funding to try to get young people interested in serving as poll workers. So we received a grant, and we have a cohort of 40 college students around Connecticut. They are the best. It is so cute.

And they are receiving training at the moderator's level. They're so excited. They're going to work 20 hours during the upcoming election. And during one of the Q&As, one young lady, 19, she was like, you know, my mom wanted me to ask what you're going to do to keep us safe while we're working because she's worried.

And honestly, that broke my heart, that like a 19-year-old who's trying to do their civic duty to work as a poll worker is worried about physical safety. But stuff like this is what helps.

JANICE BRUNNER: Exactly things like this and all the things you're doing behind the scenes. And it sounds like, I mean even, sometimes, you don't even think about it. Like you're just used to going to the polls in November. But what happens if there is a snowstorm. Like it sounds like you're ready.

STEPHANIE THOMAS: It happens more than you think, snowstorms, floods, electricity goes out. There's always something. And now, with early voting in Connecticut, we have not only one day but 15 days in total.

JANICE BRUNNER: Yes.

STEPHANIE THOMAS: Fourteen days of early voting and Election Day.

JANICE BRUNNER: This is the first major election with early voting?

STEPHANIE THOMAS: It's first general election, meaning open to all voters. We've had two primaries with early voting with like 8% and 9% turnout respectively. So this will be the first time we have a high turnout election.

JANICE BRUNNER: The primaries are hard. We're trying to work on that too. But the early voting has so far been successful?

STEPHANIE THOMAS: Yes, it's gone very well. I consider it a success when after the first round, the biggest complaint were the label makers. I'm like, hey, that's a good rollout.

JANICE BRUNNER: That is. There's always a complaint. It's the label makers. It’s doing well.

STEPHANIE THOMAS: Exactly.

JANICE BRUNNER: That's great. I think that is one reform that I think has been very well received and makes life a lot easier for so many people.

STEPHANIE THOMAS: So many people, really everybody.

JANICE BRUNNER: Yeah. Yeah. So that's great. So hopefully that will be very successful. Looking ahead, what are the priorities for the November elections?

STEPHANIE THOMAS: We probably have the same one in some ways. For me, it's really focusing on disinformation and misinformation.

A lot of people don't realize that is one of the-- actually, I think it's now considered the biggest national security issue in America. We know there is foreign interference. We know there are foreign actors who are seeking to influence the outcome of elections, to sow chaos in America, to weaken our democracy.

And they are very active, and they put a lot of money into it, and artificial intelligence makes it easier to use some of their common tactics, such as putting up false journalistic news sites or creating profiles on social media. So disinformation is a threat because false information is being put out there with the intention of misleading Americans.

Misinformation is what I worry about the most because misinformation is spreading false information without the intent to deceive. So as I like to say, it's what we all do when we hit forward, share, like or repeat something that we have not vetted ourselves or researched ourselves and know to be true.

Just by way of example, there was a study done in 2020. I don't have the exact figure offhand, but I believe it was the top 30 social media posts that were shown to be disinformation was shared 22 million times. So when you think about all those eyeballs being exposed to false information, you see very quickly why it's a national security threat.

So we spend a lot of time trying to educate the public that with all new technologies, there's always something that changes. And we don't have to be scared about it, but we just have to know the realm that we're now operating in. Because it is so easy to get disinformation out, we just have to be better about using our brains and making sure that we are thoroughly researching anything before we believe it.

JANICE BRUNNER: That's true. I mean, I think that's so essential with the civic education, right? Like it's much less likely to be fooled by this and press send, which I'm guilty of.

STEPHANIE THOMAS: It's a great point. If you don't mind, I just want to add one thing. Disinformation is meant to deceive, but misinformation is everywhere. My first general election last year, I was reading the paper, and I saw an article saying like, hey, if you haven't registered to vote, don't worry. You can still do it on Election Day. And I'm like, no, no, no. That's not right.

And then it was in a big paper. So like within an hour, six other outlets picked up the story. So we're calling around trying to get them to take down that story. It's just misinformation. No ill intent, but it was wrong.

So to your point, civic education really is the antidote to being misled. I was speaking to another group. And I said, what if you saw a post on your town's Facebook page, or there's always like these 411 groups in towns that said bomb threat at your local polling place. Voting canceled at the school. Would you believe it?

People who don't have civic education might believe it. People who do know that elections are never canceled. It's just that simple. So you would know to look for something else, or you would know who to call to find out what is happening with that election. So I just can't underscore enough how important it is, civic education but also research.

WILLIAM SENNING: And to that exact point, what I was going to say, it's been a long-running campaign since around 2016 or so from CISA and other federal agencies to always go to trusted sources. And that's where the secretary ended. Those trusted sources being the secretary of state's Office and your local town and city clerks and local election officials.

And that's especially when it comes down to the nuts and bolts of the election, when and how you can register, when and how you can cast your ballot, the date of the election. So when you do, it's a great example, even just innocent misinformation in those press articles about the registration process.

You double-check that with your secretary of state. It can be as easy as going to your website, I would assume, or picking up the phone and calling the clerk, hey, when is the registration deadline? Is this true I can wait until Election Day or not? We've been really trying to drive that home.

As a federal agency at CISA, we have to be really careful and tread really lightly around the subjects of mis- and disinformation. Unfortunately, it can be really frustrating because you run up against First Amendment issues really quickly, and the agency’s and multiple federal entities have been sued now over the last three or four years on various occasions, being accused of getting too far into any kind of content moderation or content flagging.

So we have to be really careful there. But the message we can send is to go to your trusted sources, which is always the best backup. Then the problem is I say that at events like this and invariably get the question from people about AI.

And so what if I now go to what I think is the secretary of state's website, and instead, it's an AI fake. And it's a significant challenge right now that we're all figuring out how to navigate. It's the best way I'd put that. But check multiple trusted sources at that point.

And we've had instances of this here in Region 1. The best example was the robocall earlier this year in New Hampshire that was purported to be President Biden telling voters not to bother to vote in the primary. And the New Hampshire Secretary of State's Office and Attorney General's Office did a really good job very quickly reacting and responding to that and putting out public statements that that was false and was a fake. But it's a new realm of threat that we're facing, for sure.

JANICE BRUNNER: That's for sure. And I also like the point that you made that there isn't even necessarily often negative intent or malice. It's just misinformation and the speed of which it can go out.

STEPHANIE THOMAS: It's mainly because election law does vary so greatly from state to state. Well-meaning people all the time put out false information. There is a lovely lady who lives near me. She emailed me, like, hey, I wanted to make sure everyone knew about early voting. I put together an email. Would you mind looking at it? Because I've been trying to train people. Send it to our office and let us approve it.

So we approved it. We changed some things. We sent it back to her. And then I'm on her e-blast list, along with, I think, 3,000 other people. I get the email. And it has the wrong hours listed for early voting. And I'm like, it was a typo. But like 3,000 people received that. So, verify, verify, verify.

WILLIAM SENNING: The other best practice, one other best practice we've been pushing on, and this is back to my old hat and my current one, which speaks to your story about the misinformation accidental again in the press story and then also just the ability to respond to incidents going on.

There's a bomb threat at the school. It's closed. The election’s canceled. We advise, and most secretaries of state and election administrators are doing it now, but to meet with the media and to develop a really close relationship with especially your local media sources, so that they know where to turn for trusted information.

Where if they see something online on the day of the election, before they're pushing it out there or publishing anything about it, they're picking up the phone and calling Secretary Thomas and checking with her and what she's heard. So that preparing not only among in the same manner that we do with the law enforcement agencies and emergency responders, also bringing the media into those meetings or into their own separate meetings to just get a pre-plan of how we're dealing with public communications in the event of an incident.

JANICE BRUNNER: That's great. It sounds like you're doing--

STEPHANIE THOMAS: We do a lot.

JANICE BRUNNER: Exactly. You're doing a lot. You're doing everything you can. So I think people should take away from this that you can feel comfortable that there's a lot going on behind the scenes to make sure our elections are safe, secure and accessible.

STEPHANIE THOMAS: And I don't want to leave the illusion that the media is problematic. Ever since that incident last year, like forewarned is forearmed. So we just set a new policy. Four weeks before every election, we start sending out FAQs.

Here's all the do's and don'ts. What can be done. Here are the deadlines. And we send different subjects every week, so that if we see some misunderstandings happening out in the community, we put that in the FAQ for the next week.

And as a result, the media has been, one, grateful that they don't have to comb our website trying to figure out this stuff, but they also are more likely to carry the story. So more information is getting out in the media, and most of it is accurate.

JANICE BRUNNER: That's great. Do we have any questions from the audience?

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JANICE BRUNNER: A lot of information. 

STEPHANIE THOMAS: I have a question. Has anyone learned anything new? Oh, good. I saw a lot of head nods. Has anyone used early voting yet? Does anyone want to hear more about it? I see a lot of head nods.

I do this because there's been a lot of confusion about early voting. Although it's not new, We became the 47th state in the country to adopt early voting. It is new to Connecticut, so we're just not used to thinking about it.

It's in person. A lot of people think it's mail-in voting. So early voting is in-person voting. For this election, it's 14 days. So going from Monday, October 21, through Sunday, November 3. Yes, two Saturdays, two Sundays and two days with extended hours. Most days are 10:00 a.m. to 6:00 p.m. but October 29 and 31 are 8:00 a.m. to 8:00 p.m.

So the other thing that people have been confused about, it is not your usual voting location. Every single town will have one early voting location at least. One town has two. One on UConn's campus. But every single town in Connecticut has one location. It's usually town hall but not always. But you can get that information either from our website or your town's website.

And for the first time-- we love interns at the Secretary of the State's Office because I told you how small our elections division is. So we had three great, very talented interns this summer and fall who wrote and designed a voter guide for the first time statewide. So that is also on our website, myvote.ct.gov/voterguide.

And that's where you can find all your election information in one place, including all the candidates on the ballot, links to their website and everything else you would like to know. So that's my public service announcement.

JANICE BRUNNER: Your trusted source.

STEPHANIE THOMAS: And don't forget there's a ballot question this year. Does everyone know there's a statewide ballot question? OK. Not enough heads. There is a statewide ballot question this year. So be sure to look for it on your ballot. It might be on the back. Don't leave it blank. Do your research.

Essentially, it is about whether or not the General Assembly would be allowed to change our absentee ballot law to allow for universal access to absentee ballots. In case you don't know, in Connecticut, to vote by absentee ballot, you have to meet one of six legal standards.

Most states, you don't have to do that. Yeah, 29 states have universal access. Eight states are entirely vote by mail. So we're in the minority by requiring one of these narrow so-called excuses. So the ballot question is asking voters, should our state's General Assembly be allowed to amend that law.

It's a constitutional amendment because Connecticut, unlike-- we're very unique in many ways. Connecticut has a lot of its election laws built into our state constitution because we have the oldest state constitution in the country. So in most states, the General Assembly can simply change a law, but we cannot because it's in our state constitution.

That's why we have to make a constitutional amendment, which is why it goes to the voters instead of just to the General Assembly. So, if you vote yes, that means you want the General Assembly to be able to amend the law. If you vote no, it means the absentee ballot law will stay as is. That is a quick and dirty way of explaining it. The voter guide will give you all the language and links to the explanatory text. I highly recommend the voter guide.

JANICE BRUNNER: That's great. That's great. We love interns also. And it's also, it's worth noting for people on the phone that early voting as well as the absentee requirements is set by state, which I don't think a lot of people realize sometimes. So it can vary. So that's one of the things that it's important to go to your trusted source and see when is my early voting? What is it? Because I think if you look at state by state, it's sometimes surprising the wide range—

STEPHANIE THOMAS: Very different. Like some states have 30 days of early voting, whereas many states, you hear it on the news every night. Their early voting began like a week or two ago or starts on Monday.

JANICE BRUNNER: Yeah. So something worth checking as well is the absentee. And then the other thing that that raised, which is great, is I think sometimes people feel when there's a big election like this coming up, and they say, it doesn't matter what my vote is for president in this state, or it doesn't matter-- I'm not crazy about-- I don't have a candidate I'm really pushing for. So they decide to stay home. But there's so many things on that ballot.

STEPHANIE THOMAS: Yes. Yeah. And if you don't mind, so most people don't know what's on the ballot, but president, vice president, of course. Our junior U.S. senator, every single state senator, every single state representative.

And then in some towns, also local positions. Judge of probate is up. Many registrars of voters, some board of ed members. So it really does vary from town to town here in Connecticut. And we keep saying trusted source, but I think I opened by saying how many people know what the secretary does? No one knows that the Secretary of the State's Office is the trusted source and that we have a ton of resources.

Does everyone know that sample ballots go up on our website before every single election. So if you want to see what's on your town's ballot, you can go to our website and take a look. It's a PDF. And that comes up with municipal elections. I don't know about you, but I often go to my town's elections and find five ballot questions.

And I'm like, I didn't know this was happening. Well, you can always find your sample ballot on our website in addition to polling places, election calendars with key dates, if you want to switch parties or register and that type of thing. So much info on one website.

JANICE BRUNNER: It's really great, I think, to prepare in advance because there's a lot to think about. I have been guilty of going and seeing like, oh, I don't even-- you know. I wish I would have thought about, done a little more research in advance.

STEPHANIE THOMAS: Yes.

JANICE BRUNNER: So thank you so much for being here today. This was a fabulous conversation. I think we learned-- we definitely learned where to go for information. So anything you want to leave people with today?

STEPHANIE THOMAS: Go ahead, Will.

WILLIAM SENNING: Trust the process and spread that message for all the threats, and questions, and potential risks we've talked about today. Overall, the integrity of the election process is very strong. And the undermining of that confidence in that integrity is the biggest threat.

And when I used to serve as director, when people would call me directly at my office there in the Secretary of State's Office with some concern. And after about two minutes of explanation of just how diligent and how structured this process is, they keep close track of every ballot, everyone who's voted, the number of ballots at the end of the night. The results have to match the number of people that are checked off the checklist as having returned the ballot. Nobody can return more than one. There's real integrity to the whole process.

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A slide displays the red Travelers umbrella logo. It says. Watch Replay: insideTV. Connect: LinkedIn: Janice G. Brunner. Take Our Survey: Link in chat. Hashtag Citizen Travelers. 

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The elections are audited across the country year after year. The machines are audited year after year. They're proven to be accurate every time. There's just no credible evidence of any fundamental doubt in the integrity of the results that you're going to see announced. 

And it takes time because of these different rules around absentee balloting that we've talked about. Some states allow their election officials to process the absentee ballots as they come back before Election Day. Other states, particularly Pennsylvania, that there's a lot of focus on this year, does not. So they have to wait, and they will start processing all of the early ballots on and after Election Day, unfortunately. So it can take time, but the result ultimately has serious integrity, and you can trust the process.

STEPHANIE THOMAS: Because you said that, I agree. I'm going to focus on something else because of Citizen Travelers, which is I always tell audiences, policies are not written on Election Day. So yes, get out and vote and vote in every election, but that is step one of the democratic process.

What you do the other 364 days a year is how you create the community that you want to see in the world. Also on our website, we have something called The Power of Civics. And it is ways that we can all boost our civic literacy and get more involved in government and shaping our communities. So I'll leave you with that.

JANICE BRUNNER: Great parting thought. And that's what Citizen Travelers is. So thank you. Thanks so much for being with us today.

STEPHANIE THOMAS: Absolutely. Thank you.

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Text: Citizen Travelers (service mark) at the Travelers Institute, A Series on Civic Engagement.