Situation Room: Severe weather caused a power outage at a Georgia polling location, but an effective response ensured voting continued uninterrupted.
Resource Library:It Starts With a Team: Building Your Election Security Working Group walks through the basic steps to convene emergency response partners before the election.
Planning Desk: Convene your election security partners at the 10-week mark to test response plans, review vulnerabilities and threats, and confirm redundancies and backups.
When the Power Goes Out: How Glynn County Navigated Lightning, Wildfire, and Micro-Emergencies
On the first Saturday of early voting ahead of Georgia’s May 19 primary, a torrential rainstorm swept across Glynn County. Early in the morning, a lightning strike hit one of the county’s three active early voting locations, instantly knocking out power to the facility. Making matters worse, local utility crews were already stretched thin supporting a neighboring county where severe drought had sparked a massive wildfire requiring emergency assistance and public safety coordination from Glynn County personnel.
Despite dark, muddy conditions and the loss of grid power, the response from election staff and poll workers was immediate. They flatly rejected the idea of closing up shop for the day, even when offered the option to move to a nearby unaffected polling location.
As Christina Redden, the assistant director for the county’s Board of Elections and Registration, recalled, the sentiment was unanimous: “We’re not going home.”
The Situation Room focuses on real security incidents and threats in the news relevant to election security. To review previous issues, see thenewsletter archive.
It Starts With a Team: Building Your Election Security Working Group
It is never too late to build relationships with the key election security partners in your community who can respond during an unexpected incident or emergency.It Starts With a Team: Building Your Election Security Working Groupis an easy-to-follow resource from the Election Security Exchange with basic guidance on forming a working group composed of core security collaborators. The guide emphasizes collaboration, preparedness, and strong relationships to support incident response before, during, and after elections.
Even without establishing a formal working group, taking small steps – contacting partners, exchanging critical information about the election, and establishing communication channels – can go a long way toward bolstering your security posture and strengthening your incident response preparedness in advance of an election.
The guide provides advice on:
Identifying partners: Typically, indispensable partners include emergency managers, law enforcement, IT administrators, and communications teams.
Establishing a mission: The mission statement should clearly define your group’s purpose and scope, including leadership roles.
Sharing information: Share resources and election-specific information like polling locations, voting hours, and key processes.
Developing schedules and agendas: Develop a realistic meeting cadence and standard agenda.
Maintaining an action plan: Use action items, response plan development, and exercises to keep the group engaged and moving forward.
The guide concludes with some “Pro Tips” and “Keys to Success,” including a reminder to focus on relationships and trust because the most valuable outcome is not a document. It is collaboration and mutual understanding among key partners before an incident happens.
The Resource Library section of the newsletter spotlights election security resources. All highlighted resources are available online in the Resource Library.
Week E-10: Time to check in with your partners!
Strong emergency response requires close collaboration with your election security partners, and bringing them together now can ensure everyone understands the threats to critical election infrastructure and stays aligned. With 10 weeks until Election Day, now is an ideal time to reconvene your Election Security Working Group (ESWG), or even to hold that first meeting if the year has been too busy. There is still time to test response plans, refine procedures, and verify redundancies and backups.
The third issue of our Planning Desk offered a sample agenda for a productive first meeting, which can also serve as a guide for recurring meetings. At this point in the general election cycle, consider prioritizing the following topics for discussion:
Election Overview Help your ESWG understand how critical election infrastructure is being accessed – for what, by who, and when – by reviewing your:
Timeline: Call out significant dates for the upcoming general election, such as voter registration, early voting, and certification. Provide addresses and operating hours of all polling locations.
Operations: Note which technologies, systems, and processes are being used by staff, vendors, and the public, and when.
Vulnerabilities: Describe what’s most at risk in your election operations and how losing access to your facility, systems, or specific critical data would impact your ability to administer the election.
Redundancies & Backups*: Verify which ones are in place and which ones are needed. Determine who will test and confirm that all are available and ready, and establish a schedule to ensure it happens. *Redundancy mitigates the risk of downtime, and backup mitigates the risk of data loss.
Incidents & Threats Help your ESWG understand the cyber, physical, and operational risks to elections in your jurisdiction by sharing:
Threat Intelligence: Provide any alerts, awareness, and intelligence you have on both active and potential threats so that everyone has the same information. Create a plan for sharing information and intelligence up through Election Day to maintain awareness of emerging threats.
Impact of Natural Disasters: Describe how natural disasters could impact or have impacted election operations in your jurisdiction.
Recent Incidents or Concerns: Review any recent physical or cyber incidents or near misses, and highlight any concerns about your organization’s ability to respond to or continue operations during an incident. Other jurisdictions’ experiences can offer lessons for best practices, especially those in neighboring jurisdictions or in similar geographic areas.
Election Day Plan Help your ESWG prepare to support you on Election Day by reviewing:
Joint TrainingOptions: Tabletop exercises (TTX) and Election Scenario Test Decks can help find vulnerabilities and improve incident response plans.
Tour Opportunities: In-person visits to polling locations and election operations facilities can help illustrate the risks to equipment, people, and processes.
PACE Principles: Build resilience by preparing for cascading failures.
Communication Plan: Ensure everyone has a current contact list and access to the desired communication channels. Consider activating the ESWG on Election Day through a web-based emergency operations center, chat space, or open virtual meeting for real-time chatting and brief check-ins throughout the day.
Incident Response Plan: Confirm roles, responsibilities, and plans are current and ready to be activated if necessary.
Follow-up Help your ESWG maintain accountability by scheduling a:
Follow-up Meeting: Ensure action items assigned in this meeting get accomplished by having everyone report back to the group. Ideally, the follow-up would happen in September so that the ESWG still has time to complete any additional tasks.
Post-election Review: Even if you experience no disruptions during the general election, reconvening the ESWG in December or January provides an opportunity to identify issues that may not have risen to the level of ‘incident’ but caused temporary concern at the time. Reviewing the election in retrospect can prime the ESWG for a new year of meeting, exercising, and planning.
Sustaining an effective ESWG supports election resilience and incident response before, during, and after elections. Convening your trusted security partners now can optimize that response and help ensure the continuity of your election operations.
The Planning Desk is a running timeline of key election security tasks. You can find prior editions in thenewsletter archive.
Want to get daily updates on election news? Subscribe to electionline.
