Since 2020, in collaboration with Dr. Lia Merivaki of Georgetown University and the Algorithmic Transparency Institute (ATI.io) of the National Conference on Citizenship, I have operated the Election Official Communications Tracker— the only ongoing systematic record of electoral management bodies’ public-facing digital communications in the United States. The tracker monitors the social media activity of more than 1,600 state and local election offices across all fifty states, U.S. territories, and the District of Columbia, across Facebook, Instagram, X, TikTok, Threads, and YouTube.  During the 2024 election cycle alone, we collected and coded more than 60,000 posts using a comprehensive 120-label codebook organized around eleven thematic categories, from voter registration instructions to trust-building campaigns to misinformation responses. Combined with data from the 2022 midterm cycle, our archive now contains approximately 120,000 coded posts spanning two consecutive federal election cycles.

The findings from this project have produced substantive scholarly contributions and direct practitioner value. Where election officials are more active and consistent in their outreach voters, voters are more likely to successfully navigate registration and mail ballot processes, more likely to treat election officials as trusted sources of information, and more likely to express confidence in the integrity of election outcomes— even among those most skeptical of election administration. We have also documented significant variation across jurisdictions, revealing underserved communities and which information environments remain most vulnerable to misinformation.

We thank the Social Science Research Council for helping us launch this project in 2020, the MIT Election Data Science Lab for funding this project during the 2022 cycle, Public Agenda for supporting our work during the 2024 cycle, and the Algorithmic Transparency Institute (ATI.io) for providing us with platform support. 

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July 28, 2023: Webinar on Building Trust in Elections: Evidence from the 2022 election cycle (Webinar slides and webinar video).

August 6, 2024: State Election Officials' Poll Worker Recruitment Efforts on National Poll Worker Recruitment Day. 

August 16, 2024: Open Rain or Shine: How are Florida Supervisors of Elections preparing during hurricane season? 

September 13, 2024: Disability Voting Rights Week: State EO Content for Voters with Disabilities