gold standard cornerstones
The Gold Standard: Four Cornerstones of Safe Elections
Restoring trust in our election system must be our highest priority - and trust must be earned, not demanded. In a constitutional republic, trust is not something we can command and expect people to blindly follow. The solution to restoring trust is the Gold Standard.
The Gold Standard is built on four cornerstone principles that must be applied to every phase of the election process. When properly implemented, these principles create an election system that minimizes vulnerabilities and ensures that immediate corrective action can be taken when necessary. Following the Gold Standard creates an environment where public trust can be restored, ensuring that every voter has confidence that the election was conducted properly. The four phases of the election process are discussed below -
1. Elections must be secure – The integrity of the election ecosystem begins with security. There should be no connection to vulnerable networks that could compromise the system. This includes ensuring that election equipment, materials, and data are always secure. Proper security protocols must be in place at every stage, including using locks, seals, surveillance, inventory management, and a strict chain of custody. All processes should be meticulously documented to demonstrate adherence to these protocols. Election equipment and materials should be transferred only by bipartisan teams and under continuous surveillance. Access to election data and equipment should be highly restricted and carefully monitored.
2. Elections must be transparent – Casting one’s ballot must be done in private; every other part of the election process must be done in public. Observers or poll watchers must be able to observe every phase of the election process, and public documentation must be produced to allow the public to review the process later. All phases and reports for elections should be fully observable by the citizens. These principles should be incorporated into state laws across the country. All ballot counting and tallying should be recorded, and the video should be stored as an election record on the county’s website according to state law. Anyone, anytime, anywhere, must be able to review the video of a particular race or an entire election if they so choose so that the results of the elections can be easily verified no later than 48 hours after the polls close. Public Information request should not be required to view the election results.
3. Elections must be verifiable– Accuracy of the vote is of utmost importance. When voters can verify that the votes are correctly counted, this increases their confidence in the outcome. The chain of custody documentation must be timely, legitimate, and verified. Reconciliation of votes and voters must be done in a fully transparent way. Again, anyone, anytime, anywhere, must be able to review the video of a particular race or an entire election if they so choose so that the results of the elections can be quickly confirmed or corrected no later than 48 hours after the polls close. Public information requests should not be required to view the election results. Ideally, all this information should be free to the voters. If the cornerstones of accessibility, transparency, and security are met, citizens can verify that the election was called correctly.
4. Elections must be accessible for all legal voters – Election laws must make provisions for ADA, military, and overseas voters to ensure accessibility for those unable to participate in person on election Day. Security measure for any mailed ballots must be employed to every possible extent. As stated above, public access to reports for auditing purposes is also of utmost importance, such as voter rolls, poll books, signature verification, chain of custody documentation, and registration documentation, to name a few.
To meet the Gold Standard, each of these four cornerstone principles must be rigorously applied across all phases of the election process: voter registration, voter validation, vote tabulation, and election reporting By implementing these principle, we can build a system that not only meet the security, transparency, and accessibility needs of our elections but also restores the public’s faith in the integrity of the entire process.
