Washington, D.C. — As the 2024 election year begins, a new report from the Center for American Progress offers a roadmap on how to protect the integrity of the election process, address systemic problems, and protect future elections.
The report outlines some of the most pressing challenges that this year’s elections will bring. It describes how states, election officials, and the public can not only counter these challenges but also improve election safety, accessibility, and security.
“American democracy is at a crossroads,” said Greta Bedekovics, associate director of democracy policy at CAP and co-author of the report. “The nation must take collective action to restore faith in America’s elections and democratic institutions or risk continuing down a path of conspiracy theories toward violence and autocracy.”
Recommendations include:
- Enhancing public communication campaigns to help the public understand election procedures (such as that election results are not finalized on the night of the election) and spreading knowledge about recent changes in voter registration procedures
- Deterring violence against election officials and workers by prohibiting firearms at voting locations and increasing protections against other forms of intimidation
- Guarding against efforts to subvert elections by strengthening protections for the election certification process, ensuring that mail-in ballots can be processed prior to election day, and that there are strong protections for ballot drop boxes
- Countering the spread of disinformation and misinformation by countering AI-generated election-related content
The report also includes recommendations to address systemic issues in American elections, including:
- Ensuring that voters have a voice by passing federal laws to protect the right to vote and passing state-level voting rights acts to remove and prevent discriminatory barriers
- Strengthening public trust in elections by creating a government webpage for Americans to easily locate accurate and up-to-date election results
- Increasing the fair representation of voters by moving toward electoral systems that provide voters with more proportional representation, more choices, and encourage consensus-driven politics and policymaking
- Empowering voters’ voices on policy by protecting state ballot measure processes
“To heal our country, America must stop treating election concerns with stop-gap measures and start addressing the systemic harms rotting away the foundations of our democracy,” said Rebecca Mears, co-author of the report and director of Democracy at CAP.
Read the report: 8 Ways To Protect American Democracy: Safeguarding Elections in 2024 and Beyond by Greta Bedekovics and Rebecca Mears
For more information on this topic or to speak with an expert, please contact Sam Hananel at [email protected].