Each development identified in the map is assigned a category and level. In turn, each state’s fill color* on the map reflects the overall level of concern based on a synthesis of all the developments the Task Force is currently monitoring.
Categories
Election administration disruptions (“Administration”): incidents that delay or disrupt normal voting and tabulation processes and best practices (e.g. ballot printing errors, ballots lost in the mail, use of hand counts instead of machine tabulation).
Misinformation and disinformation (“Dis/Misinformation”): false information about elections spread either intentionally to deceive its recipients (disinformation) or unintentionally by those who believe it to be true (misinformation).
Political violence and intimidation (“Violence”): violence and intimidation aimed at voters, election administrators, judges, or political candidates.
Bad faith efforts by key actors to undermine or overturn the results of an election (“Interference”): efforts to manipulate an election and ultimately prevent the true election winner from taking office through, for example, last-minute changes to counting processes, frivolous litigation, and outright refusals to certify election outcomes by key actors in the process.
Levels
3 = High Concern
A severe threat to the integrity of the 2024 elections that requires an immediate and comprehensive response.
2 = Moderate Concern
A problematic development that increases the risk of election crisis and should be mitigated or reversed ahead of the 2024 elections.
1 = Low Concern
A minor development that should be monitored for potential election crisis implications but does not require action at this time.
0 = No Concern
Despite widespread concern, this incident is not an election crisis threat or falls within the range of free and fair elections.
Example Analysis
As a county election office begins to receive filled-out absentee ballots ahead of Election Day, workers discover that about 10 percent of them were printed with defective bar codes that cannot be scanned. While these barcodes do not identify the specific voter who received that ballot, they do identify which local and district-level races that voter’s ballot contains. Without the barcodes, the ballots cannot be processed by the tabulation machines, and they must be counted by hand instead.
Analysis: This incident represents a level 1 administration development. The county will be able to count these votes and the issue will not affect the outcome of the election, but the disruption of the normal tabulation process is likely to cause minor delays and increases the risk of small-scale human errors. (If more than half of the ballots had defective barcodes, the need to pivot to large-scale hand counting could overwhelm election workers in a populous county. In that scenario, the administration development would warrant a higher concern level rating.)
*At the time of the launch of the Dashboard, we are evaluating the utility of continuing to provide state level development levels throughout 2024, and in the future may solely provide the rating and descriptions for individual developments