As a part of our mission to shed light on the processes and personnel responsible for vote counting and election certification, Informing Democracy worked to identify potential threats to elections from within the system — the spots where those responsible for administering our elections might use their positions to create delay or disruption, or even to disenfranchise voters.
Our overarching finding is that our election laws are strong and officials run elections well. In fact, in nearly all of the states researched, we found officials working to make an already strong election system more secure and more transparent in the aftermath of baseless attacks in 2020.
But with 8,000 localities responsible for running our elections, there still exists the potential for bad actors to act outside of election law and outside of their responsibilities. We researched 2,600 officials in nine key states to assess potential threats to free and fair elections. What we found most concerning wasn’t the breadth of the election denial movement across the country — with 300+ officials with notable findings — but the concentration of these officials in key counties.
It’s important to note that the concerns raised in research findings do not indicate that an official will interfere in the 2024 election. These concerns are intended to help focus monitoring efforts where the research shows the potential for interference is greatest.
Below, you’ll find the results of this research, with a deep dive into Counties of Concern, as well as analysis from our research into election officials.
Research last updated: October 22, 2024
Informing Democracy developed a warning system to identify what we think are the counties most vulnerable to exploitation due to the past actions or public posts and statements from election officials. While any one election official can adversely affect proper election administration, the most susceptible localities for delay or disruption are those counties where officials who embrace election denialism, or otherwise acted against elections, represent voting numbers on their local election bodies to force action (or inaction).
There are 16 counties that our research suggests should be most closely watched, from 572 counties researched:
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See a full breakdown of the counties by levels of concern: County Concern Levels. This also includes details on our County Concern Level Rubric.
And view High + Medium Counties of Concern here:
High + Medium Counties of Concern
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We also identified an additional 109 counties with medium concern findings, including at least one official, but not a majority, who embraced election denialism, or multiple officials with concerning findings that fall short of outright election denial:
We also want to call out 20 key counties (and counting) where officials who previously delayed or refused certification remain in their positions:
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See a full list of all counties we reviewed:
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See a breakdown of counties of concern for each state, as well as a list of officials in each of those counties: