Five Days Out: What’s Real, What’s Noise, and What You Can Do
Business Leaders Have a Role Through Certification
What’s real, what’s noise, and what business leaders can do through certification.
Leadership Now Project convened business leaders and associations to hear from election experts five days before the midterms to separate real risks from noise. The panel’s verdict: the system is working, and the task now is keeping public confidence steady through certification.
Watch the Briefing
Speakers
- Cisco Aguilar, Nevada Secretary of State (D)
- Sarah Gonski, Director of State Policy, Institute for Responsive Government
- Stephen Richer, former Maricopa County Recorder (R)
- Bill Kristol, Editor-at-Large, The Bulwark (moderator)
- Daniella Ballou-Aares, CEO, Leadership Now Project
Key Takeaways
The safeguards are in place. Officials, lawyers, and judges have spent six years readying for the challenges now being tested.
Expect noise, not failure. Anticipate post-election noise, especially in states with slower mail-ballot counts. Slow counts and routine hiccups, such as a printer not working or long lines, are part of a working process, not evidence that it broke.
Certification is the window that matters. The highest-risk period runs from November 9 to December 11. Business leaders can carry real weight in that window, in public and in private conversations with officials.
“Stability is not some sort of American birthright or guarantee. It is something that we build and that we protect every day.”
Sarah Gonski, Director of State Policy, Institute for Responsive GovernmentWhat Business Leaders Can Do
Engage your local election officials. Reach out to your county elections clerk or secretary of state’s office. Thank them for their essential work, and ask how the business community can support them.
Support employee civic participation. Encourage employees to vote and serve as poll workers. Review your company’s paid time off policies ahead of Election Day. Data shows employers can make or break employees’ decisions about whether to vote.
Share accurate information about how elections work. U.S. elections are safe, decentralized, and accurate. We benefit from bipartisan oversight, paper balloting, post-election audits, and multiple layers of reconciliation. When you help your networks understand the process, they can help dispel disinformation.
Plan for post-election uncertainty. Connect with peer business leaders now, in advance of Election Day, to prepare for coordinated action if certification is challenged or results are contested.
Explore the Election Risk HubLeadership Now is a membership organization of business leaders who believe that a strong democracy is key to a thriving economy and political stability.
