By Connie Moon Sehat and Thessalia Merivaki
Last year, we had the privilege of working with the North Carolina State Board of Elections to help build Local Election Officials’ (LEOs’) capacity to engage and communicate with the public through a training curriculum we call ARTT-LEO. This is because communications knowledge and skills have become yet another part of the expanding and complex responsibilities that election officials must now deliver in an increasingly challenging information environment.
ARTT-LEO teaches tips and strategies from our Communication Model on trustworthy discussions around reliable information. To learn more about what the ARTT-LEO curriculum has to offer, feel free to check out our blog post by researcher Ross Weistroffer. In it, you can find some tips on how to talk about elections even when you disagree.
Highlights from last year’s work on ARTT-LEO included presenting our work to hundreds of participants during North Carolina’s 2024 statewide conference for election officials, as well as getting to share the curriculum with members of the Coalition of Bay Area Election Officials.
As we wrap up our initial pilot of ARTT-LEO, we’ve been able to affirm the importance and value of the hard communications work that Local Election Officials have responsibility for, and their urgent need for support. Here are some examples from LEOs who responded to our surveys:
Our solution showed promise for election workers, though it did not get as much reach as we hoped. The election cycle was really intense and local circumstances, especially in North Carolina where Hurricane Helene hit hard, made engagement difficult. However, we did learn of some particular competencies for our ARTT-LEO curriculum:
It completely makes sense that it is hardest to change one's communication style, approach, and even mindset – one that is focused on sharing the responses and information that will keep the public coming back again – at the last minute when there are other demands on one’s time. That’s especially true given new and unexpected demands, such as creating new polling stations where they no longer exist due to a disaster!
We really have appreciated the support of the Bipartisan Policy Center, without which we could not have done this work. Looking to the future, we hope that we can be a part of a solution that can meet the needs of LEOs as much as possible during less critical times. We also want to conduct more investigations into how to make sure that the results of this training are as helpful as they can be. If you would like to learn more about the ARTT-LEO project for your own jurisdiction, or even participate in its development, reach out to us at: info@discourselabs.org.
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Connie Moon Sehat is Director of Research at Discourse Labs; Thessalia Merivaki is Associate Teaching Professor, McCourt School of Public Policy and Associate Research Professor, Massive Data Institute at Georgetown University
