In this episode, hosts Eric Fey and Brianna Lennon speak with Christopher Mann, the Research Director at the Center for Election Innovation & Research, and Stuart Holmes, the Director of Elections for Washington Secretary of State Steve Hobbs.
They spoke about the centralized system for responding to public records requests that Washington state implemented in 2023, as well as how the system is helping combat misinformation and is returning some time to local election administrators who continue to receive an increased number of public records requests.
You can read the full case report from the Center for Election Innovation & Research at https://electioninnovation.org/research/centralizing-requests-in-washington-state/.
High Turnout, Wide Margins Credits:
Managing Editor: Rebecca Smith
Managing Producer: Aaron Hay
Associate Producer: Katie Quinn
Digital Producer: Mark Johnson
Transcription of the episode is as follows:
Back in 2019, the county auditors had about 400 public records requests — by 2022, they were reporting about 1,300, and the total in 2024 that went through the Secretary of State's office was about 21,000. So, it is skyrocketing in terms of the numbers of requests that they were being asked to fulfill.
[High Turnout Wide Margins Introduction]
Brianna Lennon: Welcome to another exciting episode of High Turnout Wide Margins. This is Brianna Lennon. I’m the County Clerk in Boone County, Missouri, and with me is my co-host —
Eric Fey: Eric Fey, Director of Elections in St. Louis County, Missouri.
Brianna Lennon: And today we’re going to be talking about all things public records requests, and I’ll have our guests introduce themselves. I don’t know who wants to go first?
Stuart Holmes: I’m Stuart Holmes. I’m the Director of Elections for Secretary Steve Hobbs.
Chris Mann: And I’m Chris Mann, the Research Director at the Center for Election Innovation & Research.
Brianna Lennon: All right, so I know that in Missouri, we have not really been a hotbed of public records requests, but that is not the case for our colleagues in other states. So, that's what we're going to be talking about today, but, of course, our first question that we always ask is about how our guests actually got into the election space.
So Stuart, I guess we'll start with you. Can you give us a little bit of a bio and what made you get involved in elections in the first place?
Stuart Holmes: Well, don't we all go to school to become an elections administrator? I mean, I grew up as a kid just thinking about fire trucks and elections administration. But no, that is not the truth.
So, I was born and raised in Prosser, Washington, which was the county seat of Benton County Washington, and there in the city of Prosser is the county courthouse. My mom was the county IT manager for many number of years there, and so, over many summers, I would go down to the courthouse, answer calls and kind of worked in the courthouse there, or, you know, at least bothered my mom while she was trying to get work done. And so, really kind of born and raised around county government, and so, when I graduated from high school and was starting my professional career, she got me a part time job as a document recording specialist in the auditor's office right at a time in which the state of Washington was completing the closest gubernatorial race in Washington state history. And, of course, that was the 2004 election that went to many different levels of recount, and I was just completely fascinated and hooked, and as soon as I could, I got over into that elections department, and now here I am as the state election director for the whole state of Washington. So Brianna, that's how I got into election administration.
Chris Mann: My interest in election administration began almost 30 years ago, when I was right out of college and I was working on campaigns, and I worked on a series of campaigns in different places, and, at that time, I got really fascinated with how different rules affected the way campaigns did what they did, and how voters voted and registered. And then I decided to go back to grad school, and that was right before the 2000 election, and so, I was in school and thinking about what I wanted to research as that was in the news, and then I became a professor for almost 20 years now, and a lot of my research focused election administration and less on the campaign stuff. And so, now I lead the research team at the Center for Election Innovation and Research. We’re a nonprofit that works with election officials across the country in both parties on practical, useful research, and so, that's how I ended up where I am today.
Eric Fey: Well, as a segue, there's perhaps nothing more practical and useful than public records requests, and that's what brought us together here today — and Washington state's new and unique approach to fulfilling public records requests.
Election officials everywhere, since 2020 especially, have seen increased amounts of records requests, and Washington state seems like was no exception to that. So Stuart, maybe you can explain a little bit about the background of why Washington is trying to approach fulfilling public records requests in a different way. Maybe what kind of led up to this legislation in Washington that has changed the process?
Stuart Holmes: Yeah, that's a great question, and the state of Washington has long since been an innovator in the election space and trying to stay ahead of the curve a little bit, and as we started to notice public records requests — specifically for voter registration lists — increasing in the state of Washington, we knew without a doubt that our county elections offices were experiencing a similar increase. And when the state of Washington, back in 2019, went from a — what's called a bottom up system, which means each county had their own database and voter registration system, and it was reporting up to the state — to what's commonly referred to as a top down system where it's centralized at the state level. The state then maintained the entire voter registration database, and would be very well positioned to be able to provide the public with good customer service and being able to provide lists at a regular level and in a centralized repository, right? So you can get a statewide list, you can get a county list, you can get it all very easily by submitting a request and then being able to get the file that you're looking for without having to wait or go through a whole public records process.
Eric Fey: Just as a quick follow up, Stuart, in the lead up to the change you all implemented, kind of centralizing these requests — were county election officials having a hard time fulfilling the amount of requests they were receiving?
Stuart Holmes: Yeah, Eric, as we build up to an election, everything's happening all at once — voter Registration is increasing, ballot issuance and ballot return is all increasing, and so, the public's interest in this information is also increasing. And so, their requests for that information were being submitted and sometimes having to be delayed in responding to those requests because election officials are busy. They're doing other things. And so there, we were seeing that the requests were increasing and all kind of near or around Election Day, and so, the ability to create a system in which we're able to fulfill those requests for the public's interest so that they could follow along with an election follow, along with voter registration activity, while election officials are able to do what they need to do, as well, and administer the election and ensure its accurate, accuracy and integrity.
Chris Mann: And I can put some numbers to that because we dug into this report that we did with Stuart. So, back in 2019, the county auditors had about 400 public records requests. By 2022 they were reporting about 1,300, and the total in 2024 that went through the Secretary of State's office was about 21,000. So, it is skyrocketing in terms of the numbers of requests that they were being asked to fulfill.
Brianna Lennon: For those of us that have not really received too many public records requests, or maybe just want a little more clarification — what types of things and are they coming from constituents of Washington, or are they coming from all over the country, are they national requests? Like, what are these requests that you are getting?
Stuart Holmes: The most common requests we get is for the list of registered voters, and Washington State law does protect the use of that list, but it can be used for any political purpose. So, campaigns are using it to get mailers out to newly registered voters, or using it to identify voters that have voted in every primary or every general election, so that they can have a good mailing list. So, it's being used for a lot of different purposes, and it's also being used for purposes all around the country with national campaigns organizations that are supporting candidates being outside of the state of Washington. We do get requests from all over the country for this list of information, and the counties, primarily their requests were for just a subset of the state list. They're just getting a shorter list where they're just getting Benton County, Washington, or King County Washington's list. Whereas the state we're providing everything. So, it was a very simple solution for us to be able to take our list, split it up 39 ways for each of our counties in the state of Washington, and provide the same list at the same time to everybody that needs it or requests it.
Chris Mann: One of the concerns that we hear from election officials, we heard from Stuart about this is sometimes those requests are going into the county and the state at the same time, and it raises this risk of misinformation, you know, like the county takes two weeks to get to it, and the Secretary of State gets to it in a week, and in between, you get voter registration or other list maintenance going on, and so the numbers look different. And then, you know, folks get suspicious. They start asking questions, they start worrying. And so, you know, we see that as one of the other benefits of, you know, not just streamlining, but heading off that risk of kind of misinformation, misunderstanding of what's going on in these, you know, in this voter file data.
Eric Fey: Prior to this interview, I did read the bill that was passed in Washington State. It's always interesting reading legislation from different states. So, this legislation seems kind of tailored narrowly toward the records that emanate from the statewide voter database. And I'm wondering if, in consideration of this legislation and this policy change, was there any talk of trying to include other types of records where county auditors, election officials in Washington State also receiving increased amounts of requests for other types of public records, and perhaps it's impossible to provide all those from from a centralized state system, but I just was curious — how did the request for like voter lists compared to other types of requests that they've been receiving? The volume.
Stuart Holmes: Right. In the state of Washington, there are, as you can imagine, millions of election records related to the administration of any election, and the retention of those varies based on if it's a federal election or non-federal election, but those records exist at the local level, and there's certain exemptions for those that only can be viewed in person, so they can't be copied. So, things such as the ballot return envelope that includes the voter signature or information that is not publicly disclosable, like phone numbers and email addresses. Those things all can have to be seen in person, so there wasn't a lot of consideration for those types of things because they just simply can't be provided and only can be seen in person.
The state voter registration database is actually a combined election management and voter registration system, so we also see many public records requests or data requests for ballot issuance and ballot return information. Other states may know these as “match backs,” you know, we changed those from walking lists from when people would walk around. I don't think people do that anymore, but it's one of these things where this centralized system is so much more than just voter registration, and so we are able to assist the counties in providing standardized reports, the public with standardized reports. So, as Chris mentioned, everybody's getting the same list of information, and then each county can then use that for their own purposes. They can release that information to the public, but it prevents the human error where things get accidentally disclosed or things get accidentally excluded that should have been included in these records requests. So, having it the same request handled the same way, even if it is handled at the state versus it's being handled at the county, is really, really good.
Chris Mann: And one of the things we talked about that was really interesting — as someone outside election administration I didn't think about, but election administrators dealing with records across will know — is there's often these things that need to be redacted, and failing to do that is a big deal to the people who might be impacted, whose information has been shared. So, that standardization also kind of lowers the stress level of folks making sure that there aren't, you know, that that email or that phone number that's not supposed to be shared with the voter records isn't accidentally done.
But it's also really important to be clear, this centralization is a help, but it's not a magic bullet. It's not going to make all the records requests disappear from the counties, but if they're not dealing with these routine things that have now been shifted to the state, it means when they do get those requests for the records, maybe that only they have, right? Internal records to that county office that the Secretary of State doesn't have, then they can do that, and they're not, you know, not spending hours and hours.
And most of your audience knows this, there are certainly lots of horror stories of how you know this can just bring an election office to a grinding halt when they get overwhelmed with either requests of massive scope for unbelievable amounts of information or the volume, right? These are both problems, and when they happen together, it's even worse. So, everything that kind of moves it and you know, the centralization piece means that the infrastructure the Secretary of State has, especially that small counties may not have to deal with these voter records requests, right? That burden is shifted away from the county to folks who can handle it better at the Secretary of State's office.
[High Turnout Wide Margins Midbreak]
Brianna Lennon: So, can you speak a little bit, Stuart, to the logistics of what it is, what it looks like to have a centralized kind of response to this? If a county, for example, gets an email that says, “Hey, I want the voter list from my county,” are they expected to send it to you? Is there a way that that match happens, so that it gets centralized instead, and then you reach out to the requester and say, “Hey, sounds like you want to request. How about we give you the entire state?” Like, how does the process actually work between the state and the counties?
Stuart Holmes: Yeah. So, this was kind of going back to my introduction where my mom, as the IT manager, introduced me to IT at a very young age. So, I've been very able to comprehend and “live off the land” — cybersecurity professionals would call it — where we were able to implement a solution that provides a self-service portal for any requester, the county could use it as well, that required $0. It was using a Microsoft product. It's called Power Automate, but essentially, you're able to utilize that to provide automation while maintaining visibility and oversight over the process. So, I have a staff member that is able to see the request as they come in and confirm they're being resolved, but, essentially, what we're able to do is have a web form that creates an email and then that email triggers all of the automation. But as a part of that web form, the individual says, “Here's who I am, and here's the list that I would like to receive.” Let's say they want to get King County's voter registration list. They would select King County. That email will get submitted to the Elections Division, and then we'll be able to trigger this automation that responds back to them with a link to where they can receive their file, and that link is unique to that requester — cannot be shared with anyone else, so that they then have an ability to download that for a period of time. So, all free, with the exception of having a Microsoft subscription or whatever that entails, but most of us have Microsoft Word or Microsoft Excel, and so, if you have the ability to use Power Automate, you could do this free. We'd be happy to share, you know, the very simple workflow with anyone that's interested in seeing it. It's not magic or anything like that. So, the county is able to simply put on their website or redirect the requester to this self-service portal that is automated almost entirely.
Eric Fey: All right, so the question I'm dying to ask — and this is for Stuart and Chris — you know, it's a favorite pastime of election administrators at the state and local level to have a tendency to commiserate or perhaps complain about, you know, “State election officials, what do they really know?” or “They're annoying us for this reason.” And state election officials, I know, when they're together, they're like, “Oh, man, I got, some of these counties I've got, you know, I don't know what to do with them,” that kind of thing. And so, I can easily foresee, based on my own experience, a situation where perhaps the state wouldn't fulfill a public records request in the same way I might be inclined to fulfill it. And by — I, again, I read the statute that enables this system you have in Washington State, and it says that the request must go to the state. So, now I think it seems, to me, obvious that the Washington State Secretary of State's office is working in an effort of goodwill here, but if that wasn't always the case, could the public still get records from counties if for some reason the state wouldn't or couldn't fulfill these requests?
Stuart Holmes: Yes, Eric. So, we do have — county election officials in the state of Washington are the county auditor, in most cases. In King County, it is an elected elections director. They have a want and need to be able to serve their constituents, as well. And so, if a requester were to go to them for something — we would more than happily work with that county to be able to get the records that they're looking for. In some cases, that county is the one that is responsible for responding to those requests.
The other piece to these types of requests are not normally the standard ones that everybody is requesting, like the voter registration list. There are more specific and targeted requests for internal information within the system in which we had seen counties trying, out of the goodness of their heart, to serve their constituents and provide them with that information, but without a lack of understanding of how the system is maintained, what those records mean in the context behind them — it was creating that misinformation, right? There was a misunderstanding of what they were providing. There was a misunderstanding on the requester, on what they were receiving, and really not an ability to have a dialog, to answer any of their questions. And so, for anything that's not a standard request, we want and encourage our county auditors to get those to the state because we're able to explain how the system functions and how those workflows mean, what the data that they're getting means in a much more specific and nuanced way than the county may not understand entirely.
But the standard requests, voter lists — I'm more than happy for them to provide those because they can get it in the exact same way that I have. When it gets into something that's a little more nuanced, get those over to the state of Washington so we can make sure to get them taken care of. And, as Chris pointed out, redact whatever needs redacting. We do have some state laws that protect critical infrastructure, and elections are designated under the federal government as critical infrastructure, so we want to make sure that we protect the security of our system, as well. And election officials are not always trained and up to speed on all of the cybersecurity functions and what may create a security vulnerability in the system.
Chris Mann: So, we got into this project with Stuart because we had looked at things in 2024 about how states were responding to the flood of public records requests, and Washington stood out as something innovative. And then my colleague April Tan and I saw Stuart at a conference early last year and asked him how it had gone, and he said their successes, but he also talked about some of the things that they were already learning. If you look at the report, one of those things is —think really carefully about how you're going to draft the statute. And I think Eric one of those questions is — “How well do the state and local folks get along? Exactly what do you want to do?” Make all that stuff as clear as possible, and this is intended to be helpful, right? Some systems may already have this baked in, into that voter registration database and election management system, right? That everybody's got standard queries that are already built into that that's that's great, and then maybe you don't need, you know, a law like Washington passed here. But it certainly seems like food for thought.
We looked around when we wrote this report last year. There's a couple of bills in legislatures across the country thinking about similar ideas to this — sometimes within the Secretary of State's office, sometimes, maybe, with a university partnership that some of this data would move to a data center and move it entirely out of election officials and it'd be a public database. But, you know, these are things that as records requests go up, and especially with a lot of them being for the same kinds of information over and over again, election officials — the job description of election officials has grown dramatically, and this feels like one of those things of maybe shrinking that job description a little bit, shrinking what folks have to do, so that they can focus on the things that only they can do, and someone else can help them with us.
Brianna Lennon: And I think that's what I wanted to know, as well, and Chris, you kind of touched on it, but, you know, especially, I think, in the last couple of years, getting legislation passed about elections that's useful and practical has been very challenging in a lot of cases, and I would love some insight into how your proposal was received by your legislature, what kind of challenges you had because, you know, we can go and talk to our legislative counterparts, and they don't really have a basis of comparison to know, you know, they might hear we've got a bunch of public records requests, and their response may be, “Well, yeah, that's your job is to fulfill those. Why do we need new legislation?” So, I'd love to hear a little bit about your experience with that.
Stuart Holmes: Yeah, in the state of Washington, we're very fortunate to have a very positive relationship between the Secretary of State's office and our county auditor's office or the County Auditor's Association, I should say more specifically. Their entire association is wonderful to work with, and we're great partners in drafting this legislation. The legislature cares about dollars and cents, right? And so, when you are able to tell them, “Hey, this is going to have a cost savings. It's going to cost you nothing. It's going to serve your constituents better.” They, you know, it flew through and, I think, it was passed unanimously, if my memory is correct, through both chambers of our legislature. So it, I think, when you really get down to the positive impacts this has on being able to free up those resources, as Chris said, to be able to do some of the additional work that the legislature has placed upon our local elections officials that are increasing pre-election audits, increasing post election audits, and being able to free them up to do those and work with the increased election observers that we're seeing and really excited that have them — for a long period of time, we didn't have any observers, and now we're really grateful to have them back — but being able to take care of and explain the process and work with their community is all a wonderful thing, and being able to manage all of the public records request at the same time it was a win, win, win.
Brianna Lennon: What piece of advice would you give, maybe not necessarily to local election officials, although if you have some advice for local election officials too, but to other state election offices that are trying to do similar things?
Stuart Holmes: I think one of the most important things is we have these regular calls. We do them daily as we build up to an election, but less regular when we're in “down times” in elections, which is kind of a funny thing to say, but we regularly check in and communicate closely with what kind of public records requests we're getting at the state level, what they're getting at the county level — so that we are all aligned in uniform. And that was the first step right is identifying, “Oh, hey, we're not responding in the same way,” or, “Hey, what kind of questions are you getting?” So that we can standardize those processes, work together — whether it's through a centralized system, I think, is irrelevant. That was something that we had already in place and made it a lot easier, but I think just having those conversations and checking in and listening to each other on the state level and the local level is critical to the success of anything like this because the idea came from the local election official that said, “Hey, you guys have the state system, it would be awesome if you could help us out with this,” and we took the ball and ran it from there. But we wouldn't have done it without their blessing, without their support, and I think that whether it's a solution like this one, or something unique for your state, that is what I would recommend everybody do.
Eric Fey: You've been listening to High Turnout Wide Margins, a podcast that explores local elections administration. I'm your host, Eric Fey, alongside Brianna Lennon. A big thanks to KBIA and the Election Center for making this podcast possible. Our Managing Editor is Rebecca Smith. Managing Producer is Aaron Hay. Our Associate Producer is Katie Quinn, and our Digital Producer is Mark Johnson. This has been High Turnout Wide Margins. Thanks for listening.
