The bipartisan USC Election Cybersecurity Initiative begins its sixth year of operation, returning for a third year to serve all 50 states, made possible by generous support from Google and additional support from the Annenberg Foundation.
More than 5,000 election officials, campaign workers and civic leaders have participated in more than 60 workshops presented by USC in 2020 and 2021, most of them virtual because of pandemic restrictions. Speakers have included Governors, members of the Senate and House, most of the Secretaries of State of the 50 states, and managers of Presidential campaigns of both political parties. Video of most presenters and guest speakers are online at the Initiative’s YouTube channel.
The Initiative launched in 2017 as a multi-disciplinary USC collaboration in partnership with the National Governors Association, following a series of planning meetings in Washington DC and Los Angeles. USC and NGA collaborated on cybersecurity forums and, in 2019, presented a series of workshops for state election officials preparing for the 2020 elections, supported by a grant from the Democracy Fund.
USC began the 2020 election year planning to present programs in each of the 50 states. But in March, after six workshops around the country, the Covid pandemic required a pivot to virtual workshops, one for each of the remaining 44 states. USC ended the year with with a national pre-election wrap-up program in October, “Lessons from all 50 States:, featuring USC’s President, four USC Deans, U.S. Senators of both parties, the President of the National Association of Secretaries of State, and Vint Cerf, Google Vice President and co-inventor of the Internet.
After a year-end assessment, in 2021 USC presented ten regional workshops for the 50 states. In addition, USC presented a webinar with the National Conference of State Legislatures for state lawmakers and their staffs.
In 2022, USC will return with at least ten workshops for the 50 states, inviting national, state and local campaigns and political organizations to join as partners. This will build on the network of dozens of media and university partners that USC has created covering each of the 50 states. This year, once again, the slogan of the USC Election Cybersecurity Initiative is…
“Our Candidate Is Democracy.”