Election Security Spotlight — Office Safety for Public-Facing Employees

What It Is

Election officials are in constant contact with the public. Election offices serve as a location for individuals to register to vote, update their voter registration, and cast their votes in early or absentee voting. Office setup and appropriate policies and procedures have a major impact on the safety of election officials.

Why It Matters

During busy election cycles, people experience heightened emotions, and tensions remain high. As a result, individuals may direct their anger to election officials. Given these circumstances, it is more important than ever for election offices to have strict office safety policies and procedures in place to protect employees.

What You Can Do

Here are a few recommendations on how election officials can increase office safety:

• Keep office doors, workspaces, and sensitive areas secured. This can be as easy as installing a lock and key. Other methods include installing a keypad, scanning an employee’s badge, or using biometrics. Cameras can be used to monitor secure areas.
• Create barriers between private work areas and areas open to the public. Glass barriers to create separation from employees and the public are a great solution but can be expensive. At a minimum, ensure there is some form of a boundary. This can be done using furniture, such as desks, that provide separation.
• Follow established procedures for handling disruptive, threatening, or suspicious individuals. Trust your intuition. If an individual makes you feel unsafe or something just isn’t quite right, ensure you quickly communicate this with your supervisor and follow whatever procedure your office has in place for such situations.
• Practice access control to keep the public out of private work areas. Ensure that visitors or the public don’t roam your office freely. For visitors, maintain a log for signing in and out, issue visitor badges, and always have an employee escort visitors. Also, ensure employees wear badges that are easily recognizable from a distance. Be sure you have procedures in place on how to handle any potential unauthorized persons in private work areas of the office.
• Have a clear line of sight throughout the office. Ensure no barriers exist that impede your ability to see all areas of the office clearly. If you have a clear line of sight, it makes it more difficult for people to hide, facilitates a quick exit from the office in the event of an emergency, and provides you with better situational awareness.
• Establish a safe room/panic room. Choose a room within your office large enough to fit all employees. In the event of an emergency, employees can flee to this room and lock it from the inside.
• Schedule a Physical Security Assessment with your CISA Protective Security Advisor (PSA) or your local law enforcement agency. CISA PSAs and local law enforcement agencies can conduct a Physical Security Assessment at no cost. They can recommend both no-cost and low-cost ways to make your increase the safety of your office.
• Ensure employees are trained in de-escalation techniques. De-escalation training can help employees to decrease the intensity of heightened emotions voters may have when visiting your election office. If these techniques are not enough, employees should know when and how to ask a supervisor, management, and/or law enforcement to step in if a situation arises. For more information on de-escalation, please visit https://www.cisa.gov/sites/default/files/2025-01/De-escalation-Action-Guide_v508_20250127.pdf.
• Maintain office safety as a topic of regular conversation. Talk about office safety in regularly scheduled meetings. Ensure employees feel confident with the policies and procedures your office has in place.
• Report incidents to the 24x7x365 U.S.-based Center for Internet Security^® (CIS^®) Security Operations Center (SOC). By reporting incidents you experience in your office, the Elections Infrastructure Information Sharing and Analysis Center^® (EI-ISAC^®) can provide better threat information to all election offices, particularly if we see trends. To report an incident, please reach out to [email protected] or (866) 787-4722.

Please reach out to [email protected] if you have any questions.