Takeaways from 30+ state leaders at our Third Annual State Election Roundtable

Running elections today isn’t just about getting the rules right — it’s about coordination at scale. It’s about how quickly guidance travels, how safely people can ask questions, and how effectively states and locals stay aligned as conditions change.

That reality has shaped Civic Roundtable’s work from the beginning, and it’s why we convene election leaders to talk candidly about what’s changing, what’s hard, and what actually helps in practice. Last week, we hosted our Third Annual State Election Roundtable, an invitation-only conversation that brought together 30+ state election officials representing more than 100 million Americans. The discussion focused on the coordination pressures of modern election administration, and on how leaders are improving communication with counties, onboarding new officials, and supporting election workers under increasing scrutiny.

Below are a few insights that stood out, starting with the core challenges participants surfaced — and how states are beginning to address them:

The challenges facing election administration today

1. Compliance is constantly in motion

Election administration depends on precise adherence to laws and regulations, but those rules are constantly evolving. New legislation, updated procedures, and shifting guidance often arrive on compressed timelines, and each question comes with its own fact pattern. As one leader put it, “Election administration is like the English language; there are rules, but there are also many exceptions.” Without proactive communication, nuance gets lost and locals risk implementing inconsistent or incorrect procedures.

2. Good guidance gets buried in inboxes

Election officials are balancing email blasts, recurring calls, and one-off questions, making it hard for even high-quality guidance to cut through. Adding “one more channel” can feel like extra work, and answering the same questions repeatedly drains time during already high-pressure periods. As one participant noted, “Email sucks to search,” and even when guidance exists, it’s often buried in long threads or locked in someone else’s inbox. The result is fragmented information, duplicated effort, and a growing risk that counties act on outdated or incomplete guidance simply because it was the easiest thing to find in the moment.

3. High stakes make AI implementation harder

While leaders see real potential for AI to reduce administrative burden, elections demand a much higher bar. “Close enough” isn’t acceptable, and officials need answers they can verify, defend, and trace back to trusted guidance. Participants shared that uncertainty around reliability, implementation, and data protections makes many teams understandably cautious… especially when incorrect advice can have real-world consequences. Without clear guardrails, explainability, and source transparency, AI feels less like a time-saver and more like a risk, even when the underlying problem of finding accurate answers quickly is very real.

How Roundtable is helping states meet these challenges

1. Centralizing evolving guidance in one trusted place

Roundtable gives election officials a shared, secure workspace to publish updates, provide context, and anchor guidance in the resources behind it. Instead of relying on fragmented emails or static documents, teams can see what’s current, what’s changed, and how guidance applies across different scenarios. As one participant shared, when major procedural changes had to happen quickly, they used Roundtable to “send out the first alert, schedule a webinar, and then plan out all of the go-forwards and continue those communications.” Having one place to manage evolving guidance helps nuance travel faster, and reduces the risk that locals act on outdated or incomplete information.

2. Turning one-off answers into shared institutional knowledge

By centralizing questions and responses, Roundtable reduces inbox overload and transforms individual answers into reusable guidance for the entire network. One participant described uploading answers they’d already written into Roundtable because they knew “I’m going to get this question ten more times.” Posts, polls, and resource libraries lower the barrier to participation and capture peer insight alongside official guidance. This ensures that answers don’t disappear into private inboxes or reply-all threads that, as one leader put it, have been “slowly eating away at my sanity.”

3. Providing AI support grounded in trusted materials

Roundtable’s integrated AI Answers is built directly into each secure workspace and draws exclusively from vetted guidance, approved documents, and prior discussions. Participants were clear that in elections, AI only works if it’s explainable and defensible: “Close enough isn’t acceptable.” Because every AI response is traceable back to its source, officials can quickly find answers while still understanding where they came from — addressing a common frustration when information “gets buried in comments on a post” or is hard to locate under pressure. The result is faster access to trusted guidance without sacrificing transparency, accountability, or control.

What comes next

Looking ahead, what we heard from state leaders will continue to directly shape how Roundtable evolves. We’re expanding the platform with new capabilities focused on relationship management for poll workers and AI tools designed specifically for election workflows — purpose-built with trust, security, and real-world usability at the center. We’ll also continue supporting our state and national partners through upcoming conferences and peer convenings in the coming months — and we’re excited to keep these conversations going.

We’re deeply grateful to the election officials who joined this year’s roundtable and shared their time, candor, and experience. These conversations only work because of your professionalism and commitment to one another, and we don’t take that trust lightly. And to everyone working to improve county coordination, reduce inbox chaos, and give election workers faster access to trusted guidance: we’d love to connect and continue the conversation.