The Thurston County Board of County Commissioners (BOCC) honored the county auditor’s office after it recently won a national Clearinghouse Award from the United States Election Assistance Commission, recognized for excellence in voter education and communications.
The auditor’s office’s “Your Neighbors, Your Elections” video series won the award, beating out other counties in the large jurisdictions category such as Pierce County and Los Angeles County, according to Auditor Mary Hall. “Your Neighbors, Your Elections” highlights the real people behind Thurston County’s elections: local residents who volunteer their time to show how elections work and to build trust in county elections.
Additionally, the auditor’s office received an honorable mention in the accessibility category for “Expanding Access: Public Transit Partnerships for Accessible Elections.”
Hall visited the Tuesday BOCC meeting to highlight the work done by the auditor’s office communications team en route to the Clearinghouse Award, which she dubbed the “Academy Award of election awards.”
“Every county in the country applies for these, and we have many times, but I’m thrilled that we won the award for outreach effort,” Hall said. “We are big believers in that the way to build trust in elections is really through transparency, and elections are conducted by people. There are a lot of rumors out there of what’s really happening. So we brought people together, and we wanted to show the community who really is behind elections, and it’s really your neighbors.”
Hall thanked the volunteers for their courage in a climate in which she said elections workers and officials have received threats, including a fentanyl-laced envelope last year.
“It was very courageous of them to step up. We’ve really redefined what voter education looks like. It’s personal, it’s honest, and it’s proven to be effective,” she said. “All of this was done in house with very minimal cost. This is government at its best.”
Emmett O’Connell, communications manager at the auditor’s office and creator of the effort, said the idea to highlight the people behind the elections came from research about effective ways to build trust in elections. The “Your Neighbors, Your Elections” videos are unscripted, he said, and they allow volunteers to explain what they enjoy about working in elections and what motivates them.
“The most measurable measure with this project was the change in tenor in online comments when we went to our digital ad campaign in the fall. As you might imagine, people have a lot of strong thoughts about elections when presented to them in their social news feeds,” O’Connell said. “It’s a lot of negative. Once we put money behind these ads, it was breathtaking. People were so kind. The people who did decide to jump into those comment threads and say negative things were chastised, not by me but by other people.”
Commissioner Emily Clouse called for a round of applause after the auditor’s office presented one of the videos in the series to the commissioners. She lauded Hall and her team for the care they put into the elections process.
“I’ve seen firsthand how much you care. I’ve had the pleasure of touring the ballot processing center twice, and once was actually on election day,” Clouse said. “Everyone was locked in. They were so focused on what they were doing, but you could still see how much joy there was, and you could feel it in the room because people care so much about making sure we have fair and transparent elections.”
