About Us
The Problems With Our Elections Affect Every Issue You Care About
SMART Elections is a non-partisan project dedicated to elevating the issue of election reform to an urgent national priority.
There are currently seven main sectors in the election reform movement:
- Voting rights (ending voter suppression)
- Disability rights (access for voters)
- Anti-corruption (getting money out of politics)
- Fair Redistricting (ending gerrymandering)
- National Popular Vote (ending the Electoral College)
- Ranked Choice Voting
- Security
These groups are powerful individually – but tend to work separately from each other, and sometimes in opposition to each other. Our nation’s elections are in disrepair. A broad-based coalition of these sectors working cooperatively across the political spectrum can generate the attention and resources necessary to repair our dysfunctional electoral process. SMART elections is dedicated to that cooperative effort.
We are building bridges and lasting partnerships that can produce significant improvements in U.S, elections.
We focus especially on election security because that is our area of expertise, and we know that if security is not addressed - and votes are not counted accurately - then all other reforms are at risk.
SMART stands for
- Secure
- Marked* & Audited by Hand
- Accessible & Accurate
- Right to Vote
- Transparent
*(for those who are able)
#Election Protection forum hosts
Moderator: Lulu Friesdat
Election Security Journalist
Executive Director of SMART Elections
- Ms. Friesdat is a journalist and filmmaker who has contributed to Emmy award-winning coverage at ABC News. Her election security investigations have received over four million views on Now This. Her journalism and advocacy work have been featured in The Washington Post, The Hill, Politico, the Young Turks, The Christian Science Monitor, Salon,and Truthout. She was quoted in the New York TImes regarding the current state of the New York City Board of Elections. Over the course of a more than ten-year career in network news, she has had assignments with NBC, MSNBC, CNBC, CBS, Fox News Channel, and Nightline. Her first documentary "Holler Back - [not] Voting in an American Town" was featured in The Hollywood Reporter as part of a group of "thoughtful and provocative" films being made by women. Follow her on Twitter @LuluFriesdat.
Co-host: Bennie Smith
Shelby County Election Commissioner
Software Developer
- Bennie Smith is an advocate for election transparency, and serves on the Technical Advisory Team for SMART Elections. He was featured in a PBS News Hour segment on “What election officials think about paper ballots and voting machines.” He is best known for his proof of concept research examining election system vulnerabilities. It was covered by Bloomberg in its Cyber Security Segment and he was profiled in a cover story by Bloomberg Businessweek. Smith’s research is credited for uncovering an extraordinarily high-risk tampering mechanism and provides a new method for analyzing questionable election results. It is the foundation for the Ballot Image Project and has been presented to election officials, elected officials and at security panels around the country. Follow him on Twitter @BennieJSmith.
