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Toolkits

Thursday, October 10, 2024

To assist election officials in creating and putting together materials about a wide variety of topics that affect their operations, education, and outreach, the U.S. Election Assistance Commission aims to provide toolkits that can be used by elections offices. Providing these resources is important to assist election officials with their outreach. Many of the resources in the toolkits listed below are customizable to various degrees, depending on what the elections office needs. Below are the compiled toolkits.

Check back for upcoming toolkits.

Poll Workers Helping Americans Vote Campaign Toolkit

The U.S. Election Assistance Commission (EAC) has launched a new initiative that offers jurisdictions an opportunity to join in a national effort to recognize poll workers for the critical role they play in Helping Americans Vote. 

As a part of this effort, the EAC has created a customizable social media toolkit to raise awareness and invite your jurisdiction to participate in the Poll Workers Helping Americans Vote campaign. 

The customizable graphics cater to X (formerly Twitter), Facebook, LinkedIn, and Instagram, but the graphics and your messaging can be used for emails, websites, flyers, posters, and other communications.

Poll Workers Helping Americans Vote Campaign Toolkit:

How can you participate? Your jurisdiction is invited to send in a group poll worker photograph for potential inclusion in what will be an ongoing EAC Poll Workers Helping Americans Vote social media campaign. The What–Why-How Document in the toolkit explains it all and provides an EAC contact for questions.

Voter Education Design Toolkit

This toolkit includes best practices and templates for designing effective communication materials that are relevant, timely, and accessible. 
It’s for non-designers and designers alike working on voter education in varying jurisdictions.

This toolkit is organized into three parts:

  • Best practices guide for designing effective voter education materials
  • Editable content for 4 common voter education topics
  • Sample and blank design templates in Word, PowerPoint, and InDesign

National Poll Worker Recruitment Day Toolkit - 2024

National Poll Worker Recruitment Day is a national day of action established by the U.S. Election Assistance Commission (EAC) in 2020 to inspire civic engagement and encourage people to sign up to become a poll worker. On August 1, 2024, National Poll Worker Recruitment Day aims to address the continued need for poll workers ahead of the general election in November. In this toolkit, you will find customizable social media graphics, video templates, outreach/communication templates, and much more!

Resource files and Instructions on how to customize the toolkit graphics in PowerPoint:

Election Official Social Media Toolkit

Many election officials use social media platforms but don't have time to develop specific graphics and text throughout the year. That's why the EAC developed this toolkit to help election officials communicate proactively and consistently with their voters. This toolkit includes over 150 images that are organized into 17 different categories from "Community Engagement" to "Voting Options." Each image includes links to two versions of the image in Canva - one square and one horizontal - that can be fully customized to meet your needs. 

Each image also comes with pre-written alt text to describe each image on the social media platform of your choice, as well as sample post text that can accompany each graphic. In addition to the images in this toolkit, election officials will also find: 

  • Tips for editing your images
  • A hashtag guide to help amplify your posts
  • Platform-specific information and guidance
  • Best practices for community management and social media etiquette 

The full toolkit can be found here.

To access the static graphics from the toolkit as jpeg files, download this zip file.

Help America Vote Day Toolkit and Resources - 2024

Help America Vote Day (January 30, 2024) is a day of action to encourage people across the U.S. to get involved in the electoral process by signing up to be a poll worker and an opportunity to share information on how to register and cast a ballot. To aid in the efforts of state and local election offices across the U.S., the U.S. Election Assistance Commission has created a highly customizable social media toolkit that officials can use throughout their voter education and poll worker recruitment processes.

Clearinghouse Awards Program Toolkit

States or state professional associations can use this resource to develop an awards program to recognize elections offices and share best practices, like the EAC's Clearinghouse Awards.

Election Official Toolkit: Using Google Maps to Display Election Information

Geographical Information Systems (GIS) technology is a valuable tool for election officials but often requires a large investment, and dedicated and trained staff to develop and maintain real-time updated maps. This EAC toolkit walks election officials through using Google Maps as an option to show different data sets on online maps and how to update the information on a regular basis.

National Poll Worker Recruitment Day Toolkit - 2023

The EAC has created a toolkit to help election officials with poll worker recruitment. This toolkit is accompanied with various customizable graphics (Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter/X, and Instagram), sample social media text, trending hashtags, and more! 

AI Toolkit 

(August 2023)

Like any technology, AI tools are used for a variety of purposes—good, bad, and neutral. The purpose of this document is to provide election officials with a general understanding of AI tools, and the opportunities and threats that they create for effective election administration. The AI Handout Template (Canva log-in required) is available for election officials to create a printed handout that can be distributed at offices, libraries, and events to direct voters to official sources of important election information. 
This document includes:

  • An overview of existing AI tools; 
  • A Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, and Threats (SWOT) analysis of these tools in the field of election administration; 
  • Communications Tips and Best Practices for Navigating AI-generated Content; 
  • A handout template that election officials can use to direct voters and constituents to verifiable sources of accurate information.

Communications 101 Toolkit 

(July 2023)

The Communications 101 Guide and it accompanying materials are intended to help election offices successfully communicate with the public, and plan for challenges that may arise throughout their work. This includes an in-depth guide, a toolkit, social media graphics and calendar, and sample press releases. 

Secure Elections Toolkit

(June 2023)

The Secure Elections Toolkit, and its accompanying materials, are intended to assist election officials when informing candidates, policy makers, media, stakeholders, and the public of the multi-layered approach used to secure elections. This includes how to share information about election security in their jurisdictions and components of the EAC Testing and Certification program. Download customizable social media graphics via Canva.com.  

Protecting U.S. Elections: A CISA Cybersecurity Toolkit

(August 10, 2022)

The Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) released this toolkit as a one-stop catalog of free services and tools available for state and local election officials to improve the cybersecurity and resilience of their infrastructure. As the lead federal agency responsible for election security, CISA regularly works with state and local election officials to secure their systems and offers a number of services, information products, and other resources. This toolkit was developed through CISA’s Joint Cyber Defense Collaborative (JCDC), which worked with private and public sector organizations, including in the election community, and JCDC alliance members – to compile these free resources. The toolkit is organized into broad categories designed to help election officials: 

  • Assess their risk using an Election Security Risk Profile Tool developed by CISA and the U.S. Election Assistance Commission; 
  • Find tools related to protecting voter information, websites, email systems, and networks; and 
  • Protect assets against phishing, ransomware, and distributed denial-of-services (DDoS) attacks. 

Help America Vote Day (August 16, 2022) 

A toolkit with graphics, draft social media content, and other information is available for election officials to use to recruit poll workers and participate in Help America Vote Day.  We understand many state and local election offices have their own forms and online information for the recruitment of poll workers. Feel free to use your jurisdiction’s direct links and customize the graphics as you share information on August 16th. 

Communicating Election and Post-Election Processes Toolkit 

This toolkit can be used to create educational materials about pre- and post-election processes that observers and the public can understand. Election officials in any size jurisdiction can adapt this toolkit to fit their observer and voter education needs.

Best Practices: FAQs for Election Officials

 One of the best ways to educate the public is for election officials to proactively and consistently provide accurate and timely information to voters. The purpose of this toolkit is to provide election officials with messaging guidance, infographic facts sheets, social media graphics, social media text, and example FAQs, that can easily be shared on websites and social media platforms to inform voters about important election procedures. 

Click here for more resources on Poll Worker Recruitment and National Poll Worker Recruitment Day

 The EAC has compiled a variety of resources election officials can use as they recruit poll workers and plan for Election Day including social media graphics, videos, and more. If you have materials you would like added to these resources please email [email protected].