Living Room Conversations - Cultivating Trust, Strengthening Elections

Fostering trust in local election processes and promoting interpersonal connections can strengthen overall trust in elections. In response to concerns about the upcoming 2024 U.S. election, NCDD Member Organization, Living Room Conversations created a new guide, "Trust in Elections".  ​By utilizing these guides as a framework for dialogue and organizing pilot projects, communities can actively work towards building confidence in elections at both local and national levels. Learn more in the blog post below.

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LIVING ROOM CONVERSATIONS: TRUST IN ELECTIONS

The problem: we know the results of the 2024 election are going to be questioned

• 72% Democrats, 42% Independents, & 22% Republicans agree that if Trump wins in 2024 democracy is broken 
• 64% Republicans, 37% Independents, and 18% Democrats agree that if Biden wins in 2024 democracy is broken (Public Religion Research Institute, 2023)

We Must All Work Together To Have a Trustworthy 2024 Election, by Joan Blades cofounder of MoveOn.org, Moms Rising, and LivingRoomConversations.org - read the article at: www.newsweek.com/we-must-all-work-together-have-trustworthy-2024-election-opinion-1830884.

The opportunity: we can build trust in our elections and each other

• Americans want election processes that are fair, robust, and transparent.
• Elections happen in local communities that can actively take responsibility for conducting trustworthy elections.
• Local communities are also a great place to build  interpersonal trust as people talk to each other and work together. 
• We can build trust nationally by connecting those local communities (people are already accustomed to using video platforms to connect). We can also use high profile conversations to inspire a national narrative and model connection across differences. 

The outcome

• Local communities acquire skills and confidence in each other and their election practices ahead of November and walk away with increased trust for tackling other critical issues. 
• We counter the narrative of division that conflict entrepreneurs are spreading, leaving them a fraction of the capacity to incite violence both before and after the election.

THE GUIDES

Trust in Elections (Local)
Is there a difference in the trust you have for local elections and processes compared to other districts, state elections, or national elections? Why or why not?

Have a conversation focused on trust in local election practices. Once communities are satisfied with the trustworthiness of their local elections they can choose to be paired with communities in other parts of the country to begin the process of building trust in national election practices. 
https://livingroomconversations.org/download/trust-in-elections-local/ 

Trust In Elections
When you think about our voting practices, what hopes and concerns do you have for building trust in our electoral process?

Trust is a critical component of building and maintaining healthy families, communities, institutions and countries. What happens when it starts to dwindle or is lost entirely? Trust is built over time. It can be challenged by people with different views or backgrounds as well as events that call into question the intent of our institutions and media. Increasingly, concerns about access to voting and election integrity have led to a questioning of election results. This conversation is designed to encourage reflection on key disconnects we are currently experiencing. What happens when we don’t trust our elections? How can we move forward to build trust?
https://livingroomconversations.org/download/trust-in-elections/

How can you get involved? Bring the conversation to your community!
Have the conversation with friends, or better yet,  bring it to your library, faith community, or club. If you represent a national organization, you can invite local chapters to participate.

• This can be as simple as a conversation with friends and family or a more pointed effort where you bring in other local partners to involve your whole community.
• Use the Trust in Elections local version to get the conversation started. It offers an opportunity to meaningfully connect with people in the community and begin to build connections and trust. These connections, trust, and understanding of one another make your community stronger and provide a way to invite in missing voices.   

Stay tuned for our Trust in Elections Toolbox! 
We are gathering a wonderful set of resources for the folks that want to dig in and do more. In the meantime, you can look at some of our trusted partner resources below.

Become a part of our Trust in Elections network!
We know we’re stronger together and we want to support you. We are recruiting libraries, faith communities, schools, clubs and service organizations who are already rooted in their neighborhoods and would love to connect all the communities who are leaning in to inspire trust in elections. Once you’ve started doing the work of building trust in local elections, we’ll help you connect with other communities in other parts of the country to build national trust.We need to have confidence, and pride in our national elections as well as our local elections.

Interested in becoming a Pilot Project Partner?
Building Trust in Elections is arguably our most compelling call to action for 2024, so let’s work together to help large numbers of people feel that local impact is achievable! We would love to point to your resources! If you have something around safe, fair, and trusted elections let us know! We are looking to launch pilot projects with partners in diverse communities and online to track how conversations on trust in elections can:

• Help recruit people to become poll workers 
• Encourage participants to register to vote or become more committed to voting
• Lead to organizing other LRCs such as Does My Vote Really Matter & Public Service and the Community, individually or in libraries or other group settings
• Lead to participants organizing, attending or viewing additional bridging resources, including signing up for AllSides News
• Lead to cross country conversation about trust in elections to build national trust
• And the fundamental question – Do actions taken lead to increased trust in elections locally and nationally?

Find the sign-up form on the LRC page at: https://livingroomconversations.org/trust-in-elections-2/.