Pillars of the Community

Restoring Trust in Our Elections

We are working with community leaders to bolster public faith in the American election system and its officials.

Engage the Community

Actively involve committed community leaders - or Pillars – from across the political spectrum.

Evaluate the Election System

Engage with local and state election officials in dialogues about the accuracy and integrity of local election processes.

Understand the Safeguards

Provide community leaders with information and data about the safeguards within election systems designed to provide accurate vote counts to fortify public confidence.

Trust the Process

Through full engagement with election officials, encourage community confidence in the local jurisdiction’s election procedures and the election officials who conducted the election.

Public confidence in our elections is essential to our system of government and the peaceful transfer of power. Yet that confidence has been undermined by unprecedented political and other stresses on our voting systems.

Pillars of the Community seeks to bolster faith in elections by hosting conversations between a group of politically diverse community leaders and election officials about the ongoing work at the state and local levels to deliver an election this year that meets voter expectations of reliability and security. These conversations will enable Pillars to gain a firsthand understanding of the electoral process and share their assessment with the public.

The goal of this process is transparency and dialogue about the preparations for upcoming elections, which will promote voter trust and confidence — regardless of the election’s results.

About Our Co-Chairs

Leadership

Pillars of the Community Co-Chairs Bob Bauer and Ben Ginsberg are nationally recognized experts on elections and election administration. They have been on opposite sides of many of the nation’s most contentious election disputes over the last four decades. Through those years of experience, Bauer and Ginsberg have built relationships with both Republican and Democratic election officials across the country and gained substantive expertise in election processes. They have seen firsthand what it takes to engender voters’ confidence and how important that is.

Together, they served as co-chairs of the Presidential Commission on Election Administration in 2013-2014, through which they were introduced to election officials and systems around the country. Pillars of the Community is an extension of that bipartisan work, and Bauer and Ginsberg continue to believe in the success of building trust, starting at the community level.

Ben Ginsberg, Co-Chair

Ben Ginsberg served as national counsel to the 2000 and 2004 Bush presidential campaigns, as well as the 2008 and 2012 Romney for President campaigns. He was a partner at Jones Day from 2014 to 2020 and, before that, at Patton Boggs for 23 years. He is the Volker Distinguished Visiting Fellow at Stanford’s Hoover Institution. In 2013, he served as co-chair of the bipartisan Presidential Commission on Election Administration.

Bob Bauer, Co-Chair

Bob Bauer served as White House Counsel to President Obama from 2009 to 2011 and was counsel to both Obama campaigns. Bauer is professor of practice and distinguished scholar in residence at the New York University School of Law and co-director of NYU Law’s Legislative and Regulatory Process Clinic. In 2013, the President named him to be co-chair of the Presidential Commission on Election Administration. In 2021, President Biden named him to be co-chair of the Presidential Commission on the Supreme Court of the United States.