OLYMPIA — State and federal experts will address election integrity concerns at a panel discussion Friday hosted by the Office of the Secretary of State and the Thomas S. Foley Institute of Washington State University.
The event will take place at 11:30 a.m. in the ABC conference room on the first floor of the John A. Cherberg building on the Capitol Campus in Olympia. Speakers will focus on recent election challenges and necessary steps to reassure the public that elections are secure and fairly administered.
Secretary of State Steve Hobbs will be joined on the panel by Liz Howard, director of the Brennan Center’s Democracy Program, and John Keller, principal deputy chief of the public integrity section at the United States Department of Justice.
This capitol forum is a longstanding partnership of the Office of the Secretary of State and the Foley Institute, which have collaborated to host informative and educational discussions on politics and governance for the past three decades.
The Foley Institute is a non-partisan public policy institute focused on bringing world-class speakers to public events, supporting student internships in public service, and supporting scholarly research on public policy and political institutions.
Washington’s Office of the Secretary of State oversees areas within state government including managing state elections, registering corporations and charities, and governing the use of the state flag and state seal. The office also operates the State Archives and the State Library, documents extraordinary stories in Washington’s history through Legacy Washington, and administers the Combined Fund Drive for charitable giving by state employees and the Productivity Board state employee suggestion program to provide incentives for efficiency improvements. The Secretary of State also oversees the state’s Address Confidentiality Program to help protect survivors of crime.