PRESS RELEASE

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE  
April 16, 2025  

California Secretary of State’s Office Earns 2024 Clearinghouse Award from the US Elections Assistance Commission 

Sacramento, Calif. –  Today, the California Office of the Secretary of State (SOS) was recognized for excellence in election administration with a national 2024 Clearinghouse Award from the US Elections Assistance Commission (EAC) in the category of “Security: Innovation and New Tools in Election Security and Technology.” 

The EAC presents the awards annually to celebrate the hard work of elections offices across the country. This year’s awards honored programs that took place during the 2024 presidential election year. Submissions were evaluated on innovation, sustainability, outreach, cost-effectiveness, replicability, and the generation of positive results. 

The California SOS received an award for its innovative “De-escalation Training Program for Election Staff.”  The program focuses on enabling election workers to prevent and de-escalate sensitive situations such as altercations or instances of intimidation, whether in-person or over the phone. The program produced two training resources made available to all California county elections offices—a training video about the “dos and don’ts” of de-escalation and a scenario-based role play training for staff who answer hotline phone calls from the public.  

The video was written, produced, and filmed by SOS staff with location support from the El Dorado County Elections Office. SOS staff worked collaboratively with Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) Region 9 staff to develop the hotline operator training. These resources and trainings were offered to county elections offices by the Secretary of State and CISA Region 9 staff prior to the November 5, 2024, Presidential General Election. 

These trainings are innovative because they draw on scenario-based roleplay techniques used in other fields where intense personal interactions are expected, such as community organizing and hostage negotiation. The training scenarios were written by state elections officials with input from veteran Secretary of State hotline operators to incorporate realistic and believable scenarios.  

“Our office is proud to be recognized for our efforts. We know the importance of ensuring the integrity of elections in California and understand the need for election workers to have the tools to perform their important jobs confidently. Everyone should be able to cast their ballot without fear or intimidation,” said California Secretary of State Shirley Weber, Ph.D. “This program represents our ongoing dedication to customer service and election security. We hope that others are inspired by this video and find it useful in their own communities. And we would also like to recognize the awards given to the Los Angeles County Registrar-Recorder/County Clerk for its Multilingual Election Worker Recruitment Tool, the Monterey County Elections Department for its Books and Ballots Program, and Sutter County Elections for its Sutter Translate! Program.”

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