Election offices are slowly adopting .gov domains, report finds

A growing number of election offices are adopting verified, top-level .gov domains to safeguard against impersonation, phishing attacks and the spread of misinformation, according to a report published Friday by the Washington think tank Bipartisan Policy Center.

The report includes analysis of a dataset maintained by the Center for Tech and Civic Life consisting of websites and contact information for all local election offices in the United States. The center found that since 2022, nearly a third of the nation’s 7,000-plus election office websites have adopted .gov domains.

William Adler, associate director of the center’s Elections Project and one of the report’s authors, said he’s encouraged by the trend, but that it’s still moving slowly.

“I think this is heartening progress, but I think there’s still a long ways to go,” Adler told StateScoop in an interview.

‘Not very many obstacles’

The Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency and the FBI recommend that all election offices adopt .gov domains to help the public identify official government websites and emails, and to help reduce phishing attacks, which rely on impersonation.

Many election websites still use .com, .org or .net domains, which anyone can purchase to disseminate false information about election results or polling locations, or to collect personal information.

Only verified government entities can purchase .gov domains, which CISA has made available for free since 2021.

“There are not very many obstacles in the way of a bad actor who wants to set up a fake election website, so that’s why moving to .gov is such an important thing to do,” Adler said. “Because if they don’t, we’re kind of leaving it up to Google to return the legitimate website when people search for information about elections for their jurisdiction.”

The report says that the availability of generative AI tools, like OpenAI’s ChatGPT, has made it easier for bad actors to mimic legitimate elections websites.

OpenAI published a report in May showing that it had terminated numerous accounts linked to foreign influence operations and claimed that those campaigns “did not seem to have much of an impact.”

Changes ‘worth avoiding’

The center’s report also found that election offices that haven’t yet transitioned to the .gov domain, especially smaller jurisdictions, may face IT challenges in implementation.

“For small jurisdictions, these are election offices that are staffed by very few people, and they often have no full time IT staff,” Adler said. “So even though moving to adopt a .gov domain is a relatively easy it task, you still need someone who is capable of managing that transition smoothly. And a lot of these offices just don’t have someone full time doing that.”

The time and cost of rebranding public-facing materials can also delay adoption, he said.

“In general, it’s worth avoiding changing election procedures in the weeks and months leading up to an election because you’re more likely to confuse voters and cause issues,” said Adler.

He advised against election offices adopting the .gov until after the November election, adding that providing consistency for voters should be the top priority.

“Once the results are certified, that would be a great time for all election officials to start looking at how to make the move,” he said.