Elections are "the load-bearing beam of democracy and the civil rights issue of our time." Tiana Epps-Johnson, CEO of the Center for Tech and Civic Life, uses technology to prevent that beam from cracking under coordinated attacks targeting 8,000 election offices that represent the scaffolding holding our democracy together.
"Elections are the load-bearing beam of democracy," says Tiana. "And the civil rights issue of our time."
Tiana founded the Center for Tech and Civic Life in 2012 to solve a problem most of us never think about: the 8,000 election offices nationwide operate as an interconnected web, the scaffolding holding the mechanics of how we make decisions as a country. But this infrastructure runs on outdated technology, limited budgets, and officials increasingly under attack simply for doing their jobs.
The challenge Tiana tackles parallels what this podcast tries to do. She takes overwhelming election systems and helps people understand and engage with them. We try to do the same with activism and civic participation. Both require translation work: making the invisible visible, the complex actionable.
A historical lens reveals something crucial: chaos itself is the weapon. The goal isn't to win through better arguments but to overwhelm, confuse, and break trust in the systems that hold us together.
Her response? Build better systems and stronger networks. CTCL publishes civic information that's been accessed over 200 million times.
In 2022, Tiana launched the U.S. Alliance for Election Excellence, an $80 million, five-year program bringing together election officials, technologists, and designers across all 50 states. It's different from anything that's come before because it creates peer support and voluntary standards rather than top-down mandates. Officials from red counties and blue counties work together because they share something more fundamental than politics: commitment to protecting the infrastructure of democracy.
The personal cost of this work surfaces when we talk about 2020. CTCL distributed $350 million in donations to help local election offices run safe elections during COVID. The attacks that followed were unprecedented. Staying focused on mission when defending democracy makes you a target requires resilience most of us don't have.
One of the lighter moments: we both laughed about being talked out of becoming lawyers. For Tiana, she was interning at the Lawyers' Committee for Civil Rights when she got advice that redirected her path.
This Saturday, people will gather for NO KINGS protests across the country. They'll be standing up for democracy. Tiana and the thousands of election officials she supports are doing that work every single day, often without recognition, frequently under threat. Understanding what they're up against and how we can support them is urgent.
