About Us
Mission
National Vote at Home Institute (NVAHI) aims to increase voters’ access to, use of, and confidence in voting at home through:
- Growing and improving vote-at-home options at the state and local levels;
- Partnering with and supporting election officials in effective design and implementation of vote-at-home systems;
- Expanding the use of and trust in vote-at-home solutions through strategic communications.
Under these voter-centric, secure systems, voters: receive a ballot by mail, return that ballot using one of several convenient return options, and have confidence that it is received and counted. All of this is possible through adoption and smart implementation of policies, including:
- Single sign-up options so voters can automatically receive their ballots by mail without needing to reapply;
- A wide range of accessible, convenient, and secure ballot return options;
- Online, real-time, end-to-end ballot tracking;
- Pre-processing of ballots before election night;
- Election Day mail-ballot postmark acceptance;
- A signature verification program with a robust, easy-to-use ballot cure process.
Our Impact
Mail ballot access is an important way to make voting fair and equitable for all Americans. Robust mail ballot systems increase turnout across demographics — regardless of party affiliation — while maintaining security and instilling confidence in the results.
Many voters prior to 2020 relied on voting systems that made it difficult to vote anywhere other than on election day, in person, and at a single government-specified polling location.
Vote-at-home (VAH) systems, on the other hand, deliver democracy straight to a voter’s doorstep. By automatically mailing a ballot to every registered voter, they can:
- Spend more time studying the candidates and measures on their ballot when it is automatically mailed to them three weeks before election day.
- Return their ballot to a secure ballot drop box or voting center conveniently located, or by mail, postage-free, and postmarked by election day to ensure their vote is counted.
- Track their ballots and receive notification from election officials when their ballot is counted.
Since 2018, states across the country have dramatically increased voters’ access to mailed-out ballots. Today, nearly one-third of U.S. voters can have a ballot mailed to them automatically for every election.
National Vote at Home Institute (NVAHI) has helped facilitate innovation of vote-at-home systems by offering policy and implementation recommendations, research, and communications support to states across the country. In 2020, the organization:
- Improved election operations in 2020 by providing assistance to numerous state and local election offices in 37 states, with a concentration in the key battleground states of Georgia, Michigan, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin.
- Improved ballot access for 69 million Americans through policy changes and implementation advice going back to NVAHI’s founding in 2018.
- In partnership with election officials and organizations across the country, NVAHI helped deliver the most secure election in U.S. history resulting in record-breaking turnout of nearly two-thirds of eligible voters.
Board of Directors
Phil Keisling
Board Chair
Phil Keisling has had a long career of public service. He oversaw Oregon’s first-in-the-nation move to full vote at home ballot delivery. Phil founded the National Vote at Home organization in 2017.
Phil Keisling has had a long career of public service, including serving as Oregon’s secretary of state from 1991-99 and in the Oregon House of Representatives from 1989-91. Phil oversaw Oregon’s first-in-the-nation move to full vote at home ballot delivery. He founded the National Vote at Home organization in 2017. Phil recently retired from his position as the director of the Center for Public Service at the Hatfield School of Government at Portland State University.
Steve Silberstein
Board Member
Stephen M. Silberstein founded (in 1978), and served as the first President of Innovative Interfaces Inc., one of the world’s leading suppliers of computer software for the automation of college and city libraries.
Stephen M. Silberstein founded (in 1978), and served as the first President of, Innovative Interfaces Inc., one of the world’s leading suppliers of computer software for the automation of college and city libraries.
Steve now devotes his time to philanthropic and civic matters. He serves on the board of the Marin County Employees’ Retirement Association and National Popular Vote. Steve is a graduate of the University of California Berkeley with a B.A. in economics and a Master’s degree in library science. He has also earned a Master’s degree in econometrics from the University of Stockholm in Sweden.
Ben Jealous
Board Member
Ben Jealous serves as president of People For the American Way. He has decades of experience as a leader, coalition builder, campaigner for social justice, and is a seasoned nonprofit executive.
Ben Jealous serves as president of People For the American Way.
Jealous has decades of experience as a leader, coalition builder, campaigner for social justice and seasoned nonprofit executive. In 2008, he was chosen as the youngest-ever president and CEO of the NAACP. During his tenure, he doubled the organization’s budget, grew its online activist base by hundreds of thousands and increased its number of donors eightfold, from 16,000 to 132,000. He also positioned the organization at the forefront of critical social justice issues such as the Trayvon Martin case, the fight against voter ID laws and major protests over the New York Police Department’s stop-and-frisk policies. He pushed for the organization to fight more aggressively for marriage equality, led efforts to register 374, 000 voters and mobilize 1.2 million new voters to the polls, and worked to pass key legislative accomplishments during President Obama’s first term, most notably the Affordable Care Act.
In 2013, the Baltimore Sun named Jealous Marylander of the Year for his work on marriage equality, abolishing the death penalty and passing the DREAM Act. Jealous was the 2018 Democratic nominee for governor of Maryland, and most recently served as a partner at Kapor Capital. He is a graduate of Columbia University and Oxford, where he was a Rhodes Scholar, and he has taught at Princeton and the University of Pennsylvania.
Emily Persaud-Zamora
Board Member
Emily Persaud-Zamora is the Executive Director of Silver States Voices, a civic engagement table dedicated to building the political power of historically underrepresented and marginalized communities in the state of Nevada.
Emily Persaud-Zamora is the Executive Director of Silver States Voices, a civic engagement table dedicated to building the political power of historically underrepresented and marginalized communities in the state of Nevada. Previously, she has served as the Nevada State Coordinator for SEIU’s immigration campaign, iAmerica, and as the Nevada c4 Director for Mi Familia Vota. Emily is the daughter of Brazilian and Guyanese immigrants. She is the proud mother of her 7-year-old son William Alexander. In her free time, she is planning her next travel adventure.
Jim Sauber
Board Member
Jim Sauber is the Chief of Staff at the National Association of Letter Carriers (NALC), a position he has held since 2006. He is responsible for coordinating the research, collective bargaining, public policy and legislative activities of the union on behalf of the union’s 290,000 members.
Jim Sauber is the Chief of Staff at the National Association of Letter Carriers (NALC), a position he has held since 2006. He is responsible for coordinating the research, collective bargaining, public policy and legislative activities of the union at the direction of NALC President Fred Rolando and on behalf of the union’s 290,000 members. He joined the staff of the NALC as an economist in 1985 and served as the union’s research director from 1990 to 2006.
He has participated in nine rounds of collective bargaining with the United States Postal Service. He currently serves as the Vice Chairman of the Employee Thrift Advisory Council and represents the NALC as an executive committee member of UNI Global Union (UNI), a Swiss-based global trade union federation comprised of hundreds of affiliated postal unions around the world. He is founding activist in the National Vote at Home Institute and serves as liaison for his union with the AFL-CIO.
Sauber earned a bachelor’s degree in economics from the University of Michigan (1982) and a master’s degree in public policy from Johns Hopkins University (1992).
Circle of Advisors
Joceyln Benson
Michigan Secretary of State
Paul Gronke
Professor of Political Science, Reed College
Michelle Bishop
Voting Rights Specialist, National Disability Rights Network
Dana Chisnell
Co-Executive Director, Center for Civic Design
Neal Kelley
Registrar of Voters, Orange County, CA
Brad Moorhouse
Operations Manager, K&H Printing
Brian Corley
Supervisor of Elections, Pasco County, FL
Jennifer Morrell
Consultant, Democracy Fund
Carolyn DeWitt
President & Executive Director, Rock the Vote
Charles Stewart III
Professor of Political Science, MIT
Josh Douglas,
Professor, University of Kentucky College of Law
Manny Rouvelas
Partner, K&L Gates
Tammy Patrick
Senior Advisor, Democracy Fund
Tiana Epps-Johnson
Founder & Executive Director, Center for Technology and Civic Life
Dan Pabon
Vice President, Sewald Hanfling Public Affairs
Eric Fey
Director of Elections, St. Louis County, MO
Spencer Overton
President, Joint Center for Political & Economic Studies
Bob Giles
Director, New Jersey Division of Elections
Elena Nuñez
Director of State Operations, Common Cause
Leslie Hoffman
County Recorder, Yavapai County, AZ
Josh Silver
Founder & Director, Represent Us
NVAHI Leadership
Lori Augino
Lori serves as the Executive Director for the National Vote at Home Institute (NVAHI). Founded in 2018, NVAHI is a nonpartisan nonprofit organization dedicated to expanding the use of mailed-out ballots in local, state, and federal elections.
Kylee Zabel
Kylee joined National Vote at Home Institute in January 2022. From 2019 to 2021, she served as the communications director for the Washington Office of the Secretary of State, overseeing public affairs and media relations.
Scott Drexel
Over a 15-year career in politics and government affairs, Scott has crisscrossed the country advocating on a range of issues, with a particular emphasis on democracy reform and on behalf of clients at the federal level and in more than 35 states.
Tyra Wilkes
Tyra is a Washington, D.C. based writer and communications strategist who has spent her career partnering with businesses, grassroots organizations, and initiatives geared towards the advancement of women and marginalized peoples.
Shannon Cortez
Shannon Cortez was formerly the Deputy Director of Washington State Elections and brings over 21 years of relevant state and local elections administration experience. She's conducted more than 125 elections and five presidential elections.