Secure Elections Project

The Secure Elections Project received substantial support from Arabella Advisors-managed funds; Arabella Advisors (now Sunflower Services) is a noted left-of-center facilitator of so-called “dark-money” funding. From 2022 to 2024, the Secure Elections Project received a total of $2,205,000 from the Sixteen Thirty Fund. ⁴ In 2023, the Secure Elections Project received $2,775,000 from the New Venture Fund. ⁵

History and Leadership

The Secure Elections Project was founded in 2019 to protect elections by promoting what it calls “commonsense and nonpartisan election security reforms.” These include automatic and online voter registration, the elimination of paper-based voter registration, ³ preventing hacking and fraud, and expanding access to the polls. ^{6 7}

As of May 2026, former Kentucky Secretary of State and chair of the Republican Association of Secretaries of State Trey Grayson (R) was a co-chair of the advisory board of the Secure Elections Project. ^{8 9 10}

As of May 2026, Grayson was a partner at FBT Gibbons and had been a director of the Institute of Politics at Harvard University and the president and CEO of the Northern Kentucky Chamber of Commerce. Grayson has also been a board member of the left-of-center Center for Election Innovation and Research, a member of the board of advisors at Issue One and the States United Democracy Center, and a volunteer for Democracy Works. As of January 2026, he was also on the board of directors of the National Conference on Citizenship. ^{11 12}

In 2025, Grayson co-authored an opinion piece with John Merrill, a Republican who served as Alabama Secretary of State from 2015 to 2023. The piece stated that the authors were co-chairs of the Secure Elections Project. As of May 2026, while Grayson was mentioned as a co-chair of the project’s advisory board, neither Merrill nor any other individual is listed as another co-chair.  ¹³

As of 2024, Kayje Booker was the president of the Secure Elections Project and the deputy director for Wild Montana.  ¹⁴ Previously, she was the CEO and program manager of the left-of-center Forward Montana and a voter registration coordinator of the Forward Montana Foundation. ¹⁵

As of 2024, the Secure Elections Project reported having a total of four employees and $2,902,837 in total revenue. Chris Cavazos, the executive director of the group, reported $205,621 in total compensation that same year, and Orlando Gary Jones Jr., the chief of staff, reported $178,125. Cavazos was formerly a staffer for the Montana AFL-CIO, a left-of-center labor union federation.  ^{16  14}

2024 was the first year the organization reported having any employees; from 2019 to 2023 the group reported zero employees, three volunteers, and three members of the board. 2024 was also the first year Cavazos was not listed as a member of the board, but as an employee.  ¹⁷

Activities and Funding

The Secure Elections Project is a left-of-center election administration group that supports what it calls “commonsense and nonpartisan election security reforms” to restore confidence in the vote and expand access to the polls. ¹

The project supports automated voter registration and online voter registration ² and challenges what it calls “fake or fraudulent security ideas being passed off by politicians who are trying to manipulate our elections.” ¹

The Secure Elections Project has advocated for various states, including Iowa, Oklahoma, Montana, Kansas, Missouri, Nevada, and Ohio, to automate or refine some aspects of its voter registration process, typically from the angle of cost effectiveness.  ¹⁸

In March 2021, the group published several policy proposals to “restore faith and trust in the U.S. election system.” ¹⁹ The group’s recommendations included citizenship audits, additional sources for death notices and change-of-address data to update voter rolls, watermarked ballots to prevent reproduction of mail ballots, elimination of unofficial ballot drop boxes, replacement of signature verification with verification based on other items such as driver’s license number and Social Security number, enhanced ballot chain of custody, and others. ¹⁹

Lobbying

The Secure Elections Project’s legislative and policy team includes representatives from West Virginia, Iowa, Ohio, Oklahoma, Missouri, Arizona, Idaho, Texas, Utah, Arizona, and Michigan. ⁸ Secure Elections Project lobbies at the federal and state level. ²⁰ In 2021, Secure Elections Project spent $42,000 on lobbying in Wisconsin. ^{21 22}

Bill McCoshen, a lobbyist and former aide to Wisconsin Governor Tommy Thompson (R) reportedly lobbied on behalf of the Secure Elections Project at this time in Wisconsin, while the group was promoting a policy for automatic voter registration, according to the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel.  ¹⁶

In 2019, the project paid Arizona-based Triadvocates $120,000 for lobbying services. ¹

In 2024, the Secure Elections Project reported paying $110,000 to Catalyst for lobbying services.  ¹⁴

As of May 2026, Greg Porter was listed as part of the Secure Elections Project’s 15-person Legislative and Policy Team. It is unclear what level of affiliation these team members have with the group, or whether they contribute through volunteer or freelance work. Porter is a partner at Catalyst, a lobbying firm. As of 2026, Alex Eaton, another member of team, was part of government affairs department at Catalyst.  ²³

Funding

Between 2022 to 2024, the Secure Elections Project received a total of $2,205,000 from the Sixteen Thirty Fund. ⁴ In 2023, the Secure Elections Project received $2,775,000 from the New Venture Fund. ⁵ At the time, both of these funds were managed by Arabella Advisors (now Sunflower Services), a noted left-of-center facilitator of so-called “dark-money” funding.  ¹⁶

In 2023, the Secure Elections Project reported receiving zero contributions or grants; this is surprising because the New Venture Fund and Sixteen Thirty Fund, ^{5   24} which, like the Secure Elections Project, uses the calendar year as its tax year for its tax return, reported nearly $3 million in contributions to the project. Likely, given that the Secure Elections Project reported using cash basis accounting, these grants were awarded by the Arabella-managed funds at the end of the year and received in the beginning of the new fiscal year, thus making their way onto the organization’s 2024 return.  ²⁵

In 2020, the Secure Elections Project received a $2,058,000 grant from the left-of-center New Venture Fund (NVF) ²⁶ and a  $1,040,000 grant from the left-of-center Sixteen Thirty Fund, both of which are administered by Arabella Advisors, a philanthropy consulting firm for left-leaning clients. ²⁷ In 2019, Secure Elections Project received $750,000 of contributions and grants and reported expenses of $584,695, of which the group spent $493,687 on its program services. ^{1 1} That year’s grants received matched a $750,000 grant the project received from the left-of-center Sixteen Thirty Fund. ²⁸