About:

David Becker is the Executive Director and Founder of the Center for Election Innovation & Research, leading this cutting-edge non-profit’s work to improve election administration through research, data, and technology. David created CEIR to be the first effort of its kind, with a proven track record of working with election officials and experts from around the country and across the aisle. Through its efforts, CEIR seeks to reverse the historical decline in voter turnout, and give election officials the tools they need to ensure that all eligible voters can vote conveniently in a system with maximum integrity.

Prior to founding CEIR, David was Director of the elections program at The Pew Charitable Trusts, driving reforms in election administration, including using technology to provide voters with information they need to cast a ballot; assessing election performance through better data; and upgrading voter registration systems. As the lead for Pew’s analysis and advocacy on elections issues, David spearheaded development of the innovative Electronic Registration Information Center, or ERIC, which to date has helped a bipartisan group of nearly two dozen states correct almost 4 million out-of-date voter records, and led to these states registering almost a million new eligible voters. David led campaigns in dozens of states, red and blue and everything in between, and directed Pew’s partnerships with state government agencies, and with private sector partners like Google, IBM, Facebook, and others.

Before joining Pew, David served for seven years as a senior trial attorney in the Voting Section of the Department of Justice’s Civil Rights Division, where he led numerous investigations into violations of federal voting laws regarding redistricting, minority voting rights, voter intimidation, and vote dilution. During his time at the Justice Department, David worked in dozens of states enforcing federal election laws and observing elections in thousands of precincts, and served as lead trial counsel in many cases, including Georgia v. Ashcroft.

David’s appearances in the media include The New York Times, The Washington Post, MSNBC, and NPR, and he has been published several times, including by the Stanford Social Innovation Review, the University of California, Berkeley, and The Hill.

David received both his undergraduate and law degrees from the University of California, Berkeley.

Relevant Media

• “Why US ballot count live streams became misinformation magnets” in The Guardian
• “Trump’s cascade of falsehoods about voting by mail” on PolitiFact
• “When Will We Know the 2020 Presidential Election Results? A Guide to Possible Delays” in the Wall Street Journal
• “Networks line up election law experts for vote coverage” in the Associated Press
• “What you need to know about misinformation on Election Day” on PolitiFact
• “Trump can declare whatever he wants, but it doesn’t make it so” in the Washington Post
• “Are New York’s elections safe from cyberattack?” in City & State New York
• “How Could Voting by Mail Affect the Election? Look at Michigan” in The New York Times
• “Lines, lawsuits and Covid: 5 big questions confront election officials before voting ends” in Politico
• “Alarm grows over Trump team’s efforts to monitor polls” in The Hill
• “The key word for an election night like no other? Patience” in the Buffalo News

Email Me