Our Team

The Election Technology Initiative team brings expertise in state government and elections policy, technology and processes. The convening power of The Council of State Governments and The Turnout’s expertise uniquely position our team to support the implementation of ElectionGuard in the states.

Casandra Hockenberry

Project Manager, The Council of State Governments

Casandra Hockenberry is a program manager at The Council of State Governments where she works at the intersection of elections, technology and administrative data. As a part of this work, she leads the Election Technology Initiative and the Overseas Voting Initiative which is dedicated to improving voting outcomes among military and overseas citizen voters. Prior to joining The Council of State Governments, she worked for the Kentucky Department of Public Advocacy as a public defender. Casandra earned her degree in Political Science from Clarion University and her Juris Doctor from Case Western University.

Rachel Wright

Policy Analyst, The Council of State Governments

Rachel Wright is a policy analyst at The Council of State Governments where she conducts and overseas research on state and local election policies. Rachel analyzes trends in state UOCAVA voting policies and administrative election data to inform the development of state policies and procedures that improve voting outcomes among military and overseas citizen voters. She has demonstrated experience across a variety of policy areas providing technical assistance to states, facilitating interstate collaboration, convening state government officials and conducting legislative research. Rachel graduated from the University of Kentucky with a B.A. in Political Science and a B.A. in International Studies.

Morgan Thomas

Policy Analyst, The Council of State Governments

Morgan Thomas is a Policy Analyst for The Council of State Governments Overseas Voting Initiative. Morgan began his career with The Council of State Governments as a Roosevelt Fellow for the Overseas Voting Initiative. Morgan has also worked on the Commission on Military and Veteran’s Affairs, which brings together state leaders from all three branches of government to collaborate, share best practices, and exchange insights on issues impacting veterans and military families. Morgan is a proud member of the armed forces, serving as a non-commissioned officer in the Kentucky Air National Guard since 2015. He also serves as a Material Handler providing warehouse support for the 123rd Airlift Wing Logistics Readiness Squadron. Before that, Morgan served as a Personnelist for the 123rd Maintenance Group, providing administrative support for the Maintenance Operations Center. Morgan earned his Bachelor of Arts in Political Science from the University of Kentucky and his Master of Arts in Diplomacy and International Commerce from the Patterson School of Diplomacy.

Jared Marcotte

President, The Turnout

Jared brings over a decade of experience and expertise working at the intersection of elections, software, and design.

Prior to founding The Turnout in October 2015, Jared served as Officer of Elections Technology at The Pew Charitable Trusts, where he worked across all projects in the elections initiatives portfolio, developing and negotiating proposals to direct teams and projects, planned and facilitated conferences, and oversaw the development of data standards. He oversaw the technical work on the Voting Information Project, a collaboration with state and local officials, Google, and Pew to create an open, standardized repository of election-related information for all 50 states and DC.

Jared is also an avid programmer, with fluency in multiple languages, and an accomplished UI and UX designer, committed to the principles of open data, government transparency, and accessible design. His extensive experience in this space includes launching and managing everything from e-commerce and data analysis sites to a tongue-in-cheek polling place lookup tool. Jared’s resume also includes senior software engineering for the Voting Information Project, Six Apart, and IBM. He has a Computer Science degree from the University of Vermont.

Grace Gordon

Research Lead and Project Manager, The Turnout

Grace Gordon is Research Lead and Project Manager with The Turnout where she focuses on the intersection of election policy and technology. Previously, she served as the Senior Policy Analyst at the Bipartisan Policy Center’s (BPC) Elections Project in Washington, D.C where she published several reports including “The Federal Role in U.S. Elections Visualized” and “Ballot Pre-Processing Policies Explained.” Prior to her time at BPC, Gordon served as Project Management Consultant at the Elections & Voting Information Center at Reed College and Program Management Consultant at the California Voter Foundation. Gordon earned her Master of Development Practice from the University of California, Berkeley. She wrote her capstone thesis, “Documenting and Addressing Harassment of Election Officials,” on the threats and harassment experienced by state and local election officials resulting from the 2020 election. Prior to graduate school, Gordon worked in education and career development. She received her B.A. in English and B.A. in Mathematics from the University of California, Davis.

John Dziurłaj

Senior Solutions Architect, The Turnout

John’s award-winning involvement in the elections space spans over a decade, covering both data-driven strategic development and on-the-ground execution.

During his five years at the Ohio Secretary of State’s office, John led maintenance of the statewide voter registration database and served as lead developer for new and legacy mission-critical elections applications. His work at the Summit County Board of Elections earned him the Ohio Secretary of State’s “Voter Services Award” for work in voter registration automation.

His experience working on data-driven projects large and small includes database design, development, and migration, as well as broad experience in data architecture through designing ETL processes, building data structures, and semantic modeling.

John is also a committed, longtime champion for open data standards through both his own work as well as his advocacy through elections committees and organizations. Since 2017, he’s chaired the NIST-EAC Working Group on Election Modeling, leading their work to build a common understanding of elections across the country.