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Election reporting gets complicated fast. A breaking story can suddenly require a working knowledge of an obscure state law, a county’s ballot-handling procedures or a voting system you’ve never encountered before — and the person who knows the answer may not be someone you already know how to reach.
That’s why Votebeat is bringing back the Expert Desk for the 2026 midterms.
The Expert Desk is completely free and entirely on the record. It gives journalists covering elections direct access to roughly 100 vetted experts in election administration, election law, voting technology, misinformation, and related fields. Reporters can ask questions in Slack, get help finding the right source, check their understanding of unfamiliar processes, and pressure-test reporting before publication.
Sign up here to participate in the 2026 Expert Desk.
We first tried this in 2024. The Desk ultimately brought together 471 journalists from 56 newsrooms and 93 experts. Reporters asked everything from urgent questions about voting-machine problems to highly specific questions about polling-place rules, mail ballots, and state election procedures. Experts could answer directly, point reporters toward someone better suited to help, or build on one another’s responses.
The return of the Desk comes as a relief for Tory Wegerski, an investigative producer for KDKA-TV in Pittsburgh. She said the venture was crucial to her election coverage in 2024.
“The Expert Desk kept me from losing my mind and I am deeply glad they’re back,” Wegerski wrote in a text message.
She wrote the Expert Desk was “indispensable” because the 2024 election in Pennsylvania was hectic and constantly changing. The Expert Desk provided access to people who could help her coverage.
“From the former Secretary of State who could answer my questions about the mail-in ballot law because she’d helped write it, to other journalists from Pennsylvania and beyond who provided sanity checks, the Expert Desk connected me with incredible resources for my reporting and I was able to keep my viewers up to date and informed thanks to them,” Wegerski wrote.
Aidan Hughes, a data journalist and faculty member at the Howard Center for Investigative Journalism within the University of Maryland, also joined the effort in 2024. He wrote in an email that the Expert Desk was a valuable resource when he covered Maryland’s congressional races for the first time.
“It was a relief to know that if a niche question came up during my reporting that was important to get just right, there was a supportive community of experts and other journalists eager to point me in the right direction,” Hughes wrote.
Hughes wrote that he’ll be turning to the Expert Desk again alongside his students as he teaches a journalism course in the fall that focuses on election data.
A University of Washington study of the 2024 Desk found that participating journalists valued the speed of responses to their questions, access to hard-to-find local and specialized expertise, and the ability to gut-check their reporting.
The researchers found that the Desk increased the “speed and credibility” of journalists during important moments.
“In journalism, particularly in public-interest and misinformation contexts, these findings suggest a promising path toward strengthening the infrastructures that help support a more informed public,” they wrote.
Reporters also learned by watching other journalists ask questions and reading the answers they received. Participants gave the Desk an average recommendation score of 8.8 out of 10. The study has been accepted for publication in “Proceedings of the ACM on Human-Computer Interaction.”
How to use the Desk
Using the Desk is simple: Journalists post questions in Slack, where Votebeat community editor Zack Newman will help route them to the experts best positioned to answer. Responses in the Desk are on the record and visible to all participating journalists, so reporters can benefit not only from their own questions but from conversations happening across the network.
This year, the Desk will also include a separate AI-powered research tool designed to help reporters search election codes and related source material. It will answer questions using a curated library of documents and provide citations so reporters can check the underlying material themselves. The AI tool will remain clearly separate from the human Expert Desk: Its responses are a research aid, not a quotable source, while experts will remain available to interpret the material, answer follow-up questions and provide on-the-record guidance.
We’re also investing more in the human side of the Desk this year. Zack will monitor questions, connect reporters with the right experts, and help keep conversations moving as election coverage intensifies.
You don’t need to be an election specialist to join. You don’t need to know much of anything: In fact, the Desk may be most useful when you suddenly find yourself covering an election question you’ve never encountered before.
If you’re a journalist covering the 2026 elections, sign up for the Expert Desk here. We’d be honored to help make this hectic season a little bit easier.
Jessica Huseman is Votebeat’s editorial director and is based in Dallas. Contact Jessica at jhuseman@votebeat.org.
Zack Newman is the Expert Desk’s community editor and is based in Denver. Contact Zack at znewman@votebeat.org.
