“They’re exhausted,” Tammy Patrick, CEO of the National Association of Election Officials, which has 1,800 official members across the United States, told Wired. “People are tired, we haven’t even started an election cycle this year. They’re still being attacked, they’re still getting death threats from 2020.”
They also try to do their jobs to ensure that eligible voters can cast their ballots and that the politicians who do vote accept the results regardless. “As a country, we’re holding our breath to see if this happens,” Patrick said.
Turnover among election workers has increased dramatically since 2020, with researchers observing a nearly 40% jump in resignations between 2004 and 2022, according to a new report released this week by the Bipartisan Policy Center.
“It’s very difficult to recruit people who can withstand the intense pressure inherent in election administration,” Washington State Elections Director Stuart Holmes told Wired. “We often find that people either love election administration and serve for life. , or leave within six months.”
In some cases, such as in Buckingham County, Virginia, entire election offices were closed due to threats.
“We do have examples across the country of entire offices of people quitting their jobs because they were mentally unable to come to work every day and being inundated with death threats,” Patrick said. “For the United States of America, this is not something that people are going to do That’s the kind of situation that comes to mind. It’s something we think about in struggling new democracies that don’t have the traditions that many of us now realize we took for granted, like concessions in the event of defeat.”
Leslie Hoffman is the director of the elections office in Yavapai County, Arizona, where vigilantes monitor drop boxes. She resigned in 2022. At the time, she said the threats she received were “egregious”. She later told Wired that she actually resigned because her dog was poisoned before she left the job. No one has been arrested or charged, but she believes it is related to her election work.
For those election officials and staff who remain on the job, they now face 2024 already having to replace colleagues who have left and whose positions remain vacant – including at least one election director’s position.
According to a Brennan Center survey, one in five officials working on the 2024 ballot is doing so for the first time.
“Institutional knowledge is very important. Staff turnover in election management agencies can look like not knowing how to set it up, or delays in opening polling sites, or directing people to the wrong places,” said Christina, executive director of the voting rights group Public Wise. Christina Baal-Owens told Wired. “There’s also the cost of training and recruiting. It costs money to recruit, and it costs money to recruit. It consumes resources.”
Barr-Owens also noted that the loss of experienced staff could have a less tangible impact: “Voting is very localized and in many communities the people voting are older people who have relationships with the people who are running their elections.” So the loss of those relationships is also very important. Loss of institutional knowledge is a problem. “