[A report focused on 11 western states and found that the problem
of voting official turnover is particularly acute in the regions swing
states, where conspiracies have flourished. ]
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IN SOME STATES, MORE THAN HALF OF THE LOCAL ELECTION OFFICIALS HAVE
LEFT SINCE 2020  
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Miles Parks
September 26, 2023
NPR
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_ A report focused on 11 western states and found that the problem of
voting official turnover is particularly acute in the region's swing
states, where conspiracies have flourished. _

A poll worker prepares "I voted" stickers for voters at the City
Clerk's Office ahead of the midterm election in Lansing, Michigan.,
Photo by Evelyn Hockstein/REUTERS

 

Josh Daniels got into running elections by accident.

A Marine veteran and registered Republican, Daniels was recruited in
2019 by a friend who'd been elected clerk in Utah County, Utah, to be
her deputy.

Eventually Daniels became clerk himself and grew to love the complex
minutiae that went into running an election, and finding creative
ways
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help vulnerable populations access the ballot.

"It was really rewarding to help improve some really important
functions in local government," Daniels said.

But when the time came to decide whether to run for reelection in
2022, Daniels decided against it. Voting conspiracies had become too
much to take.

He estimated that he spent hundreds of hours over two years tracking
down election concerns that voters got online and brought to his
office.

"It was just exhausting," Daniels said. "It really was like _The
Twilight Zone_ of government service. _Groundhog Day _... every day
you wake up and it's the same thing over and over again. It doesn't
matter how much information and data you share, it doesn't matter how
many concerns you answer. There will just be a new group of critics to
again dish out the new conspiracy of the day."

Daniels is part of a large group of voting officials who have decided
to leave the profession since 2020 and the tension and pressure that
followed Donald Trump's loss in that election.

In some battleground states, more than half of the local election
administrators will be new since the last presidential race, according
to a new report
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the democracy-focused advocacy group Issue One shared exclusively with
NPR before its release.

"Local county clerk is not a glamorous job," Daniels said. "We're not
paying people in local election administrative jobs enough to be the
subject of public scrutiny, particularly when that public scrutiny is
often misguided and misinformed."

The Issue One report focused on 11 western states and found that the
problem of voting official turnover is particularly acute in the
region's swing states, where conspiracies have flourished.

In Nevada, 59% of the state's county voting officials are new since
2020. In Arizona, 55%.

It's not clear how these numbers compare to previous cycles — data
on trends in election administration is notoriously hard to come by
— but experts have been saying for years that they worried about a
mass exodus driven by the polarized environment.

In total, more than 160 chief local election officials — nearly
40% of the region's officials — have left their positions in the
11 states that Issue One tracked. Experts say they expect to see a
similar trend in other states as well, as recent polling
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own reporting
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indicated many people in these roles fear for their or their
colleagues' safety.

Arizona Secretary of State Adrian Fontes, a Democrat, told NPR that he
was considering issuing a "declaration of election administration
emergency" to shed light on the issue, and on underfunded elections
departments.

He added that threats affect Republican and Democratic jurisdictions
alike.

"Many of the folks who have been harassed and threatened are
Republicans. One former Republican recorder, county recorder here in
Arizona, had her dog poisoned," Fontes said. "This is not a partisan
issue. This is a question of the survival of our constitutional
order."

Since 2020, some states
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addressing threats to election officials, and the Department of
Justice has set up a specific Election Threats Task Force
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but intimidating and threatening language from voters often doesn't
rise to the level of criminal offense, so election officials note that
law enforcement can't solve the issue on its own.

Election brain drain

Practically speaking, the turnover presents a troubling brain drain.

Experts say the job of an election official has grown in complexity in
recent years, with county clerks now needing to be well-versed in
cybersecurity, the foreign adversary threat landscape and
communications, in addition to the normal tasks that go into putting
on an election. And in many counties, especially smaller ones, running
elections is only part of their job as well.

Kim Wyman, a former local election official and Republican secretary
of state of Washington, said the easiest way to learn the job is to do
it for a few cycles.

"The biggest challenge right now facing new election officials is just
not having that experience of having run a presidential election,"
said Wyman, now a senior fellow at the Bipartisan Policy Center. "It
sounds really simple, but it takes months of planning to get there.
And without that experience of knowing what to expect and really what
to be looking for puts them a little bit at a disadvantage."

Issue One found that the officials who left took with them more than
1,800 years of experience.

Which experts say presents a conundrum: New voting officials make more
mistakes than seasoned ones. So the exodus brought on by election
conspiracies may beget more conspiracies, as first-time honest
mistakes are treated like evidence of malfeasance.

In 2022, a printer issue at some voting centers in Maricopa County,
Ariz., became the center of false narratives
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In 2020, it was user error by a clerk
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Antrim County, Mich. (which was quickly corrected).

"The 2024 election will be even more scrutinized, which means that
these government election officials have to be on their game at every
turn and with every detail, and there is no room for error," former
Utah clerk Daniels said. "And there will be balls that are going to be
dropped in the 2024 election because of this lack of expertise."

Not just election officials

An increase in threats against election administrators and turnover
comes against a backdrop of elevated hostility against public
officials at every level.

New data show that members of city councils, county governing boards
and mayors are now experiencing insults, intimidation, harassment and
even attacks with some regularity.

The data, collected by the nonpartisan Bridging Divides Initiative at
Princeton University and the nonprofit survey group CivicPulse, build
on three similar surveys conducted over the last year. The latest
round, which included more than 1,300 respondents across the country,
shows that within the last three months, nearly half had reported
being insulted, one-third reported being harassed, and nearly one in
five reported being threatened.

"What we felt like we confirmed from this survey was some real numbers
behind that sense of pervasiveness that we were hearing from officials
over and over," said Shannon Hiller, executive director of the
Princeton initiative.

Many reported that they were concerned that the severity and frequency
of these hostile events will only increase as the 2024 election nears.

"If we see ... officials not willing to serve, [if] we see people not
wanting to speak up and participate at that level, I think it's really
concerning for the broader democracy as a whole," Hiller said.

_Miles Parks is a correspondent on NPR's Washington Desk, where he
covers voting and election security._

_NPR's Odette Yousef contributed reporting._

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* voting
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* Election workers
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* intimidation
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* Resignation
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