Why so many election officials are leaving

Over half of county-level election officials in eight states have left office since 2020, a trend that could undermine this year’s balloting. But while that turnover may be troubling, some researchers suggest it presents an opportunity for those that remain.

Eighty-seven percent of Missouri’s 110 elected county clerks have left office in the last four years, according to a recent report from the Institute for Responsive Government and the Center for Tech and Civic Life. Meanwhile, 9 out of 15 county clerks left their jobs in Nevada, and 11 out of 15 counties in Arizona saw turnover in the county recorder position, which plays a similar role to the county clerk.

The increase in resignations and retirements come as elections officials face more scrutiny over how they administer elections, and as their job duties in general have expanded and become “more technical and complex,” according to the report.

Pam Anderson, a former clerk for Jefferson County, Colorado, and the Republican nominee for Colorado Secretary of State in 2022, said election workers have to “wear so many hats,” including managing IT, human resources, cybersecurity, technology and procurement, as well as communicating with elected officials and the public.

“The job certainly has changed a lot since it was primarily clerical: processing forms and filing,” said Anderson, who now serves on the Center for Tech and Civic Life’s board. “It has created a lot of opportunities as a professional, but a lot of challenges as well.”

Among those challenges is increased public scrutiny, which has led to a rise in threats of violence and sometimes even death threats against election officials. 

Sam Oliker-Friedland, the Institute for Responsive Government’s executive director, said the increase in threats and harassment is his “No. 1 guess” at what is driving the high rates of turnover. He said the 2020 election, which had to be administered amid the COVID-19 pandemic and brought many changes to how balloting is carried out, made things even harder.

State leaders said threats and harassment have continued to escalate. In written testimony before a Senate Committee on Rules and Administration hearing earlier this month, Michigan Secretary of State Jocelyn Benson said one local elections director received a voicemail threat that they would be “hanged for treason,” while another was approached in person and told she would “pay dearly” for how she administered the 2020 election.

The hostile environment faced by local election officials hasn’t gone unnoticed. In a February speech before the National Association of Counties, President Joe Biden said the threats, harassment and violence against election workers shows that “something’s wrong.”

Benson said Michigan passed a law to make it a crime in the state to threaten or intimidate an election official with the specific intent of interfering with their duties. She said it should be a federal crime, and that lawmakers should beef up protections against doxing, intimidation and harassment of elections officials.

“Ensuring our security is critical to ensuring election security,” Benson said.

Many of these issues are further compounded by a lack of funding for local elections offices. A study from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology found that election services ranks among the least funded sectors of government.

Biden looked to address that with his recent fiscal year 2025 budget proposal, which provided $1.6 billion in the first year and $375 million per year thereafter for grants administered through the Election Assistance Commission.

Tiana Epps-Johnson, executive director at the Center for Tech and Civic Life, put the lack of funds down to a “gap in understanding among policymakers” about what it takes financially to run elections.

Some offices have critical needs, too. Epps-Johnson said she has heard stories about facilities with leaky roofs and outdated equipment, as well as some that don’t have Wi-Fi and must go elsewhere to download instruction manuals from the state. “I think it's really underappreciated, just the texture of how bad it is,” she said.

It all adds up to what Anderson, the former Jefferson County clerk, described as the potential for “short shrifting democracy,” as elections are run locally and so are reliant on people stepping up to administer them, either in elected roles or as poll workers.

The report’s findings are not all doom and gloom, however. Several states, including Florida, Iowa and Louisiana have seen one-third or less of their county-level local election officials leave office since 2020. The report attributes some of that stability to the fact that many of the offices are constitutional roles that do not report to a board and are purely focused on election administration.

Researchers also see opportunity in the high turnover. New blood means there is a willingness to do things differently. Epps-Johnson cited the example of Maricopa County, Arizona, Recorder Stephen Richer, who embraces the role’s evolved communications aspect by using social media to directly engage with critics and their accusations of voting irregularities. Richer also has brought defamation lawsuits against those who have accused him of malfeasance. Those efforts, along with those of his peers, show a “real cultural shift” to a job that is now more “public facing,” Epps-Johnson said.

Election officials are also becoming more diverse, which can build trust with communities that were traditionally left behind. Artificial intelligence can further help in these communities by translating written materials into other languages.

“One of the things that I'm most excited about is seeing folks really jump in and figure out how to serve their voters,” Oliker-Friedland said. “[They’re] getting out into their communities, figuring out what their voters need and doing that outreach, making sure that the way that they administer elections in their particular city or county is tailored to that particular city or county's political culture, community, languages spoken.”