New report reveals high turnover within local election offices

William Brangham:

A new report reveals a historic amount of turnover within local elections offices, but also the resiliency of that work force.

Stephanie Sy takes a closer look.

Stephanie Sy:

The new report from the Bipartisan Policy Center, in collaboration with researchers at UCLA, acknowledges what we have been hearing from election workers since 2020, when Trump supporters were accused of intimidating and threatening these civil servants.

But while many election workers have left the field, the report finds that there are glimmers of hope.

Miles Parks covers voting and election security for NPR and joins us now to help us unpack what this new data may teach us about what's to come in this election year.

So Miles Parks, the report states that turnover is not new and that, for decades, local election offices have dealt with this. Why is that context so important?

Miles Parks, NPR:

Well, it kind of gives a good news and a bad news, I feel like, Stephanie.

I feel like, on the good news, it — there's been all of this hyperbole over the last couple of years as this started to come out that election officials were leaving their job, kind of people freaking out about the state of the 2024 election. The fact that this isn't as new indicates to some experts that maybe the election administration profession is a little bit more prepared than — for 2024 than maybe previously thought.

The bad news is that the fact that turnover has been ticking up over the last 20 years indicates that there are some chronic issues with the profession outside of the threats and harassment we have heard so much about, things like election officials saying that they are not getting enough resources.

And the other thing I hear a lot from election officials is that their jobs have just gotten a lot harder over the last decade. We know that laws are changing rapidly. That can have an impact on how hard an election official's job is. And then election officials have to do things like become cybersecurity experts, become physical security experts now, in addition to just making sure people can get their ballots and making sure those ballots are counted correctly.

Stephanie Sy:

And some of those election workers would say that, after the 2020 election in particular, things got even harder for them.

You have been covering the election landscape, Miles, since 2016, including threats to election workers. I just want to remind viewers of what some of them have been going through. We spoke to election officials from both sides of the aisle in North Carolina and Pennsylvania.

Al Schmidt, Pennsylvania Secretary of the Commonwealth: In the past, candidates ran against other candidates and campaigns ran against other campaigns. And in the last several years, the people responsible for running elections have been targeted as enemies, when, in reality, they are simply trying to make sure that their voters' votes get counted.

Karen Brinson Bell, Executive Director, North Carolina State Board of Directors: These are not high-paying jobs for a lot of folks. And they get into this work because they have a passion for serving the public, for carrying out our elections process. They do so with integrity.

And yet we're at a time when their integrity is being questioned, both personally and professionally, quite often.

Stephanie Sy:

And we have heard of similar frustrations, Miles, among election workers here in Maricopa County, Arizona, where I'm based.

Did this report show turnover has been worse in battleground states?

Miles Parks:

It did.

And this was one of the most interesting data points is that, in the previous 20 years that the researchers looked at, turnover kind of impacted jurisdictions, no matter their political leaning, no matter their geography. And then, in 2020, what they found specifically, that turnover jumped the most in states that were competitive in the presidential election, which aligns with what we have heard from law enforcement about where there has been an uptick in threats and harassment.

And I will also note, even when I talked to election administrators who are in these battleground states, even if they personally have not received the threats, they talk about how much more pressure is on them to do their jobs completely perfectly every single day because there's just this general sense, this cloud that they could be next in terms of targeting.

Stephanie Sy:

You know, one of the positives, however, that came out of this report is that the data suggests, even though there's been more turnover, more experienced election workers are filling the jobs.

Is that across the board, or do you see more of a struggle to retain those experienced election officials in hotly contested districts?

Miles Parks:

So, what we're actually seeing is kind of the inverse,is that, across the board, on average, the people replacing the who are — who have left, according to this new report, on average have about eight years of experience in the administration field.

But when you look at these larger jurisdictions, which generally since 2020 have been the places, the Detroits, the Philadelphias, the Maricopa counties, highly populated areas, on average the election officials who are replacing the people who've left there have 11 years of election administration experience, which is really surprising, I think, to the researchers I talked to.

They found it oddly comforting, that maybe it's not all doom and gloom ahead of 2024.

Stephanie Sy:

So maybe things aren't as bad as post-2020 election headlines suggest.

Miles, I want to ask you about something else. You also recently have reported that, despite concerns about voting access that came after the 2020 election, that new data shows it has actually gotten easier to vote since 2000. Tell me a little bit about that reporting.

Miles Parks:

Yes, this was a really interesting report that came out recently from the Center for Election Innovation and Research that basically looked at, do people have more than just Election Day to be able to cast a vote?

And what they found is that in 46 states and D.C., voters have the — have some sort of option to vote early, which is a really big sea change when you think about two decades ago. In 2000, 86 percent of voters cast a ballot on Election Day, whereas, in 2024, 97 percent of voters live in a place that they have the opportunity to vote early.

And so when you just think about the most basic aspect of voting, filling it out, turning it in, that — voters have more options to do that now than almost ever before.

Stephanie Sy:

As you said, it's not all doom and gloom.

Miles Parks with NPR.

Thanks so much, Miles.

Miles Parks:

Thanks, Stephanie.