Election Workers Under Stress: Pressures From Political Officeholders, Lawyers and Citizens

The views expressed are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of ASPA as an organization.

By Steven Huefner and Jos Raadschelders
September 13, 2024

Since 2020, threats to front-line election workers have grown sufficiently serious that the Department of Justice has deployed an Election Threats Task Force to address the problem. As of March 2024, some 20 individuals have faced federal charges in connection with “widespread threats against officials running the 2020 and 2022 elections.” Numerous other complaints have been investigated.

Meanwhile, a coalition of election lawyers and communications professionals has come together to provide election workers with assistance on a pro bono basis. The Election Official Legal Defense Network (EOLDN), a nonpartisan group led by Benjamin Ginsberg and Bob Bauer, explains its mission as follows:

“Across the United States, election officials are enduring threats, harassment, intimidation, defamation and, in some states, exposure to criminal penalties, for simply doing their jobs of administering fair elections. EOLDN stands by, ready to connect election officials in need of qualified pro bono attorneys who can provide advice or assistance.”

EOLDN also can connect an elections office to a communications professional, free of charge. This service helps election officials address issues related to elections or election administration on behalf of their county office or agency.

Threats, harassment and intimidation of government workers inevitably pose risks to these officials’ ability to do their jobs. When those threats are fomented, encouraged or even made directly by elected office holders or their staff, the tensions between career civil servants and politicians becomes especially intense. What can be done to help election workers deal with these threats? This is a critical question as these workers are vital to a smooth election process. Even more so since, aside from the elected officials (e.g. secretaries of state) and career election administrators, there are many, many more volunteers, and without these volunteers properly run elections would be impossible.

This paper on the tensions between agendas of elected officials and career civil servants will probe the following:

How do public managers do their job when their elected officials do not want their job done?

What should public administrators do when directed by elected officials to act in conflict with policy and their professional training?

These questions are relevant to any public organization, agency or type of official. There is substantial literature related to both Republican and Democratic political officeholders distrusting federal bureaucracy. Republican presidents are more likely to suspect that career bureaucracy is heavily infiltrated by Democrats and to seek ways to better control bureaucracy. Democratic presidents are more inclined to distrust the military, but during the Trump presidency Republicans distrusted the military while Democrats were more deferential. However, both Democrats and Republicans have increased the number of political appointees wedged between the top political executive and the federal career civil service in the hopes of more or better control over the process. Some believe this undermines the effectiveness of government, while others believe it strengthens political control over bureaucracy. Generally, career civil servants feel a responsibility to use their knowledge and experience to help advance elected leaders’ agendas and are loyal to the administration in power. Nevertheless, on occasion they will slow down or even derail policies they see as highly partisan or unconstitutional and will limit changes of existing policies and regulations to avoid “knee-jerk governing.” This is the case when decisions and policies from previous administrations are discarded without regard for established commitments and consequences.

It has been recognized since Frank Goodnow that some amount of public policy is made by career administrators and, at least since the Great Depression, increasingly so. How could it be otherwise? No one expects political officeholders in the executive and legislative branches to have expertise in and of all areas where government regulates and legislates. Indeed, we may need bureaucracy not just for good, evidence- and fact-based policy, but also and ironically to shore up democracy: Bureaucracy may provide the policy and management continuity needed in a hyper-partisan environment where political leaders throw oil on the fire of high distrust in government.

As we cannot possibly provide commentary, let alone evidence, on how the full range of career civil servants and temporary government workers respond to pressures from other actors, we focus on election officials and poll workers. Perhaps the most prominent example of an election official facing political pressures in performing an administrative task is the January 6, 2021, example of Vice President Mike Pence facing intense pressure from several sources, including the president and a mob of citizens, to refuse to certify the 2020 presidential election during Congress’s presidential electors count. But at many other levels in the complex system through which U.S. elections are conducted, election workers and election officials have been pressured or harassed in connection with the performance of their administrative responsibilities.

We have chosen to focus on election administrators for several reasons. First, the importance of election administrators, from poll workers to secretaries of state, has become clear in the aftermath of the 2020 presidential election. Election workers were pressured from within by elected and appointed officeholders who firmly believe that the 2020 presidential election was stolen.

Related to that, second, both elected and appointed full-time and temporary election workers have proven to be resilient and have upheld the rule of law despite significant partisan pressures at local and state levels to ignore or even change election results. As one legal scholar noted: what saved U.S. democracy in the aftermath of the 2020 presidential election were state elections officials, military officials and federal prosecutors. All of these public personae acted upon an informal and unofficial set of institutional norms that has been called the “unwritten constitution.”

Third, and also related to the first and second reasons, election workers do their jobs in an environment where they are easily suspected of wrongdoing by citizens, lawyers and political officeholders, even though evidence of “rogue” poll workers is very slim. Their work is made more cumbersome by efforts of some political officeholders to limit voter access through actions that may include stricter voting ID rules and reducing the number of polling stations.

In fact, fourth, since the 2000 election, and certainly following the passage of the Help America Vote Act (HAVA) in 2002, election workers report a level of increased administrative burden that has taken much of the joy out of their work. Since 2019, work-related stress for local election officials (LEOs) and their staff is reported to have grown.

Fifth, there has not been much empirical research into the contemporary challenges of the job of election workers and perceptions they have of their job. Empirical work has focused on voting technology and complexity of the election process, and, more recently, on changes to state election laws.

We will focus this article on perceptions of various actors in and around the election process using a few academic and more journalistic sources. The bulk of this article is focused on pressures as exerted by political officeholders, lawyers, and citizens and media. We also will suggest some ways frontline election workers can be supported in this politically volatile environment.

Election Process and Officials in the United States

We are defining “election officials” as those who are in some way directly involved in administering or supervising elections through which U.S. government officials are chosen at every level of government: federal, state and local. Part of that responsibility consists in implementing proper and safe election process. The category of election officials includes elected officeholders, such as secretaries of state (SoS), appointed career civil servants, such as the local election officials (LEOs) and poll workers. At the time of the 2020 presidential election, the United States boasted some 8,000 LEOs and a whopping 775,101 poll workers in 132,556 polling locations. Most polling stations have between 5-10 poll workers, the majority of whom is older than 60.

 

The processes for which these election officials are responsible are overwhelmingly a matter of state law (although some federal law exists), beginning in some states with provisions in the state constitution concerning certain aspects of election administration. But state legislatures have primary responsibility for determining how elections are conducted in their state, with LEOs having discretion over certain matters. One result is wide variation among the states in the mechanics of conducting elections. This variation lends itself to misunderstanding and mischaracterization, especially across jurisdictions, as we discuss next.

 

Empirical Studies Report Variations in Pressures upon Front-Line Election Workers

 

Commentaries and reports in various media outlets demonstrate how difficult it is for average voters to distinguish perception from reality (see below). The Thomas theorem comes to mind which holds (in a somewhat edited version) that “when people define situations as real, they are real in their consequences.” This is especially true when public figures promote disinformation about what is and isn’t. Perceptions must be dealt with and often they are reported rather than facts. Moreover, negative reports and commentary get more attention than positive experiences. People suffer from a negativity bias and readily “attend to, learn from, and use negative information far more than positive information.” Also, people respond more quickly and prominently to negative events than to non-negative events.

 

Given that media can be overly focused on the sensational, it is no wonder that people in their roles as citizens, lawyers, elected officeholders and election workers worry that most election workers are under severe stress and experience various pressures. However, in one news report, and contrary to popular belief, it was noted that most front-line election workers have not experienced problems with pressures from citizens and public sector officials. Nevertheless, we need to qualify this assertion. Most of what empirical research has been done since 2020 on election workers is focused on career civil servants in election roles, and less on poll workers. Among career election officials, a 2023 poll by the Brennan Center for Justice found that 30 percent of election workers say they have been abused, harassed or threatened. This is an alarming finding about the challenges currently facing LEOs, only about one-third of whom reported being satisfied with their job. In addition, by some accounts it is acknowledged that getting and retaining election workers for the 2024 cycle may be difficult and that at least half of the threats against LEOs is not reported.

Meanwhile, for various Western states it has been reported that between 30-50 percent of election officials have resigned in recent years. This is a major loss in organizational memory and experience. In a survey fielded before and after the November 2022 election, researchers found that 30 percent of those serving in 2020 indicated a willingness to do so again in 2022; 15 percent reported they would opt out due to concerns about conflicts at the polling station. Those indicating a willingness to continue were older, had more experience and reported more positive experiences with other poll workers. The Brennan Center report mentioned above also noted how dozens of state and local level officials in South Carolina, Pennsylvania and Arizona resigned in June of 2021. Stephen Richter, a Republican chief elections officer in Maricopa County, Arizona, received death threats. Ruby Freeman and her daughter Wandrea “Shaye” Moss, election workers in Georgia, were threatened and pressured by people in and out of the state (because of widespread but demonstrably false allegations against them, which eventually led to a defamation verdict in their favor but only after their lives had been completely upended). In another Brennan Center poll it was reported that more than 85 percent of LEOs would welcome efforts by the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Agency (CISA) of the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) to dispel disinformation about elections. However, can any administration be effective in tackling disinformation when at least one federal judge ruled in 2023 that DHS and other federal agencies (such as the Office of National Intelligence and the FBI) intimidated social media platforms and thus violated free speech? Furthermore, what can anyone do against echo-chambers of disinformation? People convinced of election fraud claims by public figures are often not willing to question their own beliefs.

There are at least three groups pressuring election officials: political officeholders; lawyers embracing election fraud misinformation; and individual citizens and the media.

Political (Elected) Officeholder Pressures

One thing that differentiates elections in democracies is that those who participate trust and accept the outcome. When outcomes are close, recounts are conducted, and, when necessary, the court system might step in to confirm the results. This is what happened with the presidential election in 2000. But the aftermath of the presidential election of 2020 turned out quite different. The incumbent president and many of his supporters claimed without proof that the election was stolen. His and his supporters’ actions in fomenting this claim, as well as related developments at the local up to the federal level, have been unprecedented.

Shortly after the November 2020 election, and before the states had certified their electors, the incumbent president called Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger and asked him to “find him 11,000+ votes” so the state would be in his column. This is transparently one example of an elected politician pressuring an election worker, who also happened to be another elected official. The incumbent also spread disinformation about mail-in voting being an unreliable disaster and claimed that votes were cast by deceased people, despite no evidence of systematic voter fraud. The incumbent also encouraged his voter base to object to the election outcome, hoping to put more pressure on the election administration community.

While his culpability is yet to be determined by the courts, the January 6, 2021, storming and ravaging of the nation’s Capitol Building is seared in the minds of the American public. Moreover, although many Republican members of Congress condemned the January 6 attack at first, some of them eventually adopted the “stolen election” rhetoric that has continued to undergird ongoing attacks on election officials across the country. Despite his pending prosecution on criminal charges, the now-former president has not changed his message and continues to play the victim. As a consequence, many of his supporters continue to believe the election was stolen and see at least some subset of election workers as responsible.

What is baffling is the support some of his claims receive from some federal, state and local elected officials. At the federal level, North Carolina Senator Lindsey Graham asked Raffensperger whether he could disqualify all mail-in ballots in counties with purportedly high rates of mismatches. Utah Senator Mike Lee texted White House chief of staff Mark Meadows that he had worked 14-hour days to persuade state legislators to send Congress competing slates of electoral college delegates.

At the state level, former Republican Chairperson and Georgia State Senator David Shafer led the state’s delegation of fake electors. Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton filed a lawsuit against the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, referencing a baseless report that President-Elect Biden had a one-in-a-quadrillion chance of winning the election. In Wisconsin, legislative leaders wanted to oust the nonpartisan state Elections Commission administrator, Meagan Wolfe. They were supported by Michael J. Gableman, the conservative former Wisconsin Supreme Court Justice, who led a 14-month investigation into 2020 election results. He found no fraud, though his investigation cost taxpayers $1.1 million.

At the local level, Tina Peters, county clerk and recorder in Mesa County, Colorado, tried to find evidence of unauthorized people breaking into the county’s election system, hoping to find support for the incumbent’s election fraud claims. One result of these claims was that election officials and poll workers were repeatedly pressured by political officeholders to declare that the election had been fraudulent; require particular identification materials other than those required by law; and not count late absentee ballots, in defiance of state law. Two of the Georgia poll workers (mentioned above) testified how Trump’s team inflicted extreme pressure on them.

In an encouraging development at the local level, Barb Byrum, county clerk of Ingham County, Michigan, along with several other Michigan county clerks, filed an amicus brief with the Third Judicial Circuit Court, supported by the Public Rights Project (see below), opposing an effort to impose additional obligations on county clerks. Byrum’s brief argued that the additional obligations would disproportionately affect people of color in the election process. The court decided days before the 2022 midterms to reject the request for additional obligations, empowering local elections officials to resist dangerous and racist election interference.

One of the ways accuracy of voter rolls, access to voter registration, reduction of election costs and increased election efficiencies are assured is through the nonprofit Election Registration Information Center (ERIC) in Washington, DC. At all levels of government some conservative Republican party members and officeholders have claimed ERIC is an instrument that seeks to advantage democrats. Nothing could be further from the truth as Minnesota state Elections Director David Maeda and Blue Earth County (MN) Director of Elections Michael Stalberger told an audience at ASPA’s 2024 Annual Conference. They also informed those attending the session that Minnesota elections equipment is checked before and audited after elections to ensure they are in good order. But, it was not just the incumbent president and other political officeholders creating these pressures.

Lawyer Pressures

Just as stunning as the unfounded claims of fraud leveled by politicians was the degree to which lawyers also joined the effort to undermine the 2020 election, including by pressuring election workers. The best-known example is former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani, who was found liable for defaming Ruby Freeman and her daughter Wandrea “Shaye” Moss by claiming repeatedly that they had mishandled ballots while counting votes. He was fined $148 million in December 2023, after admitting he had spread false information. Another example is Sidney Powell, a former federal prosecutor who filed (and lost) election lawsuits in Michigan, Georgia, Arizona and Wisconsin. She, Jenna Ellis and other lawyers, baselessly claimed that Dominion Voting Systems switched votes from the incumbent president to the president-Elect and that absentee ballot counting procedures had decreased the incumbent’s vote share. Again, no evidence was ever provided. Powell is one of 19 defendants in a lawsuit in Georgia concerning the efforts to overturn the incumbent’s loss in the state. She pleaded guilty in a plea deal in October 2023; Ellis also pleaded guilty that same month for supporting a second set of electors in Georgia and pressuring public officials to violate their oath.

These are just a few examples of lawyers attempting to influence the election outcome by pressuring election workers. There are two things important to note. First, through a variety of lawsuits, the president at the time and his supporters played a long game attempting to manipulate democracy and their hold on power, in part by altering the operations of the election administration system. Second, one should not forget the weakened role of judges and the judicial system in combatting pressures on the election system. Section 5 of the 1965 Voting Rights Act (VRA) required that changes in election procedures or practices in specified jurisdictions could only be made after the U.S. attorney general or the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia had determined that such changes did not have discriminatory effect or purpose. However, in Shelby County v. Holder (2013), the Supreme Court held that the congressional specification of the jurisdictions to which this requirement applied no longer met “current needs,” resulting in increased burdens on the voting rights of some groups. This also may influence the perception among election workers that they are more vulnerable to outside pressures now that the federal courts have less authority to oversee election processes.

Citizen, Media and Nonprofit Pressures

Above, we mentioned how Trump, other political officeholders and a variety of lawyers have supported the campaign to discredit the 2020 presidential election. We also mentioned the January 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol building. In the events of that day, a variety of citizens were involved, some of whom have since been prosecuted and sentenced. Additionally, anecdotal evidence exists of individual citizens making poll workers’ jobs more difficult across the country by objecting to identification, electronic voting or providing proof of address, and even threatening physical harm. In February 2024 a man from Indiana pled guilty to threatening to kill an election worker in Michigan. That case is part of the Election Threats Task Force that Attorney General Merrick Garland established in June 2021. In Michigan, some citizens were charged for playing a role in a “false electors” scheme, pretending to be “duly elected presidential electors.”

The fact that voters keep believing in fraudulent elections is disturbing, especially given the absence of any evidence of systematic or widespread fraud. Why are their beliefs so resistant that the evidence to the contrary is simply ignored or dismissed? Some citizens may believe the documentary 2000 Mules that claims widespread fraud, but that propaganda piece has been completely discredited. So, we ask again, why are these beliefs to persistent? Is it only because of an unwillingness to lose a democratic election, out of a fear of ultimately “losing” America entirely to the opposition party? Of course, this would be a rejection of democracy itself, although it could explain the willingness of some to attack the very mechanisms of democratic elections. Is it lack of understanding about the position and role of government and politics in society? Or an inability to distinguish fact from fiction when a variety of political officeholders, prominent media personalities and even some nonprofit organizations repeatedly air disinformation and misinformation as truth? Or is it the so-called binary bias, a concept from psychology, that concerns the human tendency to simply reduce complexity into a black-and-white contrast rather than a continuum with many shades of grey?

Supporting Front-Line Election Workers

In sum, public officials involved in election administration at all levels are feeling extra, unnecessary stress. To date, these officials have responded with grace and professionalism. But as the attacks from politicians, lawyers, media personalities and sectors of the public continue to come, it is important to provide additional support to the workers on the front lines of democratic government.

As we mentioned above, 2020 American democracy was protected and saved by the so-called unwritten constitution of informal and unofficial norms that federal prosecutors, military leaders and state level election officers who worked to protect the Constitution against the onslaught of the “stolen election” claims. Local election officials whom Morgan and Gleason rightly describe as “the heartbeat of American democracy” also played a critical role. Those local election officials could not do their work without “the career professional administrators who manage the day-to-day administration of programs, policies, and services to citizens.” This bureaucratic solidarity among election officials and their resistance to pressures to change election outcomes is not “guerilla government.” Rather, it is the political officeholders who are exercising guerilla “lawfare” upon career civil servants to coerce or induce them to ignore their oaths of office. The term “lawfare” was coined by Levitsky and Zigblatt and refers to political officeholders who target opponents by means of, for instance, subverting the law and pressuring officials. The people who upheld that so-called unwritten constitution acted within the bounds of their official duties; they did not need to be empowered beyond that discretion and they did not act in the narrow interest of their organization, but in the interest of the American people at large.

While we can hope for a similar performance of their duty in the coming election, what else can be done to help election officials to withstand continuing “guerrilla lawfare” being waged against them?

First, it is important that states have laws that protect the election process and those involved in it. By way of example, Minnesota State Representative Emma Green informed the audience at the conference how since 2020 several acts have passed in the Minnesota legislature: Election Worker Protection Act, Democracy for the People Act, Restore the Vote Act and the Elections Omnibus Bill.
Second, a variety of public or quasi-public organizations, from the National Association of State Election Directors (NASED) to the National Association of Secretaries of State (NASS) to the National Association of Counties (NACO) to the Joint Election Officials Liaison Conference (JEOLC) have focused some of their recent activities on identifying and responding to threats to election workers. CISA at DHS also offers various programs in its election security and exercise program.

Third, non-governmental organizations have taken up the role of supporting election workers. For instance, a DC think-tank, the Center for Election Innovation and Research is helping coordinate and administer a legal defense network for election officials, which, in turn, is relying on the pro bono services of numerous lawyers. There also is an effort by the Public Rights Project to assure every vote counts and support election officials in multiple states (https://www.publicrightsproject.org/).  And, there is The Elections Group, established in 2020 (one of its co-founders had worked at CISA) that offers a Training and Certifying Election Officials program.

Fourth, additional training is needed. A variety of organizations and institutions, including colleges and universities, are increasingly involved in offering training and support for election officials (including the Ohio Registered Election Official Program at The Ohio State University and an election administration certificate offered by the Humphrey School). Auburn University’s political science department offers a 15-credit hour graduate certificate in election administration. Of note is also the Rural Democracy Project in Minnesota, aimed at increasing the number of LEOs in rural parts of the state. This program consists of a five-week introduction to civic life, a weekend training about how to run for rural elections, a six-month program on rural advocacy and public leadership, and a two-hour program titled “going local.”

However, many of these trainings are focused on the election process and the various technological challenges that might occur. As important are simulations of various possible challenges and threats to election workers that will then have the potential to enhance preparation and build cohesion among these essential civil servants.

Any type of training should mix practice (in local, state or federal government) and theory (about the role of election officials and administrators). Morgan/Gleason’s book, published before the events of late 2020/early 2021, will provide LEOs with various tools and motivate them to stay the course in the “legal lane.” However, it cannot be said enough that large-scale democracy can only stand with election officials and administrators who honor the rule of law and who have learned how to deal with and withstand the shrill voices of elected officials, lawyers and individual citizens who are hell-bent on subverting elections and undermining democracy.

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Author: Steven F. Huefner is the C. William O’Neill Professor in Law and Judicial Administration at The Ohio State University Moritz College of Law, where he also is the Deputy Director of the Election Law Program. Professor Huefner’s research interests are in legislative process issues and democratic theory, including election law. He has published a number of articles and several books, including From Registration to Recounts: The Election Ecosystems of Five Midwestern States, co-authored with his Election Law at OSU colleagues, and its sequel, From Registration to Recounts Revisited.

Author: Jos C. N. Raadschelders is professor and faculty director of professional development at the John Glenn College of Public Affairs in the Ohio State University. He is a fellow of the National Academy of Public Administration. He is co-editor in chief of Public Administration Review. His research interests include the position and role of government and democracy in society, comparative civil service systems and the history of government. He can be reached at [email protected].

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