Explainer & Lessons Learned From the Ballot Drop Box Fires in Multnomah County, Oregon and Clark County, Washington
Paul Gronke (Reed College) and Paul Manson (Center for Public Service at Portland State University), for the Elections & Voting Information Center in Portland, Oregon*
Current version: November 1, 2024
As many news outlets have reported, on Monday, October 28, 2024, drop boxes in Multnomah County, Oregon and Clark County, Washington were set on fire by someone who attached an incendiary device designed to breach metal and create intense heat. Election officials and law enforcement in both counties have been quick to respond.
This essay is the Elections & Voting Information Center’s (EVIC) contribution to helping citizens understand what happened—to the best of our knowledge—and conveying information about these events to a national audience that is suddenly focused on election administration in our region.
What happened?
- On Monday, October 28, 2024 between 3:00-4:00 AM, incendiary devices designed specifically to breach metal and inject heat were placed on ballot drop boxes in Multnomah County, Oregon, and in Clark County, Oregon. Election officials and first responders were quickly notified of these events.
- Security personnel close to the Multnomah County drop box used a fire extinguisher on the outside of the drop box, and fire suppression equipment was automatically deployed inside the drop box.
- In Clark County, the Vancouver police were notified of a fire at a drop box at 4:00 AM, responded, and contacted the fire department. Fire suppression was ineffective.
- Explosive experts were called onsite in both cases to safely remove the devices (which may have led to the delay in action in Clark County).
- In Multnomah County, three ballots were damaged, but sufficient identifying information remained on the outer envelopes so that the voters could be contacted and given an opportunity to cast a replacement ballot.
- In Clark County, fire suppression for their drop box was far less effective. As of Wednesday, October 30, 488 damaged ballots were retrieved and voters identified. 6 ballots could not be identified, and there may be more ballots that were completely burned. Clark County has been in contact with or mailed replacement ballots to all 488. County and state election officials are reaching out through the media and other channels to encourage anyone who used the drop box in question to use Washington State’s ballot tracking system to determine their ballot’s status and to then contact the election office to see if they need to obtain a replacement ballot.
- Video surveillance in Multnomah County has identified a likely perpetrator. Law enforcement officials are using this video to try to find the perpetrator.
Updates
- Updates: Friday, November 1, 2024
- Clark County will pay “about $134,000” to maintain 24-hour security on all drop boxes.
- Updates: Thursday October 31, 2024
- In Multnomah, Portland Police have released a description of the suspect and have provided more details about the incendiary device.
- Correction (and amended in story): Clark County and Multnomah County obtained their drop boxes from the same vendor. It is unclear why fire suppression failed in one case and succeeded in the other.
- Updates: Wednesday, October 30 2024
- The Clark County Auditor issued a press release updating the situation with the burned ballots. For details, follow the link, but the takeaway is
- Elections staff have been able to identify 488 damaged ballots retrieved from the ballot box. As of Tuesday evening, Oct. 29, 345 of those identified voters had already contacted the Elections Office to request a replacement ballot. Elections staff will mail 143 ballots to the additional identified voters tomorrow, Thursday, Oct. 31.
- The Clark County Auditor issued a press release updating the situation with the burned ballots. For details, follow the link, but the takeaway is
- Updates: Tuesday, October 29, 2024
- Clark County has announced 24-hour surveillance of drop boxes in the County.
- Multnomah County is increasing the frequency of visits to drop boxes by security personnel and has increased security staffing at the Elections Building.
- The New York Times reports that markings on the incendiary devices in both counties had references to the war in Gaza.
The Importance of Drop Boxes
- Vote-by-mail and early voting both involve various ways to return ballots. Many assume that with the name “vote-by-mail”, the primary method of return is the United States Postal Service (USPS). However, this is not the case for Oregon and Washington. In States that provide the option to vote-by-mail, drop boxes and drop sites are the primary way ballots are returned.
The National Overview: Defining and Tracking Usage
According to the Election Assistance Commission’s (EAC’s) 2022 Election Administration and Voting Survey (EAVS) Policy Survey, 39 states allow the use of drop boxes. The Movement Advancement Project’s list of states that have drop boxes is similar to the EAC but with some differences. The National Conference of State Legislatures is another source, but this list is very different from the previous two. The reason for these differences seems to be that there is no single definition of what it means to be a state using drop boxes. Explicitly allowing or prohibiting drop boxes in state statutes seems clear, but there is a gray area of states that are silent, and drop boxes may or may not be being used. It’s also not clear if a “drop site” at a county office or voting center is being counted–this is “not being mailed” but it is also not a drop box.
Finally, the laws and regulations surrounding drop boxes are in flux. Take, for example, the Movement Advancement Project’s coding of Alaska as having “no applicable law or policy”. Drop boxes were used in the state in 2020, but only because the Alaska Division of Elections coordinated with the Municipality of Anchorage and deployed throughout the state. The Division recently announced an end to this program for the 2024 general election. This is one of many areas where comparing laws and procedures across states is hampered by the lack of a common definition used in all states.
In terms of usage, according to the 2022 EAVS, nearly 40% of mail ballots were returned at drop boxes (this figure is based only on states that tracked and reported drop box returns). The use of drop sites (drop boxes, elections offices and polling places) is growing over time, and the use of postal returns is declining.
The percentage of mail ballots nationwide that were returned via postal mail declined from 67% in 2016 to 53% in 2020, according to the MIT Election Data and Science Lab’s Survey of the Performance of American Elections, and shown in the future. The same survey reported that the three States with the longest history of vote-by-mail (Oregon, Washington, and Colorado) had 60% of ballots returned via drop box, an increase from 51% in 2016.
“Drop Sites” and Drop Boxes in Oregon and Washington
“Drop sites” is the term used by state elections officials in Oregon and Washington for designated ballot collection locations. Oregon and Washington election law establishes parameters about the placement and population threshold for the number of drop sites, to assure voters have access for returning their ballots and there is some level of equity of access across the states. Oregon election rules require each county to develop a security plan and review it periodically to assess threats to drop sites. (Security requirements may also be in place in Washington, but we do not know at the time of this writing.)
County offices and vote centers are required to be designated drop sites, along with providing other valuable voter services. But both states allow for additional drop sites, and counties have been innovative in finding locations. The list of sites includes the usual suspects – local city hall and other county or municipal buildings, schools, police and fire stations, and public libraries are commonly used. But other locations are used that may surprise voters from states that make less extensive use of drop boxes.
For example, Oregon’s list of sites includes:
- A sports complex: “outside 24-hour walk-up only drop box located on the south side of the Rose Quarter by the fountain & Rip City sign”
- A Walmart parking lot: “Outside 24-hour drop box North side of parking lot”
- Markets and convenience stores: “Simnasho – Three Warriors Market, Outside 24-hour drop box”
Washington’s list has a similarly diverse set of locations:
- Park & Ride parking lots/mass transit stops: “Shoreline Park & Ride”
- Fraternal organizations: “Lyle Remote Ballot Box. Lyle Lions Club parking lot”
- Gas stations: “In front of Twin Totems Store between Highway 101 and the gas pumps.”
In the EVIC Local Election Official (LEO) Surveys, conducted nationally since 2018, LEOs have consistently told us that they consider improving turnout to be “part of their job” (see the results from our 2022 survey below). LEOs consider security, access, and equity when administering elections, and that includes how they place drop boxes.
We do not know the decision-making process used by each auditor, clerk, and election director in Oregon and Washington, but we are not surprised to see these diverse locations. A tool such as the Center for Inclusive Democracy’s Voting Location and Outreach Tool provides a nice illustration of the many different considerations that go into site selection.
Washington state reports detailed data on dropbox usage since 2013 (we are not aware of other states that provide this kind of detailed report). The percentage of ballots returned via drop box peaked at 73.1% in November 2020 and declined to 61.1% in the 2022 November general election. It is interesting and not fully understood why voters continue to prefer to use a drop box, even in Oregon and Washington where there is paid postage on the ballot return envelopes and ballots need only be postmarked by Election Day.
Why Attack Drop Boxes? What about Blue Boxes?
An attack on drop boxes in these States is similar to an after-hours attack on a polling place where ballots are being held. This is not the first time attacks have been made on drop boxes. In 2020, an estimated 100 ballots were destroyed by an arsonist in Los Angeles, and 35 ballots were damaged later that year in Boston in another arson attack.
There have also been attacks made on “blue boxes” – the familiar boxes used by the USPS that lack many of the security protections of drop boxes. In Lane County, Oregon, two blue box keys were recently stolen, However, these keys were probably not stolen to target ballots. The USPS has been battling stolen “arrow keys” for years. The keys are a gateway to mail theft (stealing checks, identity theft, etc.). This is a low-grade but persistent criminal activity.
Precisely because ballot drop boxes are generally more secure and lead to speedier processing of ballots by local officials, anyone stealing an arrow key is almost certainly aiming for mail other than ballots. This is what led officials in Lane County, Oregon to warn voters not to deposit ballots in the blue boxes.
Other Observations
- Not all ballot drop boxes are equal. The drop boxes used in Multnomah County and Clark County are both manufactured by Vote Armor – Laserfab Inc (but are different models). We are not aware why fire suppression worked in one instance and not another.
- Ballot Tracking is your friend! A recent report, co-authored by researchers at the USC Center for Inclusive Democracy and researchers at EVIC, points out the many advantages of ballot tracking systems, which improve voter confidence in ballot integrity and may improve turnout. This episode highlights once again how valuable ballot tracking can be to allow voters to confirm that their ballot was received and accepted.
- Video surveillance of drop boxes is not legally required in Oregon or Washington. The only reason there was a video of the drop box in Multnomah is that the attack took place on the drop box next to the County office. While it may be desirable to have 24-hour video surveillance of all drop boxes, this may limit the locations, particularly in rural areas with less reliable internet access and potential challenges accessing power.
- Legal penalties for tampering with ballot materials vary across States. The NCSL lists the legal prohibitions against tampering with ballot systems, and we were surprised to find that in at least seven states, this is only a misdemeanor. Professor Rick Hasen makes a strong argument in an essay at MSNBC that any number of federal statutes can and should be used to prosecute arson and elections-related violence.
Policy Recommendations
Violence of any kind is deplorable, but it is particularly dangerous during a hard-fought and contentious election less than four years after an insurrection at the U.S. Capitol.
It is encouraging that no one will be disenfranchised in Multnomah County, but there is a real possibility that some voters in Clark County will not realize that their ballots were destroyed.
We agree with Professor Rick Hasen that legal protections for election workers and penalizing ballot tampering need to be strengthened.
For most states with substantial numbers of by-mail voters, drop boxes are an important part of the election system. States and counties need to evaluate the security of their drop boxes and make sure that they are using infrastructure that meets the highest security standards. These boxes are not prohibitively expensive – we were told that the Vote Armor model costs approximately $6,000, and other drop boxes are in the same range.
While $6,000 is not expensive compared to some election infrastructure, it’s also not insignificant and may be cost-prohibitive in many jurisdictions, particularly in rural areas or in areas with smaller budgets.
We recommend that States provide funding so that all LEOs who want to use drop boxes can afford them, and that all current drop boxes in use be evaluated and if necessary replaced to meet appropriate security standards.
Drop boxes are here to stay. We are not experts in the manufacture and deployment of drop boxes, however, we believe that at a minimum, 24-hour video surveillance and/or other constant monitoring systems should be integrated into all drop boxes used in the United States.
We recommend that drop boxes with monitoring technologies, that can keep election officials apprised at all times of how many ballots have been deposited into a box and have video feeds to record activity around the boxes, be explored and put into use in all election jurisdictions using drop boxes for their by-mail voters.
We also recommend that LEOs, vendors, and the engineering community evaluate the fire protection integrated into drop boxes and make recommendations about best practices for fire suppression
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* Note: This posting will be updated as new information comes out. Please feel free to email the authors (linked in title) with any additional questions or information about this explainer, or contact us via our website at evic.reed.edu.
Links
Local Election Official and Law Enforcement Statements
“Elections Director Tim Scott’s statement on incendiary device at County ballot box”. Multnomah County Elections Division, Oregon. “UPDATED: Clark County Auditor statement regarding ballots destroyed in ballot box.” Clark County Auditor’s Office, Washington.
“‘Your ballot is safe’: Elections addresses voter questions about safety and security after ballot box arson incident”. Press Release: Multnomah County Elections Division, Oregon.
“ Ballot Box Fire Presser 102824 1080”. Press Conference on YouTube: Multnomah County Elections Division, Oregon.
“UPDATE: PPB Releases Photos of Suspect Vehicle in Ballot Box Incident (Photo)” Press release, Portland Police Bureau.
Media Stories
“2 Ballot Boxes set on fire in Portland and Vancouver.” Oregon Public Broadcasting. “FBI investigates fires at Vancouver, Portland ballot boxes that burned hundreds of ballots.” The Columbian.
“Ballot-box fires in Oregon, Washington are linked; police identify suspect’s car.” The Oregonian’s Oregonlive.
“New security measures in place after ballot box fires in Vancouver and Portland” KGW8 (NBC) News.
“Investigators Identify ‘Suspect Vehicle’ in Ballot Drop Box Fires in the Pacific Northwest”. The New York Times.
“Devices with `Free Gaza’ Messages Found at Ballot Box Fires.” The New York Times.
“What to know after ballot box fires in Washington and Oregon”. CBS News.
“Ballot boxes were set on fire in Oregon and Washington. What happens to the votes?” Editorial Essay by Rick Hasen: MSNBC.
“https://www.opb.org/article/2024/10/30/portland-police-ballot-box-bomber-metal-fabrication/” Oregon Public Radio
“Suspect in Vancouver, Portland ballot box attacks ‘intends to continue … targeted attacks,’ say Portland police” The Columbian.
The Elections Workforce: How Many Election Workers are there Nationwide?
Clip from a game show never to be aired:
Announcer: “26,824. Is that your final answer, Professor Gronke?”
Gronke: “Let me use my lifeline.”
Clock ticks …
Gronke: “16840.43. That’s my final answer!”
Announcer: “Your final answer to the question `How many election workers
there are in the United States is 16840 point 43??”
Gronke: “Ok, around 20,000. I am very confident that there are around 20,000
election workers in the United States. Or maybe a few thousand more …”
Announcer: On to our next contestant!
The scenario above may never appear on television, but the question is a real one, and one that evades a good answer because there is so little systematic information about the size and composition of the elections workforce.
This post and future posts will provide information about the elections workforce, drawing on results from the 2023 Elections & Voting Information Center (EVIC) Local Election Official (LEO) Survey. We hope this will contribute to efforts to improve the size, diversity, and professionalization in that workforce, and spur other efforts to improve our knowledge base about staff to monitor progress moving forward.
Why Does the Election Workforce Matter?
The quality of American democracy and the integrity of our election system relies in large part on the efforts of the elections workforce: local elections officials (LEOs) and their staff who administer elections in the fifty states, territories, indigenous areas, and in more than ten thousand counties, townships, municipalities, and other administrative units. A long research record has shown that voters express higher confidence in our election system when they have a good voting experience and when poll workers and other election officials are knowledgeable and professional. Election officials and their staffs also act as key intermediaries between political candidates and other groups who want access to the ballot to compete for public support.
A well-trained and professional election workforce is vital to American democracy and it is encouraging to see increasing attention to harassment and turnover among staff, as well as policy and research initiatives dedicated to the issue.
How Many Staff?
As valuable as these efforts are, they are hampered by a lack of systematic information about elections staff.
One place to start would seem to be the most basic: how many elections staff are there?
That seemingly simple question was posed to EVIC in September 2023, while the 2023 LEO Survey hit the field. And it is a question that we should be able to answer since we have been asking about the size of Full Time Employees (FTEs) in elections offices since 2019.
This survey question results in this powerful figure below, showing that more than half of the elections offices in the country have zero or one full-time staff person, and 90% have 5 or fewer staff members.
We can use these responses to produce a first estimate of the total elections staff, and putting aside some details (see the Appendix), 26,824 is the answer we provided. Once we adjust for the largest jurisdictions in the country, “around 30,000” was a defensible answer.
But then research and learning intervened.
We discovered something well-known to practitioners but not brought home to us until we were in the midst of a staffing study commissioned by the State of Oregon. Asking about FTEs in a local office that administers elections will inevitably capture FTEs that work on the property recording side. In some cases, these duties are split, and LEOs engage in “staff sharing” (explicitly moving a staff member from recording over to elections during peak periods).
We asked about this in the 2023 LEO Survey, and the results showed over a quarter of offices engaged in staff sharing. The larger the office, the more common staff sharing is going on (because the smallest offices don’t have staff to “share” – everyone does everything).
A second question added to the 2023 survey tries to elicit a more precise estimate of elections staff:
“Of the full-time staff, how many are fully dedicated to elections?”
The responses to this question are quite striking when compared to the figure above. Notably:
- 32% of all jurisdictions in the country have “no full-time staff” and consequently, “zero” full-time staff dedicated to elections.
- 18% of all jurisdictions have one full-time staff member (the LEO) and half of those are not fully dedicated to elections.
- 40% of all jurisdictions have 2 – 5 staff, and 37.5% of those tell us “none” of the staff are fully dedicated to elections full-time.
There are even a small number of larger jurisdictions (100,001-250,000) that do not have a single dedicated elections specialist. Such is the reality of balancing election administration with recording, licensing, budgets, and the other myriad duties assigned to LEOs nationwide.
This question was my “lifeline” — it allowed me to adjust the staffing estimate (described in more detail in the Appendix). This is my nearly “final answer” of 16,840.43.
Add some wiggle room to adjust for the largest jurisdictions, for an ultimate answer of “an election workforce somewhere around 20,000.”
If It Is Good Enough For Horseshoes … How To Get Better Estimates of Elections Staff
Our intuition is that there are somewhere between 20,000 and 25,000 elections staff nationwide, without considering additional complications like staff sharing, temporary workers, and poll workers. However, getting to that estimate required some fairly heroic assumptions.
We know that state and local governments face workforce challenges. We know that elected officials and election workers face unprecedented levels of threats and harassments for simply doing their jobs.
We believe that the research community can do better.
- EVIC can do better by improving the LEO Survey.
We can ask more precise questions about staffing. In our defense, since the inception of the LEO Survey in 2018, we have labored to make the survey instrument short and easy to complete, avoiding anything that necessitates a LEO looking something up offline. However, conversations with practitioners have convinced us that most LEOs will have a good sense of the size of their staff, and those good senses will be better than the categories we have used in the past. Barry Burden, PhD, of the University of Wisconsin Elections Research Center has successfully used a more specific item in surveys of Wisconsin clerks that we could adapt. - The Census Bureau and U.S .Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) can do better by coding election work and election workers.
Two resources to track employment and wages in local government are the Census of Local Governments and the Bureau of Labor Statistics National Occupational Employment and Wage Estimates. For reasons we don’t know, neither of these has a category or occupational code for elections. - The U.S. Election Assistance Commission (EAC) can do better by collecting information on staff sizes and other workforce information.
The EAC may consider collecting information on staff sizes and compensation levels, perhaps as an off-year effort separate from the biennial Election Administration and Voting Survey (EAVS), which is already a burdensome instrument.
Technical Appendix
The technical details of these calculations include projecting our survey estimates to the full population of LEOs, and making certain assumptions about the “multiplier” to use for the response ranges provided in our survey question.
Generalizing from the survey responses to the overall population is the easy part. Our sample is drawn proportionate to the size of the jurisdiction, to ensure a complete representation of medium-sized and larger-sized jurisdictions. Our sampling weight allows us to produce valid estimates. Sampling and weighting procedures are reported on the EVIC LEO Survey Methodology Page.
The more difficult part of the puzzle is choosing the appropriate “multiplier” for each cell in a crosstab of jurisdictions vs. elections staff. To illustrate, consider each of the cells in the table below. Across the columns, we need to choose values to use for “No full-time staff”, for any category with a range, and for “More than 50”. We use “.5” for responses of “no full-time staff”, the midpoint for other categories, and “50” for the largest category. (This calculation, by the way, resulted in our “first answer” of 26,824.)
Looking down the rows, things get more complicated, particularly in the bottom row, “none are full-time elections”. For example, 18% of our sample (160 respondents) said they had 1 full-time staff person (that generalizes to approximately 1440 jurisdictions). Half of those said “none” were fully dedicated to elections, and we use .5 of an FTE for these 78 cases.
We decided to use the .5 adjustment across the whole bottom row, thus (.5 * 1 * 8.8% * 8000) + (.5 * 3.5 * 15% x 8000) + (.5 * 8 * .7% * 8000) + (.5 * 15.5 * .1% * 8000) sums up our staff estimate for the bottom row. It is not clear that .5 is too high or too low.
The final decision is what to do with “more than 50”, fully aware that this column represents the 40 largest jurisdictions in the country, and, from personal communications, knowing that some of the very largest have 750-1000 employees.
Ultimately, we expect our estimate to be somewhat low, but we don’t think it is dramatically off the mark. We hope to collect more detailed information in 2024 to test this assumption.
Study: Election staffing lags behind growth of Oregon voterbase
Coverage by Nathan Wilk of KLCC Public Radio of the 2023 Oregon Staffing Study.
“It’s a flashing red light on the dashboard,” said Paul Manson, the Research Director with Reed College’s Elections and Voting Information Center.
“We had one jurisdiction share with us that they’re being outbid by the fast food companies,” said Manson. “More common too, we heard they’re even being outbid by other county governments.”
Julia Shumway of The Capitol Chronicle covered today’s release of the 2023 Oregon Election Officials Staffing Study.
Key quote from Dr. Paul Manson:
“The cloud over all of this is the political environment to some degree or the perceptions,” said Paul Manson, a Portland State University political science professor and the center’s research director. “(In) one out of five of our interviews, we had to pause because it was just too emotional.”
One of the clerks interviewed no longer feels comfortable telling strangers what their job is because they’re scared of the reaction, Manson said. Concerns about threats and harassment also make it harder to recruit employees.
Job postings, description and compensation don’t match the current job requirements for county election workers, Manson said. They’re usually classified as clerical jobs, but election workers now have to do more outreach and public engagement, spending time debunking misinformation and talking to adversarial voters. One Oregon official interviewed for the study noted they would make more working at the In-N-Out Burger across the street than in the elections office.
New EVIC Report on Oregon Local Election Official Staffing
We are excited to announce a new EVIC report on Oregon Local Election Official Staffing Commissioned by the Elections Division of the Oregon Secretary of State’s Office
Today, Paul Gronke and Paul Manson testified before the Oregon House Interim Committee on Rules regarding the “Oregon County Election Staffing Research Study” that EVIC prepared under their direction as commissioned by the Elections Division of the Oregon Secretary of State’s office to assess the staffing challenges faced by local election officials (LEOs) in Oregon.
EVIC’s report summarizes the findings from this study where LEOs from Oregon’s counties were interviewed for an average of 60-90 minutes, resulting in a combined 46 hours of interviews.
The Election Division of the Oregon Secretary of State’s office issued a press release today on this work. “Oregon County Clerks Struggling with Staffing, Retention, and Recruitment in the Midst of a Toxic Political Environment” can be viewed here.
In addition to the report and press release, you can access the joint written testimony of Paul Gronke and Paul Manson for EVIC here as well as the slide deck used at today’s hearing.
Today’s meeting agenda is located here.
All of the aforementioned meeting materials are located in one place here: You can also find the video of today’s session posted there.
Please share this important work and reach out if you have any questions!
Garcia was particularly lauded by election officials across the country for his engagement with “election deniers” in his county, said Paul Gronke, Elections & Voting Information Center director and a professor of political science at Reed College.
https://www.texastribune.org/2023/06/14/tarrant-county-elections-administrator-finalist/
“It is no simple task to administer elections in a large and diverse county like Tarrant, especially as we rapidly approach what is sure to be a highly competitive presidential election,” Gronke, who leads an annual survey of local election officials across the country, a source of data on the profession, said in a statement to Votebeat. “I sincerely hope that a new administrator is found who has the same level of expertise, respect, and ability to reach across political divides as Heider Garcia.”
Survey Results from Democracy Fund / Reed College Survey of American Election Officials
Professor Paul Gronke was honored to be part of the Bipartisan Policy Center’s 2022 Post-Election Summit in Washington DC. This was an inspiring event that brought together elections officials, researchers, lawyers, journalists, policymakers, and others in the elections and democracy space to discuss lessons learned from 2022 and a path forward through 2024 to ensure safe, secure, accessible, and well-funded elections.
That latter point — funding — was the biggest takeaway from the meeting. As many panelists stressed, including secretaries of state, state elections directors, and state legislators — the window for funding the 2024 election is right now, in 2023. If funding doesn’t come out of the upcoming state and federal legislative sessions, then additional funding is likely to be too little and too late. Elections officials are already starting to think about 2024 preparations, and integrating new systems, new staff, and new administrative models in response to funding needs to take place this year.
EVIC presented results from our 2022 survey and could barely manage the traffic at our poster! It was heartening to see all the interest and comments and of course suggestions for new topics in upcoming surveys.
The poster is available by clicking on this link for a PDF if the image below is too small on your screen.
Paul Manson, Research Director, and Paul Gronke, Director
Elections & Voting Information Center
Many in the elections and democracy space are concerned about the loss of institutional knowledge and expertise if many elections officials decide to depart from the field in response to increasing workloads, higher job stress, and a new environment of abuse, threats, and harassment.
We want to be mindful that departures and retirements after a Presidential and midterm may be a normal phenomena — LEOs over the years have told us that the period after a federal election cycle is a common time that an official, and their staff, will target for departures.
EVIC has been collecting survey data on planned retirements and departures since 2020. In each year, we asked respondents whether or not they were eligible to retire, and if so, were they planning on retiring before the 2024 election. For those respondents who were not eligible to retire, we also asked whether they had plans to leave the field.
In terms of eligibility, over one-third of officials reported they were eligible in 2020, and this number declined to 30% in 2022 — as would be expected if there was a wave of retirements after 2020. It’s also important to note that retirement after a presidential year is a normal phenomenon, and with no baseline comparisons, we don’t know if 2020 levels exceeded what would normally be expected.
We discovered that 13% planned to retire before 2024 (or almost half of those that are eligible), and about half of these respondents plan to retire this year. These numbers are high when compared to at least two benchmarks — the percent of the US workforce that retires annually (2%) or the federal workforce that retires annually (3.2%).
Finally, for those who were not eligible to retire, we asked if they were nonetheless considering leaving their position as a local elections official within the next two years. When we combine the planned retirements with the planned departures, we find that 21% of officials were planning to leave in 2020 and 18% were planning to leave in 2022.
Retirements and departures are very difficult to track because there is no comprehensive list of election officials in the United States. If such a list existed and was regularly updated, it may be possible to get a better purchase on retirements, departures, and lateral movements within the field, and over time in response to stressors.
Our results may be as good as we can get right now, and rely on survey self-reports. If accurate, and 18% of LEOs depart prior to 2024, that translates into anywhere between 1600 to 2000 LEOs.
By any measure, that’s a lot of expertise and knowledge that would need to be replaced in an area so critical to our democracy.
(The raw frequencies for these questions and the question wording can be found on our LEO Survey Page.)