By Paul Gronke, PhD | Paul Manson, PhD
As our Elections & Voting Information Center (EVIC) readers know, the administration of elections in the United States is a decentralized system with a complex set of diverse institutional arrangements that vary across states and sub-state jurisdictions.
Nearly 8,000 officials spread across 50 states and the District of Columbia hold many titles. They are selected by many different methods and have varying degrees of autonomy from their states (and their counties in the instance of villages, cities, etc., who conduct elections in Michigan, Wisconsin, and New England states). And, of course, they operate in very different political, demographic, and geographical environments.
In the face of this diversity, there are common features, predictable challenges, and a shared professional commitment that connects officials from the smallest Midwestern or New England township to densely populated urban and sprawling metropolitan suburban areas.
Since 2018, EVIC at Reed College has created and continuously evolved its often quoted and highly anticipated annual Survey of Local Election Officials (LEOs). And today, after the dust begins to settle on Election Day 2023 and election officials throughout the country shift focus to the 2024 primaries and presidential election, our team is proud to share our 2023 LEO Survey results and report.
The 2023 LEO Survey was conducted during the off-year (although there is no true “off-year” for election officials) by EVIC in collaboration with SSRS, our skilled survey administration partner and designer of the infographics used in our 2023 report.
In response to feedback from the elections community, researchers, and others working in the democracy space, we learned that a major challenge faced by almost all offices is summed up by one term: resiliency. In this turbulent time of rapid change, competitive elections, and increased public scrutiny, how have these offices adapted and performed?
Key takeaways from the 2023 LEO Survey include:
- Job satisfaction remains high. LEOs say that “integrity”, “service”, and “community” come to mind when they think about what they like about their jobs. When asked what they don’t like about their jobs, “misinformation”, “politics”, and “stress” are at the top of their minds.
- Peak elections workload forces most officials to stretch to their limits, or go beyond them. On a percentage basis, the increased workload during “peak” election season is truly extraordinary – from 50% to 535% higher hours worked during elections as compared to the rest of the year. This is dependent on the size of the jurisdiction.
- Turnover is twice as high as found in prior LEO surveys. However, loss of institutional knowledge may be tempered by lateral movement. For example, the average LEO in the largest-sized (>100,000) jurisdictional category has been in their current position for only 5 years, but has 16 years of experience in elections. We need to know not just about when LEOs depart, but we need to know about who replaces a LEO when they depart.
- Staffing and hiring continue to be a challenge for many election offices. Barriers to hiring include job classifications that have fallen out of sync with the skill sets currently needed to administer elections as well as non-competitive pay. LEOs are divided as to whether the political environment is a barrier.
- Misinformation is a concern among most LEOs. LEOs in smaller jurisdictions rely primarily on face-to-face communication to counter misinformation, while LEOs in larger jurisdictions rely on a broad suite of communications channels that includes social media, websites, email, etc.
On the 2023 LEO Survey page, you will find our report on the high-level survey findings. And for those of you who may be academic researchers or other data geeks (and we mean that in a good way!), you will find the following 2023 resources available to download and comb through, including the 2023 web-based instrument, crosstabs, and codebooks, as well as the codebooks, crosstabs, and questionnaires from our 2018-2022 studies.
The EVIC LEO Surveys also collect metrics to monitor the environment in which these public servants serve, their attitudes toward their work, and the situations and circumstances in which they find themselves. Since the 2020 election, the EVIC team has examined LEO perception of threats and harassment inside and outside of their workplace and the effects of this situation over time.
The 2023 LEO Survey was generously supported by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology Election Data and Science Lab (MEDSL) with additional survey communications support from the Election Trust Initiative to enable us to produce such high-quality infographics.The inaugural LEO Survey of 2018 through the 2022 Survey was funded by our collaborative partner on those efforts – Democracy Fund – without whose support this idea would not have become a reality. In addition to our current and past survey funders and their respective team members (way too many to name), we’d like to recognize our external team at SSRS and our current internal EVIC team: Jay Lee (Reed ‘19), Michelle Shafer, Simon Ahn (Reed ‘24) and Abby Durant (Reed ‘24), for their extremely valuable contributions to the success of this effort.
And last – but most importantly – we thank election officials all over the country in almost every state, for taking the time to thoughtfully respond to our survey and help us in sharing results.
If you are an academic researcher who would like to work with our data, a leader of a national, regional, or state association of election officials interested in having a presentation on the 2023 LEO Survey at your next meeting, or a member of the media interested in writing about the 2023 Survey, please contact EVIC Senior Program Manager Michelle Shafer via email.
