About the Local Election Official (LEO) Survey
Since 2018, the Elections & Voting Information Center (EVIC) has administered the Local Election Official Survey. This nationally representative survey asks local election officials about their work, tracking administrative, policy, and operational conditions of election administration, including the experiences and challenges officials face. In parallel with the 2026 survey launch, we are looking back at survey measures over time.
Overall Job Satisfaction
We start this series with results we presented at the annual Election Center meeting in Kansas City, MO. In 2020, 2022, 2023, and 2024, we asked LEOs:
All things considered, what is your level of overall satisfaction with your job?
Between 2020 and 2024, the share of LEOs who said they were “satisfied” or “very satisfied” with their job fell from 92% to 77%. Most of that drop was in the “very satisfied” group, which decreased from 37% in 2020 to 26% in 2024.
Importantly, reductions in the satisfied categories did not move to dissatisfaction. Most of the drop in satisfaction was accounted for by an increase in those who said they were “neither satisfied nor dissatisfied” – which saw a threefold increase (5% to 16%).
In other words, job satisfaction is not being replaced by dissatisfaction at this point, but by ambivalence.
Breaking this down by jurisdiction size (Figure 2) shows that declines in satisfaction and the growth in ambivalence is being driven mostly by the smallest election jurisdictions – those that serve 25,000 or fewer registered voters.
In the smallest jurisdictions, positive evaluations decreased by 18 percentage points, while those who responded “neither” rose by 13 percentage points (from 4% in 2020 to 17% in 2024), and the share who were dissatisfied rose from 3% to 8%.
LEOs from medium-sized and largest jurisdictions also reported decreased satisfaction from 2020 to 2022, mirroring the changes shown in the smallest jurisdictions, but job satisfaction largely rebounded in those areas by 2024.
The reason why the national totals (Figure 1) align so closely with the results from the smallest jurisdictions (Figure 1) is that small jurisdictions make up the largest share of election officials in the U.S.
Other indicators in the LEO survey help provide context that we will cover in future briefs. This includes questions asking LEOs if they would encourage their own child to pursue a career in the field. Spoiler alert: the percentage responding “yes” fell from 41% in 2020 to 22% in 2024, the steepest drop we found across the job satisfaction measures.
We will also dive deeper into leave and retirement questions, including a question asking LEOs who were not nearing retirement whether they were considering leaving their work. Spoiler #2: the share of LEOs who said “yes” rose from 6% in 2020 to 18% in 2024.
The takeaway: LEOs report lower job satisfaction, fewer think this is a career they would recommend to their children, and more are considering leaving the profession.
What does this mean for election administration?
The stability of job satisfaction numbers among the larger jurisdictions is important, as these offices serve the most voters nationally.
The decrease in job satisfaction in smaller jurisdictions is also important to track because it affects more public officials and has a larger impact in key states.
Many smaller jurisdictions are found in states that garner national attention during close Presidential or US Senate races. While the individual outcomes of elections in these smaller jurisdictions may not move national results, they do become more visible in national debates about the state of election administration. When these smaller jurisdictions are stressed or potentially have challenges due to turnover, these issues can contribute to broader concerns about election conduct.
About these numbers
Figures are weighted estimates from the LEO Survey. The overall-satisfaction questions have been asked since 2020 – there was no 2021 wave of the survey. Estimates carry a margin of error. For the 2024 wave, based on 659 responses, roughly ±3.8 percentage points, so small year-to-year movements should be read with that in mind. Margins are larger for jurisdiction-sized groups, especially the largest jurisdiction, since it makes up a smaller portion of LEOs.