Original post on electiononline
In a new series of blog posts, we will share highlights from our 2019 Survey of Local Election Officials, a joint collaboration between Democracy Fund and the Early Voting Information Center at Reed College. The DF/RC team are appreciative of the LEOs who took time out of their busy schedules to answer the survey. In 2019, 3000 LEOs were randomly selected to take the survey and 876 responded. For more information about how the survey was conducted, visit the study website.
We like to describe local election officials in the US as the “stewards of democracy.” LEOs comprise more than 8,000 local government employees and elected officials in municipalities and counties across the country, with a diverse range of pay, training, and experience.
They also differ greatly in the scope of their duties. Only 17% told us that they spend “all or almost all” of their time on elections-related work, while 61% said that elections work constitutes “less than half” of their workload.
Staff support is non-existent in many small jurisdictions. Forty-seven percent of LEOs told us that their staff size is one. They are the only person working on elections in their jurisdiction!
The portfolio of LEOs may include supporting local councils and commissions, judicial administration, collecting taxes, recording property transactions, issuing marriage licenses, managing public records requests, even issuing dog licenses and recording burials.
One important finding from the survey is that, for all the diversity across states and localities, most LEOs have substantial on-the-job experience. Half of the officials in our survey told us that they have been working in election administration since 2006, with several officials telling us they have served more than 50 years.
We asked our respondents where they came from just before their first job in election administration (because we offered respondents a wide set of choices, the percentages in the table may add up to more than 100%). Nearly half came from a non-elections private sector job (49%), with a slightly lower percentage (42%) coming from the public sector. Most of those coming from the public sector moved from other positions in local government. The other paths to election work are highly varied: volunteerism, political parties and campaigns, and straight out of school.
Comparing the responses across jurisdiction size, LEOs in smaller jurisdictions were much more likely to report that they were working in the non-elections private sector before starting their work in election administration, while those in the large jurisdictions (100,001 – 250,000) were notably more likely to tell us they came from state or federal government positions or from political parties and campaigns.
One reason that these origination stories may vary across jurisdiction size is because the office of local election official is three times as likely to be an elective position in small municipalities and counties than in the largest jurisdictions, 67% vs. 21%.
Of those elected, 45% were elected in partisan races for their office. For smaller jurisdictions, almost 70% are elected to their position, while for larger jurisdictions over 70% are appointed.
Local election officials in the United States, for all of their diversity of duties, are a group of experts who have crucial and insightful opinions about elections and voting. They follow a varied path into election administration, but once they get there, many hang around.
LEOs are uniquely positioned to share their perspectives about change and reform to our elections system. The DF/RC LEO Survey is designed to elevate and amplify these opinions in the ongoing debates over election reform. We will be discussing these opinions in the next few weeks.