Original post on electiononline
I think everyone knows that we won’t let the election fail – we will work ourselves to death before we let that happen.
– LEO from Midatlantic, Female, 50-64 years old, college degree, jurisdiction has between 25,001-100,000 registered voters
While they have a unique and valuable responsibility as “stewards of democracy”, LEOs across the country are also career civil servants and elected officials working to implement a set of laws, administrative rules, and practices that are mostly assigned to them by state legislatures, state election directors, and county boards.
As we wrote last week, many LEOs are Clerks and Recorders with several responsibilities in addition to running elections. Their pay, opportunities for training, and years of experience vary substantially across states and local jurisdictions.
In this week’s post, we focus on the election official as a career path, with special attention given to the nature of the work environment, professional reward structure, and how LEOs feel about the “professional ethos” of local election administration.
Day to Day
The vast majority of LEOs serve in small jurisdictions – almost half work with under 3,000 registered voters. Most voters will have a LEO who works with lots of voters, but most LEOs do not.
We call this the “75:10” issue in election administration – 75% of LEOs serve just 10% of the electorate, while the other 10% of LEOs serve 75% of the electorate. This means that talking about the “average American LEO” and the “average voting experience provided by a LEO” are two very different things.
The average LEO is unlikely to have a large staff (or any staff at all). More than half of jurisdictions under 5,000 registered voters only have the LEO working on elections, with no additional staff (aside from seasonal poll workers, potentially). In jurisdictions greater than 250,000 registered voters, to contrast, over 75% of offices have more than 10 full-time staff members working on elections.
This means that the average LEO may not do their own hiring, control over contracting and transportation, or their own IT staff. They are partners—or captives—of other parts of their jurisdiction.
We reported last week that only 17% of LEOs told us that elections took up “all or almost all” of their responsibilities, with over 60% saying it was “less than half” of their workload.
Nonetheless, when we asked respondents to share what tasks they were responsible for as local election officials, most LEOs are responsible for most elections-related duties. From our list below, ordered by frequency of response, over 85% are responsible for counting ballots (86.8%) through voter registration (94.9%).
- Voter registration
- Early voting (including absentee ballots)
- Recruiting and managing poll workers
- Election Day voting
- Managing polling places
- Counting ballots
- Voter roll maintenance
- Election recounts and audits
- Canvassing and certifying the election
- Selecting voting equipment
- Designing and printing ballots
Four tasks stand out as more common for larger jurisdictions when compared to smaller ones: recounts and audits; canvassing and certifying; selecting voting equipment; and design and printing of ballots. Less than half of the smallest jurisdictions (0-5,000 registered voters) told us that they selected equipment or designed and printed ballots. Most of these jurisdictions are township-level LEOs, and the tasks are carried out by county- or state-level administrators.
Experience
Concerns have been raised that declining public trust and the demands of a polarized political environment may cause a wave of LEO retirements. While this may yet occur, our data show that LEOs overall have extensive experience running elections. Twenty-percent have been administering elections at the LEO level since 2000 or earlier. At the same time, 20% have started their position since 2016, and 2020 will be their first presidential election.
Job Satisfaction and Pay
Something must be keeping these LEOs on the job, and we hoped to learn more about this in the 2019 survey. Overall, we found a high level of satisfaction and a sense of accomplishment in their work. This is the good news.
More worrisome is that many LEOs, especially those in larger jurisdictions, reported tensions in their work-life balance. Smaller jurisdictions told us that they were burdened by multiple demands on time and resources (recall that the smaller jurisdictions are the ones where LEOs are juggling responsibilities).
A quote from one LEO illustrates the difficult balancing act:
I have many responsibilities other than elections. I also contract with other entities for their elections, so especially in even years, I feel like I am constantly doing elections and my regular duties suffer. I honestly wish that it would be mandatory to have an Election Administrator, someone that does only elections and voter registration.
What about pay? In 2019, 57% of LEOs in the smallest jurisdictions (under 5,000 registered voters) were paid less than $35,000 annually. By contrast, 78% of LEOs serving in the largest jurisdictions (over 250,000) reported pay of $100,000 or more. Among LEOs, men are more likely than women to have higher salaries.
But pay doesn’t seem to be a significant pain point. When asked, most LEOs in our survey expressed satisfaction with their pay, more so in the largest jurisdictions.
Despite general levels of satisfaction with the work and pay, it’s revealing that fewer than 40% of LEOs say that they would encourage their children to pursue a career in election administration.
The pinch points we have uncovered here – decisions made at other levels of government without sufficient consultation, and lack of sufficient budgets – are well-recognized in the election administration community.
Much more work needs to be done to understand recruitment and retention of America’s stewards of democracy. If, as is likely, we see another wave of retirements after the 2020 election, where will the next generation of administrators come from?