Understanding the EVIC Local Election Official Survey and Looking Ahead to 2026

View the PDF Brief Here 

| The EVIC Local Election Official (LEO) Survey is a yearly, nationally representative dataset designed to track the administrative, policy, and operational conditions of election officials across the U.S. EVIC has fielded seven waves of the survey (2018, 2019, 2020, 2022, 2023, 2024, 2025), with the 2026 survey currently in development. The survey includes core measures as well as specialized subject-matter modules to explore specific policy shifts and emerging administrative challenges.

The 2026 LEO Survey

The 2026 survey is currently in development. The planned rollout for the upcoming cycle is divided into two phases:

• Spring: A short survey will be fielded to assess key emerging issues.
• Summer: A full survey will be conducted, covering election preparedness, challenges facing offices, and policy needs.

How to Support the Project

The success of this data collection relies on the engagement of the election administration community. There are three primary ways to support the project:

• Share Your Expertise: We are actively soliciting input from election officials, researchers, and others in the space on topics, questions, and emerging issues we should investigate.
• Champion the Research: Encourage local officials within your state and nationwide to participate when they receive their invitations. High response rates produce more accurate, actionable data.
• Participate (For Local Election Officials): If you receive an invitation to the Spring Pulse or Summer Full Survey, please take the time to respond. Your voice ensures our data accurately reflects the realities of your state.
• Use and Share Data (For Researchers, Policymakers, & Partners): Contact us about access to the survey data, and please let us know if you have used EVIC data in presentations, policy briefs, reports, or research materials.

Survey Structure and Methodology

The survey includes core measures as well as specialized subject-matter modules to explore specific policy shifts and emerging administrative challenges. The data collection is divided into several categories:

Active & Rotating Measures

The following survey questions cycle every few years or are new additions, grouped by subject matter.

Workforce & Well-being

• Job Satisfaction & Motivation: Sentiment on workload, pay, and respect; the official's altruistic drive and civic impact
• Workload & Hours: Measurement of typical weekly hours during and outside of election periods, and perceived changes in workload volume
• Burnout Indicators: Measurement of internal and external professional stressors
• Threats & Harassment: Baseline threat experiences, resulting staff departures, and changes to office security
• Retirement, Exit, & Succession: Retirement eligibility, stated intent and reasons to leave the profession, and organizational readiness for turnover
• Hiring & Staffing: Recruitment and retention difficulties, permanent and temporary staffing barriers, and staff management during peak workloads
• Training Needs: General training sources and effectiveness, preferred training modalities, specific training topics, and internal cross-training or staff sharing practices

Election Administration Climate, Public Trust & Engagement

• Professional Networks & Support: External organizational memberships, sources of support, evaluation of organizations and effectiveness of support
• Election Confidence & Preparedness: Confidence in local, state, and national count accuracy, registration security, and overall readiness
• Voter Inclusion & Education: Attitudes toward civic inclusion and turnout, public outreach methods and perceived effectiveness of outreach
• Misinformation & Election Skepticism: Efforts to combat misinformation and engage skeptics, as well as concerns regarding institutional fraud beliefs
• Perceived Public Reputation: Official perceptions of how the public views their competence, fairness, and professional integrity

Policy, Budgets & Operations

• Jurisdiction Scope & Duties: Election-related administrative tasks managed by the office and a quantitative measure of the total volume of elections administered annually
• Election Policy & Legislative Impact: Tracking of support for election reforms, evaluations of how state legislation has impacted local office operations
• Resource & Budgeting: Composition of revenue sources and new investment priorities, evaluations of the budget approval process
• Information & Support Priorities: Identification of primary information sources and evaluation of support priorities from state and federal agencies required to successfully manage election cycles
• Technology, Cybersecurity & AI: Digital modernization and technology adoption, including cybersecurity training and the emerging operational impact and policies regarding Artificial Intelligence
• Public Records & Audits: Volume and administrative burden of public records requests; timing, independence, and public reporting of post-election tabulation audits
• Political Pressure & Ethics: Partisan coercion and threats; ethical dilemmas regarding political activity and neutrality

Core Measures

These represent the foundational metrics collected in every (or nearly every) survey cycle.

• Demographics: Age, gender, racial/ethnic background, highest degree earned, and annual salary
• Partisanship: Measurement of party identification on a 7-point scale
• Current Role & Path to Office: Current status as a chief official, work schedule, how the position was acquired, and (where applicable) type of election
• Career History & Tenure: Years of experience, prior employment status, past service in other jurisdictions, and early career details
• Office Staffing: Total permanent FTE staff and the subset fully dedicated to elections
• One Change: Open-ended about the single most impactful change to improve state elections

Historical / Event-Driven Measures

These are one-off or limited-run modules designed to measure specific historical transitions or specific questions. They are maintained in the historical dataset but have not been fielded recently. 

• Pre-HAVA Baseline: Comparisons of modern election administration to prior eras
• Policy & Structural Preferences: Priorities balancing access versus security and preferences for official selection methods
• OVR/AVR Implementation: Administrative difficulty, financial costs, and data impacts resulting from the transition to online and automated voter registration
• Past Cycle Readiness & Performance: Evaluations of resource sufficiency and performance satisfaction for the 2018, 2020, and 2022 election cycles
• COVID-19 Response: Operational policy shifts, polling place disruptions, and impacts due to COVID-19 

If you’d like to sign up for updates on the survey, please fill out this form: https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSd7tBuyZhRHDQkIXKKnfy4LCv5z4OrbPhLhfvKHbrUk_UdnBg/viewform?usp=sharing&ouid=107499716723050947201