Local Election Official (LEO) Survey

The following categories represent survey questions that 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

The following represent categories of 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

These categories represent 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