Paul Gronke is an expert on elections. Not what the outcomes will be in the next election. That’s the job of Nate Silver and other prognosticators. But how election officials go about the business of managing our country’s elections.
Today Gronke gave a talk at the Salem City Club about the work of an organization he’s associated with, the Elections & Voting Information Center that’s co-located at Reed College and Portland State University.
My main takeaway from his talk was that election officials deserve a lot of love from us citizens. Theirs isn’t a thankless job, thankfully, but it is more difficult to express appreciation for them than, say, the cheerful competent barista at a coffeehouse.
Near the end of his talk Gronke shared a slide that featured a quote from an Oregon county clerk:
In November I was buried. I have X kids. I’m a mom, a wife. I wasn’t any of those things for two months. I got home at midnight, I went to bed. I got up the next day and came in…
In Oregon, as in most Western states, elected county clerks manage elections. Often with few other staff. And the job isn’t intense just around the time of an election. There’s another peak months earlier when the filing deadline to run for an elected office happens. Plus, voter registrations and changes happen year round.
Gronke said that in 2020 92% of Oregon election officials reported being satisfied with their job. In 2024, only 78% were satisfied. Stress is increasing with the unfounded accusations from the Trump administration and others about rampant voter fraud. Actually, this is very rare. Even when 1,500 people mistakenly were registered to vote (I think this was in Oregon), just 10 actually voted out of several million total ballots cast.
Interestingly, Gronke said it’s unclear whether voter I.D. laws suppress turnout.
One reason may be that people who lack a required voter I.D. are special compared to other people. I assume this meant that they are less likely to vote, so lack of an I.D. doesn’t make a lot of difference. Another reason may be that organizations mobilize to increase voter turnout in states that require strict voter I.D.
The Elections & Voter Information Center conducts fairly frequent surveys of election officials nationally. Demographically, in 2024 49% of these officials were elected; 87% were women; 86% were white; 56% had a college degree; 62% had a salary over $50,000; 70% were older than 50 years.
I’ll end with an excerpt from a 2023 report on Oregon election staffing that I found on the Elections & Voting Information Center web site. I’ll also share a PDF file of the report: oregonstaffingstudy
The past two decades, particularly the past two years, have called attention to the critical role local election offices play in sustaining and supporting a responsive and trustworthy democratic system. Many local offices are at a breaking point. Staff and budgets are not just “lean” but inadequate to a new and complex set of tasks and expectations. Far too many election officials and staff are subject to abuse, threats, and harassment (Clark et al. 2023, Gronke and Manson 2022). As a consequence, local election offices have experienced a wave of retirements, resignations, and loss of expertise, and it isn’t clear how this expertise will be replaced.
Oregon may be protected from some of these trends because the vote-by-mail system is robust, secure, and well-understood by Clerks, voters, and other political actors. The state has been consistently in the top 10 in voter turnout and, since the implementation of automatic voter registration in 2016, in the top rank for voter registration as well. At the same time, Oregon is not immune to national trends, and the State of Oregon has some unique challenges of its own. Politics in Oregon has become increasingly polarized, mirroring the national polarization. Economic change and disruption meant that some areas of the state have grown and thrived while others have seen a decline in local revenue streams. This has been more pronounced for those counties who traditionally relied on timber and other natural resources. And change – always a constant in the elections space – seems to be even more rapid and unpredictable.
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