NPR: Voting officials are leaving their jobs at the highest rate in decades

NPR’s Miles Parks reported on how an unprecedented rate of local elections workers are changing jobs amidst political pressure, deepening a recruitment problem that states and counties face with their election administration offices.

“Turnover among the country’s election officials has continued to increase — now nearly five years after Donald Trump’s failed attempt to overturn the 2020 contest led to voting officials facing more pressure and harassment.

Some 2 in 5 of all the local officials who administered the 2020 election left their jobs before the 2024 cycle, according to research out Tuesday from the Bipartisan Policy Center. The trend was especially pronounced in large jurisdictions, where the Trump campaign’s misinformation about voting often focused.

“This is in alignment with the challenges, burnout, threats and harassment that election officials are facing,” said Rachel Orey, who oversees the center’s Elections Project.

For the past two decades turnover in the elections field had been increasing gradually, but the new report, which Orey worked on with UCLA researchers Joshua Ferrer and Daniel Thompson, shows how 2020 amplified the trend.”

Read more at NPR.