When I started reporting this story, I intended to ask several rural election officials about their work: how they got into it, the highs and lows, what they wish people knew about it. But all four officials I contacted refused to be interviewed or else ghosted me when it was time.
That doesn’t surprise Paul Manson, the research director at the Elections & Voting Information Center, a nonpartisan academic research organization. Manson has seen how contentious rural election administration has become in the face of increasingly deep partisan divides and persistent misinformation. “There is some super-intense pressure on folks right now,” he said. “I would suspect, at this time, many local election officials are shying away from more spotlights.”
Rather than add to their stress, I decided to ask Manson my questions instead. Though he isn’t an election official himself, he has surveyed and interviewed hundreds of them. Below, Manson explains what makes American — and particularly rural — elections unique, why most election officials are women, and what he’s most concerned about come November.
This interview has been edited for length and clarity.
High Country News: How do American elections differ from the rest of the world’s?
Manson: If you were a voter in Mexico or France, you’d have a national voter ID card, and things would be managed at that level. Instead, we do a classically American thing: We push that responsibility down to the lowest level.
Instead of having one federal office of elections, we have 8,000-10,000 of them. That number varies a bit, because we divide the duties of election administration — from voter registration to Election Day administration to auditing and certification (of votes) — differently in each state. So we even have a hard time defining what an election office is. It’s a beautiful bit of American democracy at work.
HCN: Are there any advantages of this system, especially when it comes to rural areas?
Manson: Rural election officers often have legitimacy. They have shared with me just how much work they do to know their constituencies: They go to Elks meetings, veterans meetings, and share what this work of running an election looks like.
That’s a huge asset. As maddening as it is to decentralize it, that local face, I think, just means a lot to voters. If someone starts asking questions about how things work, a lot of these administrators are happy to invite them to observe the process during election season, and that can make a big difference.
HCN: How does election administration in rural areas — like Garfield County, Montana, which has 888 registered voters — differ from election administration in, say, Los Angeles County, which has 4.3 million registered voters?
Manson: In a larger office, the staff are entirely focused on election administration. In a more rural setting, it’s often in another type of office. So, here in Oregon, the county clerk will be serving in that role — and also managing property recordings, marriage licenses, maybe passport applications. Elections are part of the basket but not the entire basket.
HCN: Seven of the eight states that allow 100% vote-by-mail elections are in the West: California, Colorado, Hawaii, Nevada, Oregon, Utah and Washington. How does that affect our elections?
Manson: Thankfully, we’ve been on the cutting edge when it comes to voting options. Usually, the benefit of vote-by-mail is it’s cheaper: When you do polling places, you need to ramp up a lot of poll workers. That’s also a recruitment challenge. It used to be easier to find temporary workers, but this political binary has scared away some folks. Think about the average poll worker: an older American who’s maybe not interested in being in the fray. Vote-by-mail helps alleviate some of those pieces.
HCN: What else has changed for local election officials over the past decade?
Manson: Prior to, say, 2016, this was work that didn’t get a lot of attention. (Now) there are new stresses hitting these local election officials. When we were doing our interviews, in one of five, we would have to pause because it became too emotional, and the person needed to reset.
It’s not uncommon for me to hear stories about personal threats, being challenged at the grocery store or (being) uncomfortable leading with what their job is because they’re fearful of how these national narratives have colored perceptions of elections work. Unlike their peers in more urban settings, (rural) election officials are lower-paid officials who wear many hats, but are also members of the communities they serve — and these attacks hurt uniquely for them.
HCN: Your research has found that 84% of local election officials are women, and nearly three-quarters are over the age of 50. Many people you interviewed had mothers who held the role before them. Why does that matter?
Manson: In our society, we ask women to raise children, take care of the older generation and take care of their own household. (Election) work traditionally has done very well to support a woman trying to balance those three careers. You add on top an onslaught of public records requests that take up time, being challenged in the shopping line, and we’re seeing more and more departures from the field. We are losing institutional knowledge, folks who’ve been doing this for a long time. It seems like this toxic environment is really a challenge.
HCN: What happens if a rural district can’t replace its election official?
Manson: We haven’t crossed that bridge yet. The closest we’ve seen is some activist perspectives — some examples in Colorado, New Mexico and California, where the secretary of State had to right the ship because someone came in and felt like they could manipulate how elections are run.
HCN: What can be done to improve the situation?
Manson: We need to have candidates express their support for the legitimacy and quality of elections administration. This is going to be a very polarizing presidential election. I know these officials will do their best, but it’s a lot of pressure.
HCN: Why should people care about rural elections?
Manson: Some of these rural counties may represent a deciding factor in a congressional race, so the quality of election administration will matter in terms of how much faith we have in the outcomes.
At the local level, I always ask students how many governments there are in the United States. And 90,000 is the official number, if you go with the U.S. Census. Most of those are special districts: school districts, soil and water conservation districts, rural fire protection districts. Those are elections that these county officials are also administering, so keeping that system operating is critical for a lot of the public services in rural counties.
Susan Shain reports for High Country News through The New York Times’ Headway Initiative, which is funded through grants from the Ford Foundation, the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation and the Stavros Niarchos Foundation (SNF), with Rockefeller Philanthropy Advisors serving as fiscal sponsor. All editorial decisions are made independently. She was a member of the 2022-’23 New York Times Fellowship class and reports from Montana. @susan_shain
