Following the contentious 2020 presidential race and its aftermath, experienced election workers across the country and here in North Carolina have chosen to retire or resign, leaving behind a vacuum and big implications for 2024.
Among the leading drivers of the mass exodus are personal safety and that of family members. According to a poll of nearly 11,000 local election officials by the Benenson Strategy Group, roughly one in three workers has been harassed, abused, or threatened. One in five express concerns about being physically assaulted on the job. In North Carolina, poll workers have expressed similar fears over the increasingly hostile and polarizing rhetoric surrounding political races.
State Board of Elections Executive Director Karen Brinson Bell says several harassment charges have been reported and they’re wide-ranging, from election day and early voting workers to county office officials, and the State Board of Elections.
"It’s definitely a difficult work environment at this point in time in elections," she says. "And we’ve really worked hard with law enforcement officials to navigate these waters, make sure that we’re protecting our workers but not intimidating voters. But also protecting our voters."
Brinson Bell says North Carolina workers have not faced the same threat level as colleagues in other states. But the exodus of experienced employees and volunteers and the institutional knowledge they leave behind has her concerned, particularly because of the tremendous amount of turnover they’ve experienced at the county level where there have been 52 changes in county election directors since January of 2019.
"You know a lot of these folks are retiring after decades of experience, multiple presidential elections under their belts," she says. "And they’re being replaced by many people who have never even worked as a precinct official or a poll worker."
Brinson Bell adds that many of the veteran workers say they’re exhausted by the volume of legislative changes that have been enacted over the past few years and the growing perception of distrust in the electoral process that she says is being perpetuated by a small but vocal minority.
The responsibility of getting those new county elections directors trained on a very complex, wide-ranging set of responsibilities falls on the State Board of Elections. According to Brinson Bell, some 26 of these new leaders will be directing a presidential election for the very first time in 2024.