Most local election officials fear for their colleagues’ safety and 62%, almost two-thirds, are concerned about politicians trying to interfere in how they or others do their work, according to a new poll conducted by the Brennan Center for Justice and released Wednesday.
The poll, to which HuffPost was given early access, was based on the responses of 928 local election officials between Feb. 23 and March 28 this year and showed they have pervasive concerns about safety and political independence. Sixty-two percent of officials said they were either very or somewhat worried about “political leaders engaging in efforts to interfere with how you or your fellow election officials around the country do their jobs,” according to the poll. Thirteen percent were concerned they would face “pressure to certify election results in favor of a specific candidate or party.”
As HuffPost has reported, election offices across the country have taken action to increase election security since 2020, when Donald Trump’s lies about the legitimacy of Joe Biden’s election inspired a violent assault on the U.S. Capitol and multiple attempts to overturn the results.
Perhaps most notably, the poll found election workers faced shocking rates of threats, harassment and abuse.
More than one in three respondents said they had been harassed and abused because of their work as a local election official, and 16% said they had been threatened. Of those that had faced threats, 61% said they had been threatened over the phone, and the same number had been threatened in person.
What’s more, 70% felt that the level of threats had increased since 2020, 54% said they were either very or somewhat concerned about the safety of their colleagues or staff, and 27% said they were concerned about being assaulted at home or at work. Four in 10 officials said they were very or somewhat concerned about being doxxed, or having their personal information “published online with the intent to threaten [their] safety,” as the poll defined it, and 23% were concerned about being “swatted” — being targeted with a fake emergency call that sends a SWAT team to the victim’s home.
In response to the wave of hate fueled by Donald Trump’s lies about the 2020 election, many seasoned election administrators and poll workers have left the field.
Twenty-seven percent of election officials said they personally knew at least one or two election workers who’d left their jobs at least in part due to fear for their safety, increased threats, or intimidation — a 50% increase over 2023, according to the poll. The number who’d seen “many” election workers leave their jobs for those reasons doubled, from 4% to 8%. Those departures will likely continue after 2024: Twenty percent of respondents said they were unlikely to continue serving in the 2026 midterm elections.
That shift in the elections workforce brings with it a drop in institutional knowledge: 2024 will be the first presidential election a quarter of election officials have worked, according to the poll. And nearly half of election workers told pollsters they were very or somewhat concerned that new local election officials might themselves believe in disproven conspiracies about election fraud.
They have reason to be worried: Most Republicans believe falsely that the last presidential election was illegitimate. Election officials across the country are taking previously unheard-of steps to secure the elections process — including beefing up defenses against threats ranging from shootings to hacking attempts to fentanyl-laced mail.
According to the Brennan Center poll, 92% of local election officials have taken at least some critical steps to increase election security since 2020. More than half, according to the poll, have implemented cybersecurity measures, including multi-factor authentication and unique log-in credentials for devices. Forty-four percent have updated polling place contingency plans, and 40% have enhanced the physical security of election offices or polling places.
The Brennan Center produced its poll by emailing an invitation to participate in the survey to a list of 11,678 local election officials created with the assistance of the U.S. Vote Foundation. The poll’s margin of error was 3.1% and the data was weighted by region and jurisdiction size.