CNN
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Threats and slander against election officials and the voting process have not eroded Americans’ confidence in our election system or their willingness to vote this year.
According to interviews with more than 25 election officials, election officials across the country, including in the top seven battleground states and major cities such as Los Angeles and Minneapolis, are relieved that the feared shortage of poll workers has not materialized. It became clear that he was sighing.
CNN surveyed a variety of Democratic and Republican election workers and found they are generally in good health and filling positions for volunteers and paid staff to work at polling places, process mail-in ballots and help run elections. I answered.
The top elections official in Raleigh, North Carolina, said the state is “fully staffed” with more than 3,000 trained workers for this year, a slight increase from 2020. A clerk in a small Michigan town near Lansing said he outnumbered poll workers. needs. And Atlanta officials even said they “had to discontinue recruiting” due to the increased interest.
“Based on recent communications, large election jurisdictions are currently in a better position to meet their poll worker staffing needs,” said the agency, which serves approximately 100 precincts and is working with officials from both parties. Carolina López, executive director of the Large Election Jurisdiction Partnership, a nonprofit organization that supports The nation’s largest election office.
Former President Donald Trump’s actions in 2020—consistently lying about how the election was run and attempting to overturn the results—transformed a once-quiet election office into a dangerous front line of American democracy. This brought about the arrival of a harmful era.
It is well documented that this new situation has led to an exodus of election officials and poll workers and concerns about staffing shortages. But civil society organizations and election offices have stepped up efforts to bridge the gap and allay concerns in 2022. Their efforts seem to be mostly paying off for the 2024 cycle, but there is still some more that can be done in isolated areas.
Despite President Trump’s disparagement of election officials, a majority of U.S. voters still trust state and local election officials, according to a new Pew Research Center poll released Thursday. There is.
About 90% of Harris supporters and 57% of Trump supporters also said they were confident the 2024 election would be conducted smoothly, according to the Pew poll.
Election officials in Pittsburgh, suburban Philadelphia, Las Vegas, Reno, Madison, Green Bay, other municipalities in Wisconsin and a handful of small counties in battleground states all spoke positively about staffing this fall. .
Detroit has “no vacancies to fill,” said Daniel Baxter, the city’s elections director. Officials have spent months training teams expected to process about 100,000 mail-in ballots at the Democratic stronghold. Still, there are anecdotal examples of poll workers quitting after the 2020 chaos at a vote-counting center in Detroit.
“Some of the people who worked in 2020 say they don’t want to work in this election because of some of the things that happened in 2020,” said an election worker at the Detroit elections office. said David Nathan, manager in charge of training.
Esril Musta, the elections director for Coconino County, Arizona, which includes Flagstaff, said his county’s supervisors have been able to keep pace with most of their retirements.
“Initially, we had a group that was involved in polling for a long time, but they decided not to do polls anymore due to personal reasons and safety concerns,” Musta said in an interview. “But we were able to backfill the numbers. We’ve never felt such an exodus other than the knowledge that remains with the people who have been running polling places for years.”
Officials in Maricopa County, Arizona, also said they are in a good position heading into November. The vast majority of Arizona voters live in the vast county that includes Phoenix. County officials told CNN that recruitment efforts are happening “ahead of schedule” compared to past elections and there have been “no reported challenges.”
Travis Doss, chairman of the Georgia State Board of Elections, said some poll workers were “making demands” after the Trump-backed state board passed new rules requiring hand-counting of ballots. He said that he had heard that he was considering quitting because “there were too many problems.” ‘Too much time’ But the issue was resolved after a judge blocked the new rules.
Doss, who is also the top election official for Richmond County, where Augusta is located, added that his county “has a waiting list for poll workers and we are in a good position.”
Hurricane Helen, which hit western North Carolina, forced election officials in the region to reevaluate polling place staffing plans earlier this month.
Buncombe County, where Asheville is located, still has two-thirds of the poll workers originally planned to help operate early voting locations. The county has confirmed the majority of its required 500-plus employees will be in attendance for Election Day, which county spokeswoman Kassi Day called “excellent” given the circumstances.
But some North Carolina election officials said the state House passed a bill Thursday that would require additional early voting locations in some storm-damaged counties, where voting has already begun. has expressed concern about what has happened.
“Poll workers don’t grow on trees,” Karen Brinson Bell, executive director of the State Board of Elections, said when asked about the bill by CNN during a webinar Thursday.
Los Angeles County, the nation’s largest voting jurisdiction, is also in good shape.
“Fortunately, our recruitment and deployment of election workers for the upcoming general election went very well, meeting our overall recruitment needs to staff and support 648 polling places in this election,” Ross said. said Mike Sanchez, a spokesman for the city clerk’s office. More than 4.2 million people voted in Angeles County in 2020.
He said the diverse county supports 18 languages. Bilingual poll workers are being hired across the county, but the agency is looking for more Khmer speakers.
Sherry Poland, the election director for Hamilton County, Ohio, said her office in Cincinnati is not experiencing a shortage, but there are still “a small number” of Republican poll worker positions remaining. “My large suburban county is purple, so we can recruit enough judges from both parties,” said Curt Bahr, elections director for St. Charles County, near St. Louis. Poland and Bahar are republicans.
A spokesperson for Hennepin County, Minnesota, which includes Minneapolis, said the county is “fully staffed this year” and has not heard of any shortages in nearby areas.
“Many local election judges reapply every year, and their participation is a source of civic pride,” county spokesman Joshua Yetman said in an email.
Despite the disinformation that sometimes dominates the election conversation, these election officials still enjoy voters’ trust, according to the Pew poll.
Polls show that about 72% of Trump supporters trust state election officials this year. (This could also be the secretary of state or the state elections director.) This is a 15-point drop from Republican voters who were asked the same question in 2018, before the 2020 campaign.
Harris’ supporters have even more confidence that state and local election officials will “do a good job” this year. About 91% of Harris voters trust state leaders, and almost universally, 97% trust local officials.
The poll was conducted from September 30th to October 6th.
Years of polling have shown that voters have far more trust and confidence in their local officials than they do in national politicians. A new Pew poll is consistent with that history, but remains notable for the toxic atmosphere created by President Trump, with a majority of Republicans still believing the 2020 election was stolen. worth it.
Despite widespread bipartisan confidence in their efforts, threats against election officials have intensified since President Trump tried to overturn the 2020 election. This year, election offices have received suspicious packages that have led to evacuations, and the Justice Department has filed a series of charges against people who sent death threats to officials.
CNN’s Majlie de Puy Kamp, Casey Tolan and Tierney Sneed contributed to this report.
