1 in 5 Election Officials Say They’ll Likely Leave Their Jobs in a New Survey

The data indicates that Donald Trump’s attacks on the election system are taking their toll.

Brynn Anderson/AP

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As Donald Trump and his associates scrambled to overturn the 2020 election, they accused ordinary election workers throughout the United States of engaging in an unprecedented conspiracy to hand the presidency to Joe Biden. For many election administrators, workers, and officials, life became nightmarish. Pro-Trump media outlets (and in some cases Trump lawyers) doxxed them for doing their jobs, leading Trump supporters to inundate them and their family members with death and rape threats. Conspiracy theorists online called for their execution. One Georgia election worker told NPR that two strangers had attempted to force their way into her grandmother’s house—where she used to live—and make a “citizen’s arrest.

A new survey released by the Brennan Center for Justice, a liberal-leaning nonprofit that supports voting rights, suggests that the toxic environment has persisted past Biden’s inauguration and that it’s taking a toll.

One in five election workers reported that they’re “very” or “somewhat” unlikely to stay in their positions before 2024, citing politicians’ attacks on the election administration system as one of the key reasons why. In addition, the number of local election officials worried about interference by political leaders has increased threefold since before the 2020 election. 

The survey, which included data from 596 interviews with election workers throughout the country and across the political spectrum, indicated that more than half of the threats to election workers weren’t reported to law enforcement. One in six workers said that they had personally experienced threats, and nearly 8 in 10 of them said that threats against them were on the rise. However, few of the perpetrators have faced any consequences for their actions. 

Last year, the Department of Justice formed a new task force to investigate threats against election workers. The task force made its first arrest in January 2022 after a man posted on Craigslist calling for “Georgia Patriots” to assassinate several election officials. 

DONALD TRUMP & DEMOCRACY

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DONALD TRUMP & DEMOCRACY

Mother Jones was founded to do journalism differently. We stand for justice and democracy. We reject false equivalence. We go after stories others don’t. We’re a nonprofit newsroom, because the kind of truth-telling investigations we do doesn’t happen under corporate ownership.

And we need your support like never before, to fight back against the existential threats American democracy faces. Fundraising for nonprofit media is always a challenge, and we need all hands on deck right now. We have no cushion; we leave it all on the field.

It’s reader support that enables Mother Jones to report the facts that are too difficult, expensive, or inconvenient for other news outlets to uncover. Please help with a donation today if you can—even a few bucks will make a real difference. A monthly gift would be incredible.

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