Ohio’s local election workers are overworked, underpaid and burdened by conspiracy attacks, and the state could do more to keep politics out of the electoral process, according to a voting rights group that spoke to local election administrators.
All Voting is Local Ohio is partnering with research firm Public Circle, LLC to examine the evolving work that local election administrators are doing as they prepare for the next highly contested election.
“Today, these professionals find themselves in a difficult position under the weight of concurrent statewide special elections and rhetorical attacks on their credibility, character and patriotism,” the report says.
More sophisticated elections, technological advances and increased voter education needs have added to a burden that local election directors say grows year over year. Let’s add to this the “politicization” of elections, among others allegations of electoral fraud AND mass voter challengesAccording to the study’s authors, “hidden costs” arise. election staff report.
“It affects workers, it affects voters, and ultimately taxpayers have dollar and cent concerns,” said Dean Jackson, director of Public Circle and a researcher on the project.
According to Kayla Griffin-Green, Ohio’s statewide director for all local votes, the report was inspired by conversations with Ohio boards of elections.
“I felt like their voices really went unnoticed,” Griffin-Green said.
During the first three months of this year, 29 election officials from 20 of Ohio’s 88 counties and all regions of the state were interviewed, Jackson said.
During interviews, local employees emphasized the cross-party nature of running an election office, drawing attention to the fact that a significant number of offices cannot be reached unless you utilize the “republican key” and “democratic key”.
“It’s really a group of people from both sides trying to make sure the process works the way it should,” Jackson said.
Going through the process of meeting election deadlines, which administrators say takes about 120 days for an election of any size, is enough of a task without questions about election integrity and nefarious acts in office.
“The claim that you can somehow flood an election with illegally cast ballots, but it just doesn’t work that way,” Jackson said. “If you talk to administrators, they spend a lot of time trying to explain to the public how robust this process is and why it would be very difficult to pull it off, especially considering that, once again, everything has already been done about it. two-party principle.”
The “hidden costs” referred to in the report are due to the fact that election workers sometimes forgo vacation time due to extra work, which is the result of 10 elections in three years. The task of these elections was not only to ensure the proper functioning of voting machines and to inform voters. For many, this work now includes outreach work, de-escalation training and Narcan overdose treatment, after envelopes with fentanyl sent to election offices in other states.
The stress and complexity of contemporary elections are enough to cause high turnover and low recruitment rates, and salary levels for some non-standardized election positions are high.
“They are often set at a level that is similar to what it was like 20 years ago, when it was a much simpler job, maybe even part-time,” Jackson said.
The report’s recommendations include having an emergency response and communications plan and establishing communication chains between law enforcement and polling places.
“It’s something they should have started working on yesterday,” Jackson said.
Ohio saw it mass voter challenges That strained the resources of even some larger offices, including Wood County, where one person filed 16,000 voter objections, according to Griffin-Green. These challenges did not result in vast numbers of voters being removed from the rolls, but they did cause staff to postpone other times to review the rolls in response to individual challenges.
According to Jackson, the fact that these election challenges are happening in more states shows, among other things, the need to modernize the system.
“I think it just goes to show that if we don’t invest in election administration, things are going to get worse through no fault of the people who are doing it,” Jackson said.
Preserving “depleted resources,” as the report calls the election workforce, must include investments from city governments all the way down to state lawmakers and the Ohio Secretary of State’s Office.
This should include consolidating the election calendar to eliminate unpredictability, including the August special election, which the report said was “a top complaint among election administrators regardless of political affiliation.”
Griffin-Green and Jackson claim that the so-calledprohibition of cooperation,” passed in 2021, created problems in the system, in part by trying to do too much while making some of the work of election administrators more hard.
The law prohibits electoral commissions from working with “non-governmental” entities, but the report recommended modifications (if not outright repeal) to “more clearly exempt a broader range of voter outreach activities or community partnerships designed to raise public awareness of voting laws , recruiting a bipartisan pool of poll workers and educating voters about election security.”
The ban could also be narrowed to “actions that most impact lawmakers while enabling others,” including allowing election boards to consider “additional grants” for equipment.
“If you’re concerned about wealthy, private philanthropists with out-of-state-funded activities who might be perceived as biased, you could ban them but still allow people to buy copiers,” Jackson said.
Griffin-Green touched on the hot-button topic of drop boxes, which have been the subject of debate both publicly and in the Ohio Supreme Court as state and election advocates disagree on whether they should be allowed and, if allowed, how many each county should have.
As part of the report’s theme, Griffin-Green said local workers should speak up.
“Election officials must be able to choose what is best for their communities,” Griffin-Green said.
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