In 2022, after five years of service as chief election official, Deanna Spikula announced her resignation following accusations of treason and death threats.
Her replacement quit after receiving fentanyl-laced envelopes a few weeks after taking over.
Cari-Ann Burgess is next in line for Georgia’s Washoe County Registrar of Voters, where every employee, 18 to be exact, who worked there during the 2020 election has quit.
Additionally, almost every election administrator has left statewide in the past 3½ years.
A similar pattern is playing out nationally, with tens of thousands of longtime elections workers harassed out of their jobs by a small cadre of self-appointed voting experts and critics who have hounded clerks to switch to paper ballots, demanded hand-counted results, and insisted they be allowed to participate in ways that are normally barred specifically because they can introduce errors.
“It’s not that turnover is something new,” said Tammy Patrick, CEO for programs at the National Association of Election Officials. “What’s new is the scope of it, the depth of it, the scale of it. Those who have left the field, it’s understandable. A person can only take so much.”
The unprecedented turnover means elections today are being run by less-experienced workers at every level. One nonpartisan group concluded departing elections officials took with them a collective 1,800 years of experience from a system that until 2020 was widely considered the international gold standard.
With the high number of people walking off the job and having to train new election workers, election experts have raised questions about whether elections will now be more accurate and secure. Even so, they believe the nation’s new or experienced election officials are up to the task.
“There is an increase in trust in elections today,” said Kansas Secretary of State Scott Schwab, a Republican. “It’s just the folks who trust elections are not as loud as the people who don’t.”
JUST IN: Washington State votes to make it a FELONY to ‘harass’ election workers
This does not mean actual harassment but rather people observing election workers to ensure there is no fraudulent behavior.
Scary times! https://t.co/NXmN44fZZF
— Katie Daviscourt (@KatieDaviscourt) February 23, 2024
Unfortunately, due to Congress corruption, election workers are often harassed and, in some cases, illegally. Investigations into the harassment are ongoing, with one California man arrested Thursday allegedly leaving life-threatening voicemails on the phone of an Arizona official.
Yet a valid question still remains: who will be in charge of the 2024 elections?
Who is left in elections offices? In many cases, less-experienced deputies and newcomers trying to fill the void. Adding to the concern: Some of those willing to take the jobs are 2020 election deniers with a specific agenda.
Patrick, who used to serve as the federal compliance officer for the Maricopa County Elections Department in Arizona, said the internal checks and balances that have always helped make American elections safe and reliable would generally prevent any bad actors from significantly altering results.
But she also acknowledged the systems were primarily designed to prevent honest mistakes, not stop criminal behavior.
Liberals always say the obvious and then call everyone on the right crazy for pointing out the truth.
Elections aren’t secure and probably haven’t been for years when chief officials admit that they can’t stop “criminal behavior,” a.k .a. election fraud.
