How election officials are preparing for the year ahead

The past few years haven't been easy for election officials and their teams. They had to pivot during the pandemic and face ongoing threats that have resulted in unprecedented staff turnover. This turmoil brings more scrutiny of errors that occur when people make honest mistakes.

Despite these challenges, Tammy Patrick, CEO for programs at the National Association of Election Officials, is confident that the tens of thousands of people charged with election administrators across the country this year will deliver free, fair, and secure  elections. She's also optimistic about their ability to rise above threats and uphold their commitment to democracy.

Patrick has been working in the election administration space since 2003, most recently as the Senior Advisor to the Elections Program at Democracy Fund. Focusing on modern elections, she works to foster a voter-centric elections system and support election officials across the country.

In this conversation, we dive deeper into what's in store for election workers this year and how Patrick and her team are helping them prepare to stand up against everything from misinformation campaigns to threats of physical violence.

Michael Berkman
From the McCourtney Institute for Democracy on the campus of Penn State University. I'm Michael Berkman.

Candis Watts Smith
I'm Candis Watts Smith.

Jenna Spinelle
I'm Jenna Spinelle and welcome to Democracy Works. Happy New Year, everybody. Welcome back to another season of the show. We are kicking things off this year with a conversation with Tammy Patrick, who is the Chief Executive Officer for Programs at the National Association of election officials, also known as the Election Center. This is essentially the trade organization for the people who run elections across the country, folks who have who always have very important jobs, but I think especially so this year, as we approach another presidential election season. And Michael, you and I were chatting before we started recording. In some ways, this conversation really gets at a lot of the ethos and what we had in mind with democracy works way back when we started it almost six years ago, if you can believe that.

Michael Berkman
Yeah, I really do think so Jenna, and Happy New Year. Good to see you again. Happy New Year. Candis, nice to see you again. Yeah, it really did remind me of our early days when we were talking about what we wanted, democracy works to be all about and trying to figure out our place in that kind of podcast space. And, you know, of course, we wanted to use it as, as I believe we do to affirm democracy and highlight important perspectives on democracy from academics and journalists and activists. But we also wanted to focus on the people that make democracy work. And our original logo. I don't think we use this anymore, do we Jenner, the original logo of she's nodding your head no. But our original logo featured old rust belt steelworks as a metaphor for how democracy only works through the efforts of people in and out of government all working together, different kinds of institutions doing the hard work of democracy, and Tammy Patrick and her organization, the National Association of Election Officials and more importantly, the people they represent, and the people with whom they work really are the workforce that carry out American elections. And overall, I think they do it quite well. As we've said before, on the show, elections in the US are highly decentralized. laws around elections are made largely at the state level. And then the states rely on their own unique distributions of power to counties and local level workers. And as Kandi points out, in her interview, the people she represents go by all kinds of different names. So here in Pennsylvania, for example, we have 67 different county boards of elections. And these boards are composed of three county residents from each party. I know the names of ours from local politics. So they're from both parties. And the board, then there are four full time employees, including a director, and this is who carries out elections at the county level Cantus Not to put you on the spot. But do you know how that's set up in North Carolina?

Candis Watts Smith
Well, what I was gonna say is that, so Pennsylvania has 67 county boards of election, North Carolina has 100. And I'm really glad that we brought Tammy to the show, because I mean, I think she just does such a great job of really helping us to understand the nuances of the day to day work that people have to put in the institutional knowledge that people have the kind of the things that we don't see, she really kind of helps to clarify that things don't just appear from nowhere, that we depend on upwards of 700,000 people across 10,000 districts, we're going to talk a lot about the 2024 election, that's going to come up a lot. And I always cringe a little bit when we use election in the singular. And it's not wrong, but it makes it sound like there's just kind of one centralized top down system, designed with consistency under one law that we all do the same thing. And what Tammy really helps us to see is that there are hundreds of 1000s of people that are implementing at least 50 sets have different rules by each state that percolate up that require people to do a range of different things depending on where they live that we need all of these people to have familiarity with the laws and the policy of their part of the world in order for democracy to work. So you know, the thing is, is and again, I'm glad that she's here is that elections, you know, you show up at your polling station, if things are going While it feels like magic, and so just to have her to talk about the kind of long term work, the collective knowledge that undergirds these systems, and the many individuals that bring them to fruition, I'm glad that she's here.

Michael Berkman
So now, as we've come to meet, for example, Rudy Freeman and her daughter and her daughter, che Moss, women to election workers in Georgia, who just financially decimated Rudy Giuliani, for the way that he lied about them, after the 2024 election, lied about the, I'm sorry, after the 2020 election and whine about them in quite racialized terms as well, not even particularly subtly. But you know, I mean, the two of them are not a typical of election employees or civil servants. They're from the community, they're of the community. Public sector jobs have long provided economic security for black families. And so disproportionately they're going to be African American. And they had their lives utterly destroyed by Donald Trump and Rudy Giuliani for and others. Gateway Pundit, I think is in there as well. For the for the claims that they made around around data and ballots.

Candis Watts Smith
I often, I have a team of people that I work with, and I talk a lot about the idea that when things aren't going right, nobody knows that they're there. Yeah, it's when things that are going wrong, that you kind of figure out who's responsible for this. Unfortunately, in this case, this like doesn't work that way. Right? Nothing went wrong. Nothing went wrong on their side of the equation, right that folks were doing their job diligently doing the very mundane, but incredibly important tasks that move elections along. And people a leads, largely conservative, mostly, exclusively, to say that actually know that they are doing something more sinister than what appears out of like making things out of whole cloth. And so it's really, you know, anonymity, on some level is like a gift and a curse. Right that. So the fact that we know who shame us is, is not because she did anything wrong. But because, you know, she and her mom were targeted by the President of the United States of America, at that time for doing her job while being black. I mean, that's essentially what it came down to and to facilitate the big lie that the election was stolen, and largely stolen in minority communities, Detroit and places like that. And so, again, it's just I'm glad that we have Tammy to really illuminate the nuances here. Because I think we just need a greater appreciation for a group of people who either have been anonymous or demonized.

Jenna Spinelle
Yeah, and Tammy's group, one of the things we talked about in the interview, they put together a lot of resources to help both of you know, full time election officials and volunteers understand the processes and help them do their jobs. I know they're already hard at work on getting everything ready for everything to come this year. So let's go now to the interview with Tammy Patrick.
Jenna Spinelle
Tammy Patrick, welcome to Democracy Works. Thanks for joining us today.

Tammy Patrick
Thanks so much for having me. Good to be here.

Jenna Spinelle
So I'm sure some of our listeners have heard you on the PBS news hour or maybe read interviews with you in the New York Times or other outlets that you've been quoted in. But for listeners who might not be familiar with the election Center and the work that you do, can you just tell us a bit about that to kick things off?

Tammy Patrick
Absolutely. So election center is what is commonly known as, but it's actually the National Association of election officials. And we've been around for almost 40 years. I've been a member for half of that time. And it's an association that's comprised almost entirely of election officials. But we also have members who are in the corporate community, nonprofit community that work in the election space. So it's state and local election officials and we have a variety of programming over the course of the year. We have workshops and national conferences. And then I think one of the most important things that the association does is we have a collaborations the Institute of academic research Jim policy through Auburn University and we do a certification program. So we've certified close to or actually a little more now than 1500 election officials in the country. So it's an exciting program. I myself graduated through it back in 2007. Which doesn't seem that long ago, but I guess it was.

Jenna Spinelle
Yeah. And it can you say more about what exactly an election official is, knowing that elections are done differently in every place? I imagine there's some variance in what constitutes an election official? Or maybe not, you tell me? Yeah,

Tammy Patrick
Absolutely. And that's spot on. So across the country, and it's debatable exactly how many election jurisdictions we have some say, quote, the number around 8000 have, say it's closer to around 10,000 jurisdictions, the election officials go by a lot of different names, whether they're the county supervisor, recorder, auditor or clerk, the function of conducting election encompasses a lot of tasks. So you have voter registration. And in one state that might be done by a clerk in another state, it might be the tax assessor, in another state, it might be an auditor or supervisor. So there are a lot of different names that get that get used across the country. And even at the state level, it's the same thing, the important piece is really the function of the role in the job that they have. And so it's really those individuals who are tasked with the conduct of the election, the administration of the election, the oversight of the election, those are our members. And they, you know, they have many names, but the tasks that they do, are often shared.

Jenna Spinelle
Right. And, you know, as you've been talking about in the media recently, the threats that they're receiving and the factors complicating their lives and their day to day work are often seem to be the same, or at least similar trends across the board. And I certainly want to come back and talk more about that. But you have been in your current role as CEO for programs for just about a year now, you had your one year anniversary on December 1, how is the first year been? Like, what do you what comes to mind as you reflect back on 2023. And what's on your mind, as you look ahead to 2024,

Tammy Patrick
We are now over 17, 150 members, which is I believe, the largest number of membership we've ever had, our convenings are seeing a growth in attendance. We have a lot of interest in the work that we're doing. And we're just really excited for what we can provide to our members. And we're listening to our members in a way that I think is really important in this moment, because election officials, as you mentioned, have been under attack, I often say that they're under resourced, they're understaffed, they're underpaid, and now they're under attack. And so we need to make sure that they're supported, that they feel supported, that they have the tools and the resources they need. And in this moment, that's more important than ever before.

Jenna Spinelle
And those attacks seem to dominate the media conversation about election officials, I wonder how much of a role they play at your gatherings and kind of the day to day work and interactions that you're having with your members.

Tammy Patrick
So we definitely hear from our members, how it's impacting both themselves, as well as their staff and their poll workers and their voters. But one of the things that I think of as bright lights in this moment, is that we still have members who wants to go out and register voters who understand the importance of this moment, they understand that a democratic republic relies upon its citizens to be engaged not just in voting, but in the conduct of the election itself. And so we while we've had a number of people leave the field, it's often referred to reasonably as the mass exodus from the field. We also have people who have doubled down in their dedication to end commitment to the profession that they love, and we're attracting more people to the field. In this moment, we just need to make sure that those who are taking up the mantle are doing so with the correct motivations. If someone believes that they can become a local election official or become a poll worker and have an outsized influence on the election. I think it's very important for them to know that not on the watch of existing election officials. Everyone is very much attuned to and understands the threat that insiders could play in any election cycle. And either through oversight from other workers, oversight from other agencies, oversight from political and non partisan observers, it's just not going to happen. They might people are going to probably try to do things. But it is not going to it's not going to work. It didn't work in 2020. It hasn't worked in the past. And it's not going to work in the future, because that is not how free and fair elections are conducted. And they'll certainly not how they're conducted in United States of America,

Jenna Spinelle
As you said, there, this is something that's going to be tried, right, trying to get election deniers or folks like that into some of these positions, whether they're, you know, paid staff or volunteer, I guess what guidance are you offering your members about how to push back against that how to kind of cut that off at the path how to prevent these folks from being those reps who can change the system from within.

Tammy Patrick

So all of the states and localities are doing a good review of their policies, practices and procedures to take a look and say, if in fact, we have someone who tries to disrupt the process, and I'm using kind of broad, broad swipe terms here, because it could happen and manifest in a number of ways. If someone tries to disrupt whether it's through challenging voters are causing a problem at the polling place, or slowing down the count at a tabulation facility, what mechanisms are in place in the current law, in current practice, to stop that type of disruption to hold those people accountable? And so I think it's important to know that, you know, we do have a court system that has played a prominent role in ensuring that laws are upheld, and I think we'll continue to do so. So what we're talking to our members about is how exactly are you reviewing your policies and your procedures? What sort of support do you need? Where are there gaps, and that's where I've been talking not only to members, my association, but other associations as well associations of legislators, associations of other individuals that are vested in this process, so that they are also looking from the role that they play in this process, because that's one of the things it's so important to notice that when an election goes on, it's anywhere from 700,000 or more poll workers, there's an additional, you know, 1000s of people who serve as observers. So an election is really a time in which the community turns out to make sure that their voices are being heard, effectively. And that's why it's important that everyone who plays a role understands legally, what their role is, and what to look out for. I know when I was an election official in Maricopa County, I did the training for the political parties of their observers. And I wanted to make sure that they knew you know, what they should be looking out for, and also what their abilities were, who they can talk to in a polling place, how close could they stand to the voting equipment, because all of these measures that are in place in most states are the additional ways in which we secure the integrity and the legitimacy of the outcome of the election? Yeah.

Jenna Spinelle
So you know, to kind of add, on top of all of this, there are problems that happen, right? I mean, things will go wrong. We're human, right. These are our systems. And so it seems to me that there's also a bit of a high wire act with, you know, how to investigate and run down errors or problems that might happen during the course of an election, but without providing fodder to people who are waiting to hang a conspiracy theory over on every little thing that happened. So I guess, how are you thinking about that issue? And maybe the way that the messaging around problems and errors has changed over the course of the time. You've been doing this? I imagine it's changed a lot since the early 2000s.

Tammy Patrick
It certainly has. So when I first started election officials, we would often lament that we were toiling away in obscurity, we had some observers, we always had observers in the tabulation center. But you know, there were very few at the polling place. Because they, you know, they just weren't there. So it's definitely the tenuous situation where you want to be fully transparent, but you need to make sure that people understand what it is they're seeing, and also, that people make mistakes, and those people include voters. So sometimes voters don't follow the instructions on the ballot. And depending on the rules of engagement in that state, an election official may or not be able to sufficiently register the way in which that voter wanted to make their vote count. Every election there'll be a transcription error keying error. There will be you know, a problem with a printing mistake, a proofing mistake, there might be problem with the programming of a voting equipment in one place or another. And this happens for a variety of reasons, all of these errors that can occur should be able to be recovered from should be able to be identified. And depending on the rules in a state, the problem can be identified well before election day, particularly say for instance, if voters have the ability to vote by mail or to vote early in person, that's when we often identify issues well in advance of the election day and before the final vote is cast. So having some, some shifting in the electorate of when and where and how they vote has actually been helpful in finding errors before you know, it's quote, unquote, too late, the 2024 primaries and general election. And it's also, you know, since 2016, when there's been an error, there was, you know, an immediate reaction of does this mean, we were hacked, does this mean that foreign or domestic adversaries have, you know, gotten into the system, and to a last incident, every single one of those, it's come down to a human error of transcription. Because as I mentioned, before, you know, election officials are really exhausted, they're tired, they're under resourced. They're understaffed. And that's when mistakes can occur. So if, in fact, we truly care about the accuracy of our elections, the legitimacy of our elections, we should resource, our elections and make sure that people have what they need, in order to do the best possible job.

Jenna Spinelle
You know, the other thing, election officials are not our communications professionals, in many ways in in, in many cases, and they're often put in a position where they have to explain these things and kind of take on the people who are trying to maybe spread falsehood and these kinds of things. What advances have the folks in your organization made in that realm over the past couple of years? Are there messages or ways to communicate that have broken through and maybe challenging some of the misinformation and conspiracies that are out there about elections.

Tammy Patrick
This is certainly a trying time, I mean, election administration started out as a very clerical task after Bush v Gore in 2000, then we have kind of a change in the type of technology that we're using. And we used to say, you know, now election officials need to also be IT managers. And then in 2016, oh, and by the way, a cybersecurity expert 2020 happens, and they need to be an expert in global pandemics and public health. And now after 2020 into 2022, and beyond communication specialists on Miss Indus and Mal information. The real challenge here is that the claims that are being made about the election system are very much emotional, and fear based. They're short, and they are succinct. Elections are stolen. They have been rigged. They are, you know, you heard the claims. They evoke in a visceral reaction by someone who hears it, because they think that they are probably true, and of course, they are not. But the answer to that is not so pithy. It is a complicated explanation of all of the ways in which we secure our elections, all of the ways in which there are checks and balances, all of the ways in which quality is controlled, and, and the legitimacy and integrity is secured. And that's part of the challenge election officials have in this moment. So one of the things we try and do with our members is provide them with the resources that are created by all sorts of organizations, whether it's the Election Assistance Commission, or nonprofits like the elections group or Center for Civic design, or others that have created communication tools, to as well as academic research, I should know, there's a number of really good studies out there about what are the proper messaging, ways that you can talk about these things, so that voters will understand. But herein lies the additional complicating factor if it wasn't complicated enough. Some people don't want to hear the facts. To some facts don't matter. I had an election official said they spent about a town hall and we're doing a tour of their facility and, you know, had spent over an hour showing everybody all of their security protocols. And then they sat down with one person who was very vocal and for 25 minutes went over all their questions. And at the end, the person said, look, let's just set the facts aside. And that's where we are in this moment, is we're in a post fact, environment for some people. For some people, the truth and the facts still matter, but for a portion of Have our fellow citizens, it doesn't. And the only thing I think that will bring them back around is for individuals who know what the truth is to speak the truth and not continue to fuel the flames of myths and disinformation. And the only way those individuals are going to do that is if we hold people accountable and responsible for their actions and their words, and we remove the incentives. So for some, they're doing it because they need to get out of their primary. For others, they're doing it because they are lining their coffers, in their pockets with dollars by continuing this, you know, narrative. But I think what we're seeing, you know, most definitely the most recent weeks, and as we move forward, as more of the facts come out, many of these people know that they're not telling the truth, and many of them know, and are doing it just for their own gratification and and their own games. Yeah.

Jenna Spinelle
So there is this mass exodus that you described earlier, I wonder if there are places that are in danger of not having enough staffing or enough resources to carry out their elections in November, and if so, what happens, then, what?

Tammy Patrick
We're seeing across the country often times is that someone from within the office rises up to a more senior leadership position, or someone from a small jurisdiction, you know, goes to a larger jurisdiction. And the challenge will be if there are places that don't have anyone, whether or not their laws have a mechanism in place for the election to still go on, because elections have to happen. And so in most cases, they have a mechanism in place where a county board of supervisors or county commissioners or state board would have the ability to appoint someone to do the work or to do the job.

Jenna Spinelle
So what else is on your mind? As you've looked out to the rest of 2024? It seems like there's a lot of dangers, as we've discussed, but also some reasons for Hope You strike me as a naturally optimistic person. Maybe not, maybe you just play one on podcasts and on TV. But yeah, how are you thinking about the next year to come?

Tammy Patrick
That's funny, I try to be I try to be an optimist. And I think that there are a lot of things to be really excited about as we move into 2024, all of them kind of point back to the voter stration. We've seen, you know, large turnouts in 2020, we have more Americans vote than ever before in a global pandemic. And not only that, but voters changed their voting behavior and took early action. And that's what we're going to need to see in 2024. Because there is still some chaos in this system, and there's still some uncertainty. So people want to take early action in making sure they're registered, making sure their information is current, if they want to vote by mail, get that request in early, get the ballot back early. If they want to vote in person, think about going and voting, you know, in an early voting location of you're going to vote on election day goes, you know, go at a time when in your local area, maybe it isn't as busy, the very first thing in the morning on election day, it's gonna be busy, there gonna be people lining up hours before the polls open. So there'll be a line. The other piece to think about is when you see a line, don't be discouraged. It's more challenging to me, if there's not a line at all, that means there are no voters. So what we want to see are lines of voters moving and being processed quickly and effectively. So we don't want to see voters standing in long lines for a long time. But having a long line that you only have to wait 1015 minutes, that's kind of ideal. So just make sure that there's early action happening. The other piece of this is, you know, if you have the ability to talk to a candidate, ask them what they would do if they lost. And if they don't believe there's any way they could lose, and they don't, you know, immediately say, Well, you know, if there was evidence, I would, you know, I would take it to court and if I lost in court, I would concede that's what we need to have as we need to get back to a time where candidates understand that they lost and in concede in a civil way. And thankfully, we saw that in most cases in 2022. And hopefully that will continue into 2024 and beyond. Tammy,

Jenna Spinelle
We will leave it there. Thank you so much for joining us today.

Tammy Patrick
Thanks so much for having me. And I look forward to seeing you all at the polls, the Dropbox or at the after party.

Michael Berkman
Welcome back. Thank you Jenna. That was a good interview was interesting to hear from Tammy here. You know one thing that Tammy mentioned that I wanted to pick up on is that you know, these are human beings. And they can and do make mistakes and mistakes are not necessarily weather mistakes. So they're not intentional, but they can have serious consequences mistakes. Some people who are my age listening to this podcast probably remember the butterfly ballots, which were the very poorly designed ballots in West Palm Beach, Florida in the 2000 election where the holes on these old punch ballots didn't quite line up with the candidates. And in a result that probably through the election to George W. Bush, people who thought they were voting for one candidate ended up voting for Pat Buchanan. And that was an indication of how people can make mistakes, and there was really no correction that could be made for it. And there was a story in our local newspaper here in Pennsylvania just the other day about how the shortages and election workers that we discussed in the first part, and that Tammy mentioned, as well in her interview also can have really important consequences right now actually may be kind of trivial, but could be significant. So they were talking about how Greene County, Pennsylvania just doesn't have enough people running their elections these days. And they just had a string of errors, and their most recent elections, misprinted ballots, mistakes in how ballots were processed. I mean, all kinds of problems that came up. And that, you know, the problem would be, even if it's not enough votes to make a difference, it adds to a perception that's really problematic these days, especially in a state like Pennsylvania, that there's something wrong with the election. And I mean, really, especially Pennsylvania, because, of course, we were one of the contested states in the 2020 election. And Pennsylvania, is actually the only state where President Trump won a court case about the elections, there's all kinds of doubt, sewn around Pennsylvania elections.

Candis Watts Smith
Tammy is talking to us in a very particular moment about how people are being threatened and don't want to participate in these really important jobs because they're being attacked. And I think what I hear her talking about is how fragile how much democracy relies on a currency of faith and trust, that as long as we have a sense of faith and trust around our elections, they work fine. And when things go wrong, we chalk it we have historically kind of chalked it up to like, oh, man, that was terrible. But you know, no one's we all want the best for our society, we all kind of want about the same thing. But when faith is eroded, any minor mistake becomes more than that. So when people are told that election officials are corrupt, and those people decide to drop out of their jobs, because they don't want their families to be threatened, then the quality of elections may actually decline, like in real life, and not just like boogeyman world, but they will decline because when dozens of people quit hundreds of years of institutional knowledge are removed with them, then new people don't want to take the job. And then there are fewer people there to ensure that mistakes aren't made.

Michael Berkman
Yeah, I'm really glad you brought it back around to this, Candice. Because I think that the way you just talked about this really captures why all these election why all this lying about the 2020 election and the persistence in repeating it over and over and the pervasiveness of it now within the Republican Party, at all levels of the Republican Party is so corrosive to democracy. Yeah. Right. Because now, you know, so many people now are just conditioned to not accept the result of an election. And as we've talked about, on the show many times, this is a pretty central feature of democracy. Yeah, right, that you lose. And then you say, I lost and you move on and you fight again another day. And I mean, that is kind of how democracy, one political scientists once put it in a democracy parties lose. Yeah, that's just how it works. And it is so corrosive, when it is persistently stated. And, and what I really liked about, you know, talking with Tammy today is the way it allows us to see how this operates at the very local level, you know, all the way down to the people that are administering the election. She really goes into that and of course, I think the whole country has seen it a bit with the election workers from Georgia whether or not they've you know, really thought about it in these terms of But this is why all this election denialism is so corrosive to democracy,

Candis Watts Smith
It boggles my mind that we have policies on the books that do prevent people from fully realizing their rights to vote. But we are not having a conversation about that, or those folks aren't having a conversation about that. They're having a conversation about things that are simply not real. But those conversations are the ones that are moving us, and that are threatening the quality of our elections. So we have to thank Tammy Patrick, and the good people at the election Center and our local poll workers, whether we see them on Election Day or any day before and after, I'm really pleased that we brought her on to highlight the work and the necessity of the work that hundreds of 1000s of people who had once toiled in obscurity are now being highlighted but not necessarily in a positive way, and we can counteract that. So I would like to encourage us to do that. And to thank our audience today. I'm Candis Watts Smith.

Michael Berkman
I'm Michael Berkman. Thanks for listening.

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