'Our democracy can't function' without poll workers. Here's how some states are protecting them
Minnesota Secretary of State Steve Simon is nervous about the 2024 presidential election.
The Gopher State will need roughly 30,000 elections workers to oversee and administer hundreds of polling places, but it’s becoming difficult to get civic-minded Americans to volunteer.
That's because Minnesota, like many other states, saw an uptick in abusive behavior towards poll workers leading up to last year’s midterms, he said.
“If we continue to see a climate that is increasingly negative or unwelcoming to them, we're going to have problems recruiting and retaining those folks,” Simon told Paste BN.
“It is a problem in Minnesota. It is a problem nationally.”
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Among the ongoing fallout from the 2020 presidential contest is the backlash against local and state poll workers, whom experts say are the lifeblood of the U.S. electoral system.
Those civil servants have been pushed to their limits. They have faced harassment, acts of intimidation and death threats.
In one Virginia county the entire election staff quit after being bombarded by false claims of voter fraud, according to NBC News.
But some states are moving to establish new or stronger protections for poll workers ahead of the next presidential race for a role that has gone from an obscure and quaint volunteer position to a frontline national security job.
"Our democracy can't function unless we have people who are willing to work as poll workers," said Larry Norden, senior director for elections and government at the Brennan Center for Justice.
"I've talked to a lot of election officials who have concerns about recruiting poll workers, because there's going to be a fear from people that in doing their civic duty and helping their communities, they may be opening themselves up to personal threats."
Survey: 1 in 6 poll workers face threats
The people who volunteer to assist in administering U.S. elections have become more of a target in the years since former President Donald Trump has refused to accept losing the 2020 race.
At least one in six have experienced threats because of their job, a survey by the Brennan Center for Justice found.
Another one out of five indicated they were likely to quit ahead of the 2024 presidential election.
The immediate worry is that the wave of harassment and abuse will lead to a major loss of institutional knowledge, which experts say can lead to more administrative mistakes that further erode confidence in the system.
In Nevada, for example, the Brennan Center reports 10 of 17 counties will have a different election administrator in 2024 than during the previous presidential race.
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Arizona has seen a similar exodus, where 11 out of 15 counties have witnessed senior election administration officials leave their posts, according to the center.
Secretary of State Adrian Fontes said the situation is an "emergency" ahead of the 2024 elections given the amount of planning for a presidential election.
"This is a question about patriotism, and our civic faith in each other as Americans that doesn't have anything to do with politics," Fontes told Paste BN.
"And the problem that I have is these authoritarians want us to lose faith in one another."
What are states doing to protect poll workers?
But pro-democracy advocates are encouraged as states across the country are taking action, especially in battlegrounds where the 2024 contest is expected to be close.
Nineteen states have introduced measures aimed at protecting election officials since last September, according to Voting Rights Lab, a nonpartisan group that tracks election bills.
At least six of those states—California, Colorado, Maine, New Hampshire, Oregon and Washington—have successfully enacted new laws.
Those new protections add stiffer criminal penalties for people convicted of threatening election workers, for instance, and shield officials' home addresses from being shared.
Washington, for example, updated its cyber harassment statuette make it a felony to target election workers online.
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This year five others states have similar measures that are at different stages of passing, including Virginia, Arizona and Nevada, which would allow election officials to request that certain personal information be kept confidential.
Those state level proposals aren’t limited to Democratic-controlled states either.
Republicans in Missouri, for instance, proposed a measure that makes it a felony to tamper with an election official “in performance of their official duties.” Similar bills have been filed in red states such as Indiana, Oklahoma and Montana.
'A sacred process'
Simon, the Minnesota secretary of state, praised efforts in other states to give officials and law enforcement more tools to combat the onslaught against election workers.
The Minnesota secretary of state's office has told legislators that they have received disturbing reports of administrators being followed to their vehicles; being bombarded with harassing phone calls at home; and in some instances being “physically accosted” at their workplace.
Simon has leaned into supporting a measure working its way through the legislature—called the Election Worker Protection Act—that looks to stop intimidation of election officials in various ways.
He said a "huge chunk" of people who normally sign up in his state help out during the upcoming election have bowed out, adding that much like police officers and medical professionals, election workers and others who oversee the voting process must be looked at differently.
"In terms of security, I think generally speaking, they are in charge of a sacred process, and if someone is going to interfere with that sacred process through their conduct, I think (poll workers are) in a special category," Simon said.