Election official turnover hit 41% in 2024—the highest in 25 years—and their replacements are running elections with months of experience instead of years

In 2024, 41% of local chief election officials turned over—the highest rate in at least 25 years. In the year following the 2024 election alone, 53 chief local election officials in Western states left their jobs, nearly matching the 55 who departed after the 2020 election. These are not interchangeable bureaucrats; they are the people who know how to configure ballot templates for their county's specific equipment, how to recruit poll workers from local civic organizations, which polling locations have ADA issues that require temporary ramps, and how to troubleshoot the county's 15-year-old tabulator when it jams at 2 AM on election night. The human cost is severe and specific. In Shasta County, California, the Clerk and Registrar of Voters retired in 2024 after nearly two decades, citing heart failure from job-related stress. Her successor resigned less than a year later for similar health reasons. In Clark County, Nevada, the longtime Registrar reported that threats escalated to the point that police were checking on his home hourly and that his family was also targeted. These are not isolated incidents—a Brennan Center survey found that one in three election officials has experienced threats, harassment, or abuse. The people being driven out are disproportionately the most experienced ones, the ones who have run enough elections to know what can go wrong. The structural reason this persists is that election administration in the U.S. was designed for an era when it was an unglamorous, apolitical clerical function. Salaries are set by county pay scales that treat the election clerk the same as any other department head, despite the fact that the job now involves death threats, 80-hour weeks during election season, cybersecurity responsibilities, and intense public scrutiny. There is no federal certification, career ladder, or professional development pipeline for election officials. When an experienced official leaves, the replacement is often a political appointee or the next person willing to take the job—and they are learning on the fly how to run an election that serves hundreds of thousands of voters.