Journalists of color make up less than 17 percent of newsroom staff, and account for just 13 percent of newsroom leadership. Why are these numbers still so low? And what is our responsibility as funders?
As we’ve said before,there are serious inequities that need to be addressed to create a culture of journalism that helps people meaningfully participate in our democracy. One of the most persistent is this lack of diversity in newsrooms. This is a problem because newsrooms that do not reflect their communities are not able to serve their communities. Full stop.
So what’s going on? The leadership of majority-white newsrooms still latches onto the myth that there’s a pipeline problem — blaming the lack of diversity on a lack of job candidates. But past research has shown that graduates of color are hired by newsrooms at lower rates than their white counterparts, while a recent survey shows a disturbing trend of mostly mid-career, Black women exiting the industry. Namely, the candidates are there, but newsroom leadership is failing to hire and retain them. Let’s dig into why this pipeline myth is so persistently harmful, what’s really happening, and what funders can do.
A look under the hood of the pipeline myth
Basically, what’s happening is that some newsroom leaders are relying on exclusionary recruiting efforts, such as:
Prioritizing applicants from elite journalism schools that are often alienating institutions themselves
Trying to attract talent via unpaid internships that are prohibitive for professionals from low-income backgrounds
Calling on their existing networks that reflect and replicate the same inequities
When instead they could be lifting barriers by:
Looking beyond top-ranked journalism schools (or even college degrees!)
Shifting recruiting efforts to focus on the talent found inside groups like the Asian American Journalists Association, National Association of Black Journalists, National Association of Hispanic Journalists, National Lesbian and Gay Journalists Association, Native American Journalists Association, South Asian Journalists Association – by building authentic relationships, not just reaching out when newsrooms want to circulate a job posting.
But the real myth of the “pipeline problem” is that diversifying newsrooms is all about hiring. It’s not. It’s also about building an inclusive culture that supports the growth and leadership of journalists from all backgrounds.
The deeper issue: newsroom culture
For years, journalists of color have been sounding the alarm on an industry that consistently undermines their lived experiences, excludes them from leadership roles, and pushes them out when they dare to push back.
Last summer, when Black reporters spoke up about the emotional trauma of covering the killings of Black men and women, editors responded by disqualifying them from being objective. They failed to provide them with the support that covering these traumatic stories require. And still, many Black journalists bore the burden of reporting on civil unrest and racism in this country in newsrooms that lacked a deep understanding of racism. Journalists of color, and specifically Black women in journalism, are disproportionately targets of the worst online abuse and harassment when covering these issues. These stories made front pages and headlines, but they came at a steep personal and professional cost.
These issues contribute to hostile environments for journalists from marginalized communities, who are expected to leave their identities at the door until they’re forced to educate their colleagues on issues that hit close to home.
There are many things that newsrooms can do to create a more inclusive environment — from turning to guidance from groups like Journalists of Color on Slack and the Journalists of Color Resource Guide that offer a community for minorities to access support and resources that help them navigate the field, to engaging in difficult conversations about media industry biases that hinder journalists of color. One of these is the myth of “objectivity”, which is rooted in the lens of white men and largely ignores the perspectives and expertise of Black and brown reporters.
As funders, it is our responsibility to follow the lead of these reporters. It is critical that we center the experiences of those most frequently and deeply marginalized within their newsrooms and journalism in our grantmaking practices. We must ensure our investments are not propping up harmful institutions with bandaid solutions, and instead supporting genuine, radical change.
Funding power building is key
If you’re going to fund efforts around increasing newsroom diversity and building more inclusive newsrooms, you must also invest in the power building and sharing efforts that journalists of color are leading. This means funding programs who address retention, mentorship, promotion, leadership, safety, and community building for journalists of color. This is the only way to move from surface-level representation to centering equity and justice in journalism.
Some organizations we currently fund that seek to build and share power with traditionally excluded journalists include:
The Ida B. Wells Society, an organization dedicated to increasing and retaining journalists of color in investigative reporting.
Press On, a Southern media collective that catalyzes change and advances justice through the practice of movement journalism through solidarity with oppressed communities that birth social movements.
OpenNews, a community of journalism peers strengthening relationships across organizations to build a more equitable future for journalism.
Free Press, whose Media 2070 team is inviting all of us to reimagine the future of journalism with reparations and justice.
Talented job candidates from Historically Black Colleges and Universities, Hispanic Serving Institutions, Tribal Colleges and Universities, and women’s colleges across the country are ready to launch their journalism careers. Funding these organizations will provide support to journalists of color to stay in the industry long enough to build power: become editorial decision makers, become hiring managers, and mentor new staff. They are building the structures, culture, and practice that will help become the next generation of newsroom leaders.
For several years, Democracy Fund has been pushing for greater platform transparency and working to protect against the harms of digital voter suppression, surveillance advertising, coronavirus misinformation, and harassment online. But the stakes for this work have never been higher.
One in five Americans rely primarily on social media for their political news and information, according to the Pew Research Center. This means a small handful of companies have enormous control over what a broad swath of America sees, reads, and hears. Now that the coronavirus has moved even more of our lives online companies like Facebook, Google, and Twitter have more influence than ever before. Yet, we know remarkably little about how these social media platforms operate.
With dozens of academic researchers working to uncover these elusive answers, it is essential that we fund and support their work despite Facebook’s repeated attempts to block academic research on their platform.
Earlier this month Facebook abruptly shut down the accounts of a group of New York University researchers from Cybersecurity for Democracy, whose Ad Observer browser extension has done pathbreaking work tracking political ads and the spread of misinformation on the social media company’s platform.
In full support of Cybersecurity for Democracy, Democracy Fund today joined with its NetGain Partnership colleagues to release this open letter in support of our grantee, Cybersecurity for Democracy, and the community of independent researchers who study the impacts of social media in our democracy.
The Backstory
For the past three years, a team of researchers at NYU’s Center for Cybersecurity has been studying Facebook’s advertising practices.Last year, the team, led by Laura Edelson and Damon McCoy, deployed a browser extension called Ad Observer that allows users to voluntarily share information with the researchers about ads that Facebook shows them. The opt-in browser extension uses data that has been volunteered by Facebook users and analyzes it in an effort to better understand the 2020 election and other subjects in the public interest. The research has brought to light systemic gaps in the Facebook Ad Library API, identified misinformation in political ads, and improved our understanding of Facebook’s amplification of divisive partisan campaigns.
Earlier this month, Facebook abruptly shut down Edelson’s and McCoy’s accounts, as well as the account of a lead engineer on the project. This action by Facebook also cut off access to more than two dozen other researchers and journalists who relied on Ad Observer data for their research and reporting, including timely work on COVID-19 and vaccine misinformation.
“Platforms have strong incentives to remain opaque to public scrutiny. Platforms profit from running ads — some of which are deeply offensive — and by keeping their algorithms secret and hiding data on where ads run they avoid accountability — circumventing advertiser complaints, user protests, and congressional inquiries. Without reliable information on how these massive platforms operate and how their technologies function, there can be no real accountability. When complaints are raised, the companies frequently deny or make changes behind the scenes. Even when platforms admit something has gone wrong, they claim to fix problems without explaining how, which makes it impossible to verify the effectiveness of the “fix.” Moreover, these fixes are often just small changes that only paper over fundamental problems, while leaving the larger structural flaws intact. This trend has been particularly harmful for BIPOC who already face significant barriers to participation in the public square.”
This latest action by Facebook undermines the independent, public-interest research and journalism that is crucial for the health of our democracy. Research on platform and algorithmic transparency, such as the work led by Cybersecurity for Democracy, is necessary to develop evidence-based policy that is vital to a healthy democracy.
A Call to Action
Collective action is required to address Facebook’s repeated attempts to curtail journalism and independent, academic research into their business and advertising practices. Along with our NetGain partners, we have called for three immediate remedies:
We ask Facebook to reinstate the accounts of the NYU researchers as a matter of urgency. Researchers and journalists who conduct research that is ethical, protects privacy, and is in the public interest should not face suspension from Facebook or any other platform.
We call on Facebook to amend its terms of service within the next three months, following up on an August 2018 call to establish a safe harbor for research that is ethical, protects privacy and is in the public interest.
We urge government and industry leaders to ensure access to platform data for researchers and journalists working in the public interest.
The foundations who make up the NetGain Partnership share a vision for an open, secure, and equitable internet space where free expression, economic opportunity, knowledge exchange, and civic engagement can thrive. This attempt to impede the efforts of independent researchers is a call for us all to protect that vision, for the good of our communities, and the good of our democracy.
In the past year, during a pandemic and national uprising for racial justice, our grantees rose to the challenge of authoritarianism, attacks on journalism, rampant misinformation, a crisis election, and increased political violence. We are truly grateful for and proud to support these efforts. As we look to the future, we will build upon the strengths of our grantee community and what we have learned together.
While we have made great strides towards an open and just multi-racial democracy, that progress has triggered a profound and dangerous backlash that threatens the very core of our republic. It is imperative that across the sector, we reflect on how this reality challenges the foundational assumptions of our work and craft strategies commensurate to this moment.
Last year, ongoing political crises culminated in our choice to anchor Democracy Fund’s identity in our democratic principles instead of bipartisanship. But we have planned to review our strategy since our launch, when we committed to formally revisiting our strategy every five years. Currently our organization is engaging in some deep thinking — while continuing our current grantmaking — and plan to wrap up in 2022 as we know the need to take up this work now could not be more urgent.
We are still early in the process of developing a new organizational strategy, but a few central ideas have emerged as anchors in our exploration:
We cannot achieve a healthier democracy unless we deal with the longstanding structural barriers designed to prevent majority-rule. To address these barriers effectively, afocus on racial justice and equity must be embedded across our work.
The racist, illiberal, authoritarian faction that is ascendant in our political system represents an existential threat to our democracy. Failure to withstand the threat posed by this faction could lead to irreparable damage. Over the coming years, we must weaken this coalition and defend against its attacks on our democracy, while strengthening the pro-democracy movement.
An incremental approach to reform without a vision for transformational change will not succeed. We must disrupt the culture, institutions, and rules of the game to unrig our political system and transform the fight for a more open and just democracy.
We don’t expect to have clarity on all program areas until at least mid-2022, as the expertise of our grantees and other field leaders are crucial to our approach. We have already engaged some partners in our work thus far, and we anticipate many more opportunities to do so in the months to come.
We feel energized by these powerful ideas. They align with our values and the communities we support. Integrating these concepts into our strategies and grantee portfolios will take time and our team is ready to dive in. It is clear that there are no silver bullets or easy answers for our democracy. But we are ready to join with our many partners to do what’s needed — listening to and building on the work of the leaders and organizations who came before us. We are grateful, as always, for those who have already engaged in our process and continue to be champions for our democracy.
Last summer, solidarity became a national buzzword. Thousands of people declared and demanded solidarity against racism in the wake of police murdering George Floyd and Breonna Taylor. Some news organizations swiftly moved beyond the statement by implementing and amplifying solidarity reporting: the practice of going directly to marginalized communities to inform accurate coverage instead of relying on authorities and elites to tell the story. But many news outlets did not go this route, and remain caught between a desire to appear neutrally “balanced” and the growing understanding that mistaking balance for accuracy can promote misinformation with grave repercussions.
As journalism funders regularly pledge to support accurate reporting, it’s time to be more specific – and more discerning – about what qualifies as accurate reporting, particularly in coverage of marginalized people.
Journalistic accuracy must be substantive — not surface-level
News organizations often achieve surface-level accuracy by amplifying the words they hear on a police scanner or during a press conference without mistyping or omitting any talking points. The problem is that accurately repeating what someone says doesn’t mean their statements are true: distortions, decontextualized self-validation, and outright lies are common. And as we know from research in the last five years alone, fact-checking after publishing doesn’t easily fix misinformation.
Think of it this way: if a reporter were writing a story about injustice affecting the house you live in, who would know the most about it? The answer is likely you. Imagine, though, that the reporter never reaches out to you. Instead, they speak with the city council, police officers, and your landlord or mortgage lender. This story might provide surface-level accuracy through amplifying “expert” voices, but it would lack the substantive accuracy that your perspective, as the most directly affected person, would provide.
Surface-level accuracy sets the stage for journalism to amplify misinformation, while substantive accuracy through solidarity practices remedies it.
Let’s consider a recent example: When police murdered George Floyd,the initial report made no mention of a police officer’s knee on his neck. At a surface-level, it is technically true that this report said, “Officers were able to get the suspect into handcuffs and noted he appeared to be suffering medical distress.” It is far from true that this report accounts for how George Floyd died. We know this because of more reliable sources who lived the moment.Four children who witnessed the murder provided the most accurate account of what happened. And in March 2021, in stark and undeniable contrast to the original police report, they provided accurate court testimony about how George Floyd was killed.
Cases like this make it so clear that when reporters center sources with institutional power and stop there, the public does not get a substantively accurate story. All too often, surface-level reporting further amplifies misinformation. Fortunately, we know that solidarity reporting can address this problem.
Solidarity reporting strengthens substantive accuracy across a range of issues
Any newsroom that covers timely and important issues should provide substantively accurate coverage. Solidarity reporting improves accuracy across a range of these issues and communities, including:
COVID-19, by addressing and accounting for the disproportionate impact on Black and brown communities in the U.S. and abroad – even when elected leaders deny the crisis.
As news organizations promise to learn from their past mistakes, journalism funders can support solidarity reporting as a way to help news outlets move beyond statements and apologies and toward achieving greater substantive accuracy.
A call for funders: Supporting accurate reporting means supporting solidarity reporting
Next time you’re reviewing a proposal, ask yourself these three questions to understand how or if solidarity is part of the reporting process:
Is the project aligned with substantive accuracy in journalism, which means including the perspectives of people directly affected by ongoing injustice?
Are the terms, frames, and definitions of the project aligned with affected communities’ self-described needs?
In the face of injustice, will leadership and contributors be able to name it and stand against it, or is the project structurally tied to maintaining a façade of neutrality?
A minimal standard of surface-level accuracy in journalism cannot suffice. Such a low standard breeds misinformation about marginalized communities and perpetuates harm against them. It’s time to support solidarity reporting and the substantive accuracy within it to help build a more just future.
Anita Varma, PhD leads the Solidarity Journalism Initiative. She is an incoming assistant professor at UT Austin’s School of Journalism & Media and senior faculty research associate at the Center for Media Engagement. Previously, she was at the Markkula Center for Applied Ethics (Santa Clara University). The Solidarity Journalism Initiative helps journalists implement solidarity in their reporting on marginalized communities. If you are a journalist or journalism supporter and would like to learn more about Solidarity Journalism, please contact anita.varma@austin.utexas.edu. You can also follow her on Twitter.
As the United States continues to reckon with the crack in its foundation, the legacy of slavery, our institutions are making small steps to finally recognize Juneteenth — commemorating the day enslaved Black people in Galveston, Texas learned of their freedom on June 19, 1865.
Yesterday, the president signed historic legislation to establish Juneteenth as a U.S. federal holiday. While the action signals a step forward as a nation, it is also a stark reminder of how far our country still has to go. Just as the journey to a perfect union doesn’t end with one verdict, a national holiday does not absolve the nation of its relationship with white supremacy.
Six months after the first Black and South Asian woman was confirmed as vice president of the United States, the right to vote remains threatened, and yet Black people are still called on to fight for democratic institutions that often don’t protect us — a bitter irony when we are historically our democracy’s strongest champions.
To be clear: symbolism is important. National recognition of Juneteenth and the celebration of its significance provide the chance to learn and discuss these difficult truths about our shared past. This weekend should absolutely be filled with events that celebrate Black culture — and shout out to that extra day off!
But imagine a world where the symbolism of a national holiday is coupled with equitable rights and a clear pro-democracy agenda. Imagine it, and use the image it conjures as motivation in the ongoing journey towards achieving that reality. Let’s call out policies that claim to secure elections but are designed to prevent Black people from making their voices heard. Let’s create and implement new reforms that foster diversity, equity, and inclusion — ones that build power and bring about racial and economic justice.
And as my dear friend LaTasha Brown of Black Voters Matter said, “This isn’t just a policy fight. We are fighting a culture of oppression.” We cannot take our foot off the gas. Instead, despite everything, we must double down.
Our democracy remains at risk until we fully reckon with the forces of systemic racism that boldly try to suppress Black voter participation while masking it with performative actions. We must stop the efforts to disenfranchise Black people or we will never achieve a healthy, open and just democracy. My grandmother often said, “baby. don’t get weary in well-doing.” These words resonate with this moment, and serve as a reminder that now is not the time to let weariness overcome the drive of good work.
America, there’s a crack in our foundation. Are we ready to rebuild?
Part of “Stewards of Democracy,” a series on findings from the 2020 Democracy Fund/Reed College Survey of Local Election Officials
In the wake of a historically competitive and challenging election, election administration and administrators continue to be flashpoints of political conflict. We want to provide a forward-looking, proactive agenda to sustain this critical part of our democracy and to support the people who serve in more than 8,000 voting jurisdictions nationwide.
For the past six weeks, we have been posting the results of the 2020 Democracy Fund/Reed College Survey of Local Election Officials as part of a “Stewards of Democracy” project. In this final post, we reflect on top takeaways from the 2020 survey and identify paths forward to support and advance the professional community of local election officials.
Here we identify key areas we believe should be a focus for state and local officials and their allies in the policy and research communities. For each, we describe what we have learned from the research as well as where we know we still have a lot to learn — critical questions that call for further experimentation and evidence.
Sustainability Advancement
What we have learned
Local election officials are a community invested with the responsibility of maintaining a piece of critical national infrastructure and administering elections for nearly 240 million eligible voters, yet they report chronic underfunding, a stressful work environment, and rapid and sometimes unexpected policy changes. Local election officials tell us that state and federal lawmakers seldom consult with them when contemplating changes in election administration.
It is vital to identify sustainable budget paths so that local election officials are not constantly faced with new and changing mandates without the resources to meet them. Local election officials are experts and should be consulted as key stakeholders in discussions of the budgets that impact their capacity, as well as legislative and policy decisions related to election administration.
Opportunities for experimentation
Adequate budgets don’t completely solve for the stress and unpredictability of election work. Sustainability also depends on ensuring sufficient and capable staff, which merits attention to recruitment, training, and retention.
Our survey results highlight the importance of professional development and training for election officials. Most officials have access to training when they begin their careers and even more receive ongoing training, but there is variation in officials’ perceptions of how effective that training is. For example, local election officials from the largest jurisdictions are the least satisfied with the effectiveness of their training.
This indicates an opportunity for differentiation in the way training is designed and delivered. To do this well, we need more experimentation in the types of training programs that are offered to election officials and the way those trainings are tailored to the needs of different jurisdictions. Experimentation would allow us to collect new evidence about the kinds of training programs that work best for a diverse and heterogeneous elections administration community.
Where we need more research and learning
The Democracy Fund/Reed College Survey of Local Election Officials provides data on the career backgrounds of the chief local election officials, how long they stay in the field, as well as their job satisfaction and what motivates them to continue doing this work. But we lack data on the staff in local election offices. This would be harder data to gather in a systematic and generalizable way, as our survey does with respect to chief officials, but studying elections office staff would fill in a missing part of the story on diversity, retention, and institutional knowledge in the profession.
Related, we know very little about the recruitment strategies and pipelines used by local election officials to attract staff, what kind of movement occurs across jurisdictions, and whether there are successful diversity initiatives that can serve as object lessons for the elections administration community. As we learn more about diversity in the field, we will have an opportunity to observe how diversity impacts the attitudes and practices of election administrators.
We have heard much this year about a wave of retirements, but we actually know next to nothing about historical rates of retirement and turnover. This makes it impossible to know if we are experiencing a brain drain or just a typical spike that occurs after a presidential year.
And while 60 percent of local election officials across the country are elected to their positions (rather than hired), we know almost nothing about how the elective path operates, and how much turnover is a result of election losses.
Networks and Community
What we have learned
Networks, both formal and informal, and “community” were mentioned again and again in responses to our survey and in our in-depth interviews as ways that local election officials learn, adapt, and maintain resilience in the face of change.
We are convinced that there is a substantial added value to regular state and regional association meetings and venues for professional development, such as Election Center and the election administration program at the University of Minnesota’s Hubert H. Humphrey School of Public Affairs. Not only do local election officials learn in these venues, but they also connect and build support networks. States and localities need to provide budgetary support or other mechanisms so that all election officials, not just those from larger and well-funded jurisdictions, can attend regular training and regional and national gatherings.
Opportunities for experimentation
While we know that networks and community are important, we need to learn more about what structures, events, and learning opportunities are cost-effective and add the most value.
State associations are highly rated as sources of information by most of our survey respondents, but these associations operate very differently from state to state. This variation provides an opportunity to learn how different ways of organizing and creating communities of local election officials produce different levels of engagement and satisfaction among members.
Our survey responses demonstrate that officials in smaller jurisdictions are far less likely than those in medium and large jurisdictions to attend a regional or national gathering of election administrators. Some national programs — such as the ELECTricity, a newsletter run by the Center for Tech and Civic Life — gear their information and outreach towardofficials in small and medium jurisdictions. As these programs mature, and new networks are developed, there will be an opportunity to learn about the tactics that bring these officials into the community and how information is shared across the field.
Where we need more research and learning
Interviews with local officials indicate that many of these public servants are connected to other professional networks outside of the elections field. Only 61 percent of local election officials — and 46 percent of those in the smallest jurisdictions — say that elections make up the majority of their workload. Even those who spend most of their time on elections often have other responsibilities, like administering courts, maintaining public records, and issuing marriage licenses. These duties connect them to other functions of their local government and other state and national networks. There is an opportunity to understand how trends in other sectors of local government may impact the work and culture of local election administration.
Voter-Centric Practices
What we have learned
The 2014 report of the Presidential Commission on Election Administration highlighted the importance of a “voter-centric” service orientation among election officials. Respondents to our surveys expressed overwhelming support for a voter-centric approach. Officials, without respect to jurisdiction size, embraced voter education and outreach as part of their jobs. This is good from a customer service perspective and also from a democracy perspective.
But there are barriers to such voter-centric practices: The most commonly cited among these is insufficient budgets for voter outreach. Local election officials must be able to meet voters where they are — whether through print materials, media advertisements, or engagement on social media — and these efforts take time and resources, and may require new skill sets.
Opportunities for experimentation
Our surveys show that some pro-voter policies, such as voter registration modernization, are more likely to be supported by officials who have experienced those policies. This may mean that local election officials who have experience with effective policies can be “champions” to others in the community who have less experience.
However, we don’t know how attitude change occurs among local election officials. Our finding about officials supporting a policy with which they have experience may reflect learning that happens through interactions with a policy — or, it may be acceptance. For example, officials in states that do not currently have a policy may simply be resistant to change, while officials in states that have already implemented a policy have already adapted to the change and accepted a new norm.
Where we need more research and learning
In our post about local election officials’ perspectives on election policy and practice, we noted that the opinions of these officials show some of the same partisan patterns that are observed in the general public. What we don’t know is why these patterns persist in a community of experts that presumably should be more resistant to misinformation and false claims.
More research needs to be done to understand the underpinnings of local election official attitudes toward election administration at a local, state, and national level, and how the structure of beliefs can impact the ethos of election administration. We also know very little about who are the trusted communicators within the community, whether fellow local election officials, state officials, national taskforces, academics, or advocates. Understanding who can best convey information to these local officials is a critical element in advancing a voter-centric approach.
While there is much to explore and learn about the field of local election officials, what we know already points to important ways we can better support the essential work they do in service to democracy and the voting public in their communities.
We encourage fellow researchers, policymakers, and others who care about representative government to be part of this journey of inquiry, knowledge-sharing, and reform. And just like legislators, the research and advocacy communities must engage local election officials in an ongoing and systematic way to ensure we’re asking the right questions and surfacing valuable insights. Local election officials have a critical vantage point, and their voices and expertise should always be part of the conversation.
Last year, we published “Dear Funders: What Does it Mean to Care About Equity in Journalism?” where we outlined three priorities for foundations seeking to support equitable journalism: investing in journalism created for and by people of color; supporting groups that are building a more equitable industry overall; and closing the resource gaps that philanthropy has helped perpetuate.
Righting these wrongs will take incredible amounts of time and money from the field of philanthropy. But doing this work gives us energy and brings us joy. We’re investing in the incredible efforts of leaders of color that are shaping the future of journalism, and we hope you’ll join us.
Here are some of the things we have been doing:
In 2020, we increased investments to several partner organizations, including an additional $500,000 to the Racial Equity in Journalism Fund to ensure dollars could go directly to POC-led and serving newsrooms and to address the legal needs of journalists of color. We also provided an additional $100,000 to the Center for Community Media at CUNY to help ensure their media partners across the country had access to critical training and resources.
We increased the flexibility of our grant structures, like removing annual audit requirements, providing more mediums for annual reporting, and moving project grants to general operating (excluding grants with fiscal sponsors or agents). And we committed ourselves to using public platforms, as well as industry events like Media Impact Funders, the United Philanthropy Forum, and Council of New Jersey Grantmakers to highlight mediamakers of color and push our peers to increase their support of them.
And our team is continuing this work in 2021. We’ve committed over $1.5 million dollars to grant amendments and renewals to organizations like the Maynard Institute, Emma Bowen Foundation, and the Asian American Journalists Association, all of which support the growth and leadership of journalists of color while holding the journalism industry accountable for more fair and representative coverage. We’ve also renamed our portfolio “Equitable Journalism” to better reflect our funding priorities and guide future strategy.
We know this is just the beginning. The violent racism that communities of color have experienced during the COVID-19 pandemic is nothing new. Journalism has too often historically contributed to propping up racialized violence and harms, and philanthropy has persistently underinvested in journalism led by and serving POC communities or divested altogether. We don’t want to continue this legacy of harmful funding practices, and we hope you don’t either. We are collaborating more intentionally across our media grantmaking strategies to ensure equity is at the forefront. And Democracy Fund is working to infuse racial equity across the organization, while continuing to examine how our external grantmaking and internal culture uphold white supremacy.
We’re calling on our peer funders to join this transformative moment, and share their plans and actions so we can all learn from each other. We look forward to sharing more about how we are increasing our investments in organizations led by and serving communities of color, LGBTQ communities, and other historically marginalized groups, and continuing to work on our internal practices and culture to ensure this support is sustained.
Paul Gronke, Paul Manson, Jay Lee, and Heather Creek
/
May 20, 2021
Part of “Stewards of Democracy,” a series on findings from the 2020 Democracy Fund/Reed College Survey of Local Election Officials
With growing recognition of the importance of diversity, equity, and inclusion, organizations across many economic and government sectors have been re-examining the makeup of their teams. Diversity has known benefits to decision making and innovation, and in the administration of a representative government, it is arguably essential to carrying out the values of, as well as building trust and engagement in, a diverse constituency. The representative bureaucracy model, for example, argues that with diversity in the workplace, the public is better represented in administrative decisions. As the American population becomes increasingly multiracial and multiethnic, a governmental discipline whose workforce does not reflect the country’s diversity may indicate that it is constrained for some reason in its appeal or its recruitment pipeline. Related, a lack of diversity in an area of public service raises ethical concerns about whether all Americans have genuine access to that office.
In this post, we present information on diversity in the local election community, focusing primarily on the demographic categories of gender and race/ethnicity. It will surprise few familiar with this community to learn that the average local election official is white and female and that this description has not changed in some time. We suggest some possible explanations for this enduring demographic profile and also spotlight some of the nuances of a complex election system that could challenge efforts to increase its diversity. To take just one example, over half of local election officials are elected to their positions, as are other local officials, so candidate recruitment and voter choice also shape these demographics. Some jurisdictions require that candidates for this role reside in the local area, further limiting the pool of potential candidates.
Finally, there is an important caveat to our findings. Our survey focuses on the single official in charge of election administration within each jurisdiction. We know nothing about the composition of their staffs, which may be more diverse and may, in medium and larger offices, be the public’s main point of contact. From other research, we know a bit more about the racial makeup of poll workers, and that having more poll workers of the same races as voters can improve voter confidence. Interactions with staff and volunteers in the election process who better reflect local diversity may reduce some concerns about representation and enhance legitimacy and confidence.
There is much more to learn. In the final section of this post, we identify some outstanding questions about staff, mobility, and recruitment as important research areas for the future.
A Little-Changing Demographic Makeup
Who are the professionals doing the day-to-day work of running American elections? As we touched on in a preceding post, local election officials are not a population that mirrors the American public. The average local election official is far more likely to be white, a woman, and over age 50 than the general public, or even the voting-eligible public, which skews whiter and older.
The 2020 Democracy Fund/Reed College Survey of Local Election Officials found that almost 75 percent of these officials are over age 50, 80 percent are women, and over 90 percent are white (and non-Hispanic). Almost half had a college degree or even further education, and 44 percent identified as Republican — compared to 33 percent who identified as Democrat and 22 percent who described themselves as Independent (among the 72 percent of respondents who shared any party identification). Only 45 percent make more than $50,000 a year, and 60 percent are elected to their positions.
Before diving into this post’s exploration of gender and race/ethnicity diversity in particular, it’s helpful to understand the demographic stability among local election officials over the past 15 years, as well as a few areas where we see changes.
To do this, we look to three years of our own survey data and that of three surveys from the mid-2000s conducted by the Congressional Research Service (CRS). While changes observed over time can provide important information about developments in the community of local election officials, we warn against overinterpreting small changes in consecutive surveys, which may be due to sampling variability rather than to actual demographic shifts.
With this in mind, we see notable patterns since 2004. First, there is almost no movement in the racial diversity of chief local election officials. With the exception of our survey in 2020, all other mentioned surveys found that about 95 percent of officials were white. There is also minimal change in the proportion who are elected to their position, female, and Republican (or conservative, in the CRS surveys).
The patterns of race and partisanship are in part explained by the decentralized and federalized nature of election administration and the jurisdictions where local election officials come from. While local election officials as a collective do not reflect the diversity of our nation as a whole, they do tend to be more representative of their jurisdictions.
Where we do see notable changes are in age, education levels, and pay rates. In 2020, 74 percent of local election officials are over age 50, compared to 62 percent in 2008. In 2020 dollars, over 60 percent of local election officials were earning more than $50,000 in 2008 compared to just 45 percent now; apparently, their salaries have not kept pace with inflation. Finally, formal education is on the rise. Half of local election officials in our most recent survey reported having a college degree, compared to only 40 percent in 2004.
The race and partisanship of local election officials changed little over six years of surveys
Demographic
2004
2006
2008
2018
2019
2020
Female
75%
77%
76%
85%
83%
81%
White and non-Hispanic
94%
95%
94%
95%
94%
90%
College
40%
41%
44%
46%
51%
50%
$50,000 or more*
53%
61%
63%
43%
46%
45%
50 or older
63%
62%
62%
77%
74%
74%
Republican†
51%
47%
44%
—
43%
44%
Elected
65%
58%
53%
—
58%
57%
*CRS surveys reported salaries greater than $40,000. Due to inflation, $40,000 in 2006 is approximately $50,000 in 2019.
†CRS surveys reported whether respondents considered themselves to have a conservative ideology, rather than asking about a partisan identification.
Women and Local Election Administration
When we look across the entire U.S. political landscape, we find durable patterns of under-representation of women in public roles. Recent research shows that women currently hold 27 percent of U.S. Congressional seats, 31 percent of state legislature seats, and 30 percent of statewide elected offices, and only 32 of the 100 largest U.S. cities have women serving as mayor. According to 2019 Equal Employment Opportunity Commission data, only 42 percent of county or local officials and administrators are women.
Yet, among local election officials, over 80 percent are women. Why do we see such a different gender composition of local election officials, more than half of whom are elected to their posts, compared to other elected and appointed office holders? There are at least three possible explanations.
First, election work may be filtered by gender in ways similar to other offices in government. For example, a national survey of municipal clerks found an even higher proportion of female clerks (90 percent) than we found in our survey of local election officials. Meanwhile, women make up only 1 percent of sheriffs in the U.S. Even district school boards, which are often perceived as more aligned with women’s interests, have just 44 percent of their seats held by women. Election administration has increasingly become a complex administrative occupation with a diverse skill set. But elections work may have been traditionally viewed as a more clerical role, particularly the registration component. Women may have been directed toward or been more willing to accept positions in election administration. We also note that, historically, some of the more important roles in the conduct and adjudication of elections has been assigned to roles dominated by men, such as sheriff or judge. These patterns may account for the historical and current gender balance of the profession.
A second possibility is a gatekeeping effect among local party leaders combined with the structures that help candidates win elections. In this scenario, women would be differentially allowed “through the gate” to run as local election officials, possibly because elections work is unlikely to translate into higher office. As a potentially related point of reference, our survey asked local election officials if they have an interest in running for elected office (different from their current role, if elected). Overall, only 11 percent indicated they were interested, a number that drops to 9 percent among only female respondents. We lack good comparative data on other local elected offices to conclude that these totals are high or low and whether gatekeeping is going on.
Third, elections work may be sought out by women and less so by men for some reason. It could be that elections administration, especially in smaller offices, offers flexibility that supports a better balance between work and responsibilities at home, which other studies report still fall disproportionally to women in American society. While this may seem to be a surprising notion to local election officials who have just completed an incredibly time-consuming election year, women who responded to our survey were somewhat more likely than men to say that they can balance work and home priorities. Of note, women in larger offices were more likely to tell us that work-life balance was a problem than were women in smaller offices. What we are seeing in these findings may not be a preference among women, but rather a signal that they are more often forced to balance priorities because of fewer career options or cultural norms and expectations.
Gender Differences by Jurisdiction Size
The responsibilities of a local election official vary greatly by the size of the jurisdiction, and not surprisingly, so does the “average” local election official. Those in larger jurisdictions are significantly more likely to be men, non-white, college educated, paid more than $50,000 a year, Democrats or Independents, and appointed to their positions than those in smaller jurisdictions.
Local election officials in larger jurisdictions are more likely to be male, less likely to be white
Jurisdiction by number of voters
Demographic
Overall
0 to 5,000
5,001 to 25,000
25,001 to 100,000
100,001 to 250,000
>250,000
Female
81%
84%
85%
69%
65%
47%
White and non–Hispanic
90%
90%
91%
89%
93%
80%
College
50%
43%
55%
58%
77%
82%
$50,000 or more
45%
23%
69%
80%
98%
95%
50 or older
74%
77%
70%
66%
68%
61%
Republican
44%
44%
50%
42%
30%
17%
Elected
57%
64%
54%
36%
32%
18%
Being the chief elections officer in a larger jurisdiction often has more prestige. It often requires more steps up the ladder or winning what is likely a more competitive and expensive election — all of which may influence the gender of those chosen or self-selecting for such a position. Large-jurisdiction positions are also more likely to involve stresses that challenge work-life balance. Indeed, local officials serving in larger jurisdictions were less positive on the question of balancing work and home priorities.
We see that female local election officials also, on average, earn less than their male counterparts, but these averages may be driven at least in part by jurisdiction characteristics. That is to say, the observed pay differences between men and women may be a function of differential pay by jurisdiction size combined with men’s greater likelihood to serve in larger, better-paying jurisdictions.
Despite this disparity, a majority of local election officials, male and female, told us that they were satisfied with their pay. Women were slightly more likely to raise concerns about pay, but not markedly so.
Women are over-represented overall in our data — and in any survey of local election officials — primarily because of the number of small jurisdictions. It may be that women find the role attractive in these smaller jurisdictions because it is more likely to be part time, supporting work-life balance. It may also be that the nature of the work in a small jurisdiction is perceived to be more appropriate for women through the lens of traditional gender roles, as misguided and outdated as these perceptions may be. Perceptions that operate within thousands of counties and municipalities nationwide would have a powerful effect.
This brings us to a concern: If work-life balance is a key factor in women’s participation as local election officials, threats to that balance could cause a shift in gender composition. The 2020 election created some cracks in the veneer of job satisfaction. If this continues, the cost/benefit calculation could shift, and so could the demographics of the local election community.
“I would recommend [becoming a local election official to others] … I think as long as you have a good understanding of what you’re heading, and what you’re in for, and you have a plan for that, you can have a life balance with family and friends and work. You need to have a plan for that. Then yeah, I would still recommend it.”
– LOCAL ELECTION OFFICIAL, OCTOBER 2020
Race, Ethnicity, and Representative Bureaucracy
Next we explore racial and ethnic under-representation. Approximately 90 percent of local election officials are white and non-Hispanic. That is substantially more than the proportion of white, non-Hispanic people within the U.S. citizen voting age population, according to data from the 2020 Congressional Election Survey (CES). This difference persists even when we compare local election officials to other state and local officials and administrators. Just under 78 percent of state and local officials and administrators across the country are white according to 2019 U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission data.
Local election officials are disproportionately white when compared to the general population
Demographic
Proportion of local election official population
Proportion of U.S. public (CES, 18+)
Female
81%
52%
White and non-Hispanic
90%
69%
College
50%
41%
$50,000 or more
45%
51% (family)
50 or older
74%
49%
Republican
44%
40%
Elected
57%
—
Drawing any conclusions about the reasons for these patterns is a challenge for our study because there are so few non-white respondents in our survey. In the subsequent figures, we have pooled the three years of the Democracy Fund/Reed College Survey of Local Election Officials so as to make some comparisons. We also use “white” to refer to the white and non-Hispanic population.
As a first cut, it’s important to recognize that a vast majority (70 percent) of local election jurisdictions have a citizen voting-age population that is over 90 percent white, according to the most recent American Community Survey. Three-quarters of the smallest jurisdictions have voting age populations that are 93 percent or more white, while 50 percent of the largest jurisdiction have populations that are 65 percent or less white. As a point of comparison, the citizen voting age population in the United States overall is 68 percent white.
The reason these numbers come out the way they do is that non-white voters in the United States are relatively concentrated in metropolitan areas and certain states and regions. To illustrate how this works, we randomly selected one voter from each jurisdiction to be a local election official. The result was that our hypothetical workforce of local election officials was still 88 percent white — nearly the same as the 90 percent that we observed in our survey.
The federalized and decentralized nature of election administration (and many other governmental functions) combined with some jurisdictions’ requirements that election official candidates be local residents creates a structural barrier to a more diverse and nationally representative population of local election officials. Efforts to diversify this field may require extra emphasis on recruiting job applicants for staff positions, leadership positions, and candidates from outside the jurisdiction. What we don’t know — and where we think more research is necessary — is how these structural barriers impact local government more generally, and whether and how some local governmental agencies have overcome these barriers.
If we flip our lens and look from the perspective of voters, the situation appears a bit different. Our survey, combined with Census data, shows that non-white voters are somewhat more likely to be served by non-white local election officials.
The majority of white local election officials serve predominantly white jurisdictions. Black local election officials serve a much more racially and ethnically diverse population. Because of small numbers, we combined local election officials in other racial categories (including Native American, Asian American, and Hawaiian or Pacific Islander) and find they too serve a more diverse population. The starkest under-representation in our data is among Hispanic local election officials: We find so few that we are unable to compare these officials with jurisdiction populations.
The size of the jurisdiction once again appears to drive much of these dynamics. Smaller jurisdictions are less likely to have significant populations of non-white voters — and are also more likely to be served by white local election officials.
The overall population of local election officials is significantly more racially homogenous than the voting age population, but local election officials who are not white do serve more diverse populations. Here our survey sheds further light: When we asked if election officials “should work to reduce demographic disparities in voter turnout,” 80 percent to 90 percent of non-white local election officials responded in the affirmative — almost twice as high as white local election officials asked the same question.
For Further Research
As we have described, understanding diversity and enhancing representation among local election officials and their staffs is a complex undertaking. There are many potential reasons for the findings we report here, and further research is needed to reveal complexities and patterns more completely, to understand the reasons behind them, and identify productive steps. We look forward to engaging the practitioner and research community on these questions in the months and years ahead.
We are limited in our ability to investigate some of the potential reasons for the gender and racial disparities we found due to the limited number of officials who are non-white overall and across jurisdiction size categories, but more broadly, due to the inherent limits of survey sampling for a population of 8,000 officials spread across states, counties, and townships and municipalities. Qualitative research involving focus groups and in-depth interviews may be necessary to probe how current officials, those who appoint them, and even those who vote for them, think about the role of a local election official as compared to other local offices.
One complexity we confront in this post is whether or not the overrepresentation of women in local election administration is a good thing, given the traditional underrepresentation of women in positions of power, especially in elective offices, or whether it indicates that women are being channeled to an area of local governmental work that has been historically undervalued and underfunded. Our suspicions, based on our data and other patterns of gender representation in local government more broadly, is that both are somewhat true. There is some evidence that job mobility is lower for women than for men in the election community. Among the local election officials we surveyed who serve in jurisdictions with greater than 100,000 registered voters, 45 percent of men said they have worked in another election jurisdiction, while only 20 percent of women answer similarly. Overall, 18 percent of men say they have worked in more than one jurisdiction versus 13 percent of women. It remains important for further research to explore if these differences result from barriers to upward mobility, filtering by gender, or other factors.
Also with respect to gender, we believe future research should focus on understanding the personal experiences and pathways for local election officials across their careers. While our study is informed by various theories on why women are over-represented in this field, interviews and discussions with local election officials could better explore the dynamics that result in a role overwhelmingly served by women. Turning to race and ethnicity, as noted, our research is focused on the person holding the chief local election official position. While the individual in this role can be influential, we also know that the race and ethnicity of the rest of a local government office staff matter. Further research on the composition of local election office staff and volunteers could better detail the diversity and inclusion of these offices, as well as voter experience.
We were able to show that non-white officials are more likely to be serving in communities with higher percentages of non-white voters, but the still-high level of homogeneity indicates that the elections community, especially in smaller jurisdictions, has too narrow of a recruitment pipeline. Describing the career pipeline, highlighting successful efforts that have been made in expanding recruitment pools, and understanding who constitutes the pool of staff and elections officials of the future are all fertile areas for research.
If the elections community seeks strategies for encouraging diversity in its ranks, it will need to wrestle with the multiple paths that people take to assuming this role. A heavy reliance on elections as a selection method in the smallest jurisdictions puts a damper on hiring-based methods for promoting diversity in a profession, and efforts to bolster diversity may require coordination with former elected positions and political parties (if the races are partisan).
Efforts to expand and diversify the pipeline for service in local election administration will need to take into account substantial structural barriers due to the federalized and decentralized nature of American election administration and the significant gaps in pay, prestige, budgets, and administrative powers between small and large jurisdictions. We know from conversations with officials that state recruitment rules or residency requirements may be one barrier. But we do not know the steps local election offices take to broaden their recruitment for all positions, and if diversity and inclusion is something they focus on in these hiring practices. Related, larger jurisdictions are well positioned to hire an internal candidate like a deputy director who has been “training up” through the department for several years, or to run nationwide recruitment searches for new officials. Still, the vast majority of jurisdictions are not running national-scale job searches for an open position.
In a previous post, we more deeply discussed the age of local election officials, which is another important aspect of their demographic makeup. These professionals are older as a group than they were even 15 years ago, while at the same time being better educated yet earning comparatively less. Age and pay satisfaction are two things that can cause local election officials to leave the profession. How do decreases in compensation, especially in combination with the increase in qualifications that we also see, affect who sticks with the job or moves on? What is, in fact, the “normal” rate of retirement of officials after a presidential election, and how does the rate of retirement in 2020 compare? Further research pursuing these questions will fuel a robust dialogue about what the future of local election administration should look like in the United States.
There is much yet to learn about how recruitment and advancement in election administration helps or hinders diversity. Our 2020 survey findings point to challenges here, as well as potential opportunities. This is just the beginning of the data-driven story, and we hope to see future research engage these questions.
The authors wish to thank Bridgett A. King, associate professor of political science at Auburn University, for her feedback on this research.
We tried something different. As a foundation, we are only as effective as our understanding of and alignment to what is occurring in the fields we fund. That’s tough to do in a complex environment. During a crisis, it’s even tougher. Try several crises.
In the summer of 2020, the grantees of our Digital Democracy Initiative (DDI) were revving up to combat a trifecta of mis- and disinformation about COVID-19, the Black Lives Matter movement, and the 2020 election. And we wanted to know how we could support them — not with slow, drawn-out information-gathering and analysis, but with something more agile.
We had to rethink the way we learn.
We didn’t have the luxury to wait for researchers to conduct a study and package it up for us to leisurely read nine months later. Nor did we want to ask our grantees to spare time that could be better used to do the work. So, we decided to approach our research and evaluation a little differently. We made a decision to minimize our plans for a developmental evaluation into a set of learning conversations that prioritized strengthening and facilitating information flows among our grantees over answering our own set of learning questions.
We also made a conscious decision to do something researchers would not advise (because of possible observer effects): we broke the fourth wall of objectivity. Our Associate Director of DDI and our Strategy and Learning Manager joined in on the focus groups facilitated by our evaluator. This had positive implications on our construction of knowledge. We were able to hear and respond to concerns in real time as our grantees were experiencing it and extract key points outside of those captured by our evaluators. Grantees were also able to learn from each other in real time and see other parts of the wider field they contribute to. While the resulting report, Responding to the Moment, synthesized much of this information, it was invaluable to have immediate access to it.
Our grantees expressed gratitude for the time to connect, particularly during the pandemic lockdown because some felt increasingly siloed. Hunkered down within the circles they were already in pre-pandemic, some felt it a challenge to do what the moment demanded: connect with new folks in order to advance the work.
We learned that one of the largest gaps in the mis- and disinformation network space existed between researchers and activists. While field-building and connecting across network gaps is a critical tactic for the Digital Democracy Initiative, this was an urgent learning for us. Leaning into making connections across fields of work is vital to successfully attacking the complex problem of mis- and disinformation. We have begun this through follow-up meetings and we are already seeing our grantees make these connections more explicitly in their work.
In our real-time learning, we made sure to center the experiences of people of color and women, with special attention to women of color who fall within both groups and experience unique circumstances because of this intersectionality. One important learning that resulted from this centering was the consequences and inequity of uniformed dollars in the philanthropic field due to “parachuting” and “trendiness.” As money was pouring into the mis- and disinformation space, dollars were going to new actors parachuting into the space for those resources as opposed to going to long-term actors who already worked on these issues. Additionally, a surface understanding of the challenges in the field made it likely that grantmakers would give their well-intentioned dollars to solutions that were trending, but not necessarily effective instead of buttressing effective efforts that activists and researchers were already cultivating. We have worked to elevate the voices and work of those who have been working in this space over time, and ensure funders understand the importance of that work as an anchor in this field.
These learnings underscore the inequitable ways that philanthropic support rarely goes into the hands of those most impacted by the problem and therefore best suited to address the problems. Centering the perspectives and experiences of those most negatively impacted by disinformation, people of color and women, allowed us to best understand our points of leverage for field solutions that are either out of the focus of or deprioritized by a broader philanthropic sector that is overwhelmingly wealthy and white.
The summer of 2020, like other crisis moments, was filled with chaos, trauma, and uncertainty. We were surprised by the learning that can happen even in the midst of crises when we strip away the formalities and reduce the amount of time and attention being taken away from important work being done in the field. Many of those crises continue today, and the changes we made to our learning will extend past the summer of 2020. We are thankful to our grantees for their time and honesty. The lessons we learned come from them.
As part of our 2020 Democracy Fund/Reed College Survey of Local Election Officials (conducted in summer 2020), we asked local election officials an extensive battery of questions about how they were preparing for the upcoming November election, including a special set of questions tailored to COVID-19 challenges.
The Realities of Different Jurisdiction Sizes
In each blog post in this series, we have pointed to the significance of jurisdiction size when describing and understanding the local election environment and the role of the local administrator.
Election readiness is no different and, accordingly, pandemic-related issues didn’t impact all local election officials in the same way — even if they were serving in the same state. Some large jurisdictions received a lot of media attention in 2020 because they had so many polling places and long voter lines. But small jurisdictions faced many of their own challenges as they worked to rapidly respond to shifting requirements and implement new procedures.
The fundamental distinction relates to workload, support, and staff. Local election officials in the smallest jurisdictions are more likely to wear several hats as town clerks, county recorders, or other roles. Elections work amounts to a small proportion of the job responsibilities for about half of small-jurisdiction officials, and as a result, these officials had even less working time to adjust to the realities of running elections amid a pandemic.
Additionally, small jurisdictions are much more likely to have a very small staff: About 75 percent of local election officials in jurisdictions that have under 5,000 voters are the sole individual administering elections in their jurisdiction, and many of these are only part-time workers.
Preparing to serve a few hundred voters is obviously a very different enterprise than doing so for millions of voters. Nonetheless, we flag for the reader that the ability to adapt to the new demands placed on local election officials in 2020 may have been crucially dependent on size, staff, and other resources. Simply having a larger election office allowed for some redundancy and support during the pandemic. We heard from a number of local election officials in small jurisdictions that a single positive COVID-19 test would require them to close their offices for 14 days because their small teams all work in close proximity. An official working in a larger jurisdiction would be able to rotate staff or lean on other parts of the organization to avoid such an impact.
Election Preparedness and COVID-19
Small jurisdictions were the least likely to say that they had to adjust their election planning in light of COVID-19. While all of our respondents in jurisdictions with more than 100,000 registered voters said that they had to adjust to the pandemic, only about 85 percent of local election officials in jurisdictions with under 25,000 registered voters said the same. We suspect these differences may be simply a function of scale — adjusting for things like socially-distanced voting is probably easier in rural settings and small municipalities.
One of the specific changes that we were interested in was whether local election officials would have to consolidate polling places, leaving some voters farther away from a voting location than normal. Consolidation of polling places became a flashpoint for political and legal conflict during primary elections in the spring and summer.
By mid-summer when our survey was being conducted, only about 10 percent of local election officials were considering precinct consolidation during the November election in response to COVID-19, although for larger jurisdictions this proportion reached about 30 percent. Larger jurisdictions are more likely to have many polling places, while some smaller jurisdictions might have only a single voting location that cannot be shuttered.
When asked why they were considering consolidating some polling locations, a clear majority of respondents cited facilities constraints as part of their reasoning, and slightly under half cited poll worker issues. Resource and staffing constraints were much less common, and very few respondents said that they were required by the state to consolidate locations.
When asked about their preparations for conducting the election amid the pandemic, local election officials expressed a fairly high degree of confidence across a number of dimensions, such as having enough personal protective equipment (PPE) for their staff and volunteers, safely accommodating staff and volunteers in the workplace, and being able to utilize their permanent workforce and traditional polling places.
Presented with a set of questions asked in previous years to understand staffing and resources, local election officials expressed high levels of confidence in their ability to obtain accessible voting machines and polling places but much less confidence in obtaining poll workers, particularly bilingual poll workers. Note that our figure below shows confidence levels only for respondents who agreed that a given resource applied to them. While 95 percent of our survey participants responded that the first three resources applied to them, only 40 percent said having bilingual poll workers did, which corresponds with the proportion of those federally required to have such support. Thus, the lack of poll workers with bilingual skills is likely to be even more acute than our data reflect.
Where Local Election Officials Found Support in Responding to the Pandemic
With so many local election officials reporting that they had to change their processes in response to COVID-19, we wanted to know what sources they turned to for information and which were most helpful.
Officials were most likely to seek resources close to home: in their local jurisdiction or to state elections offices, state associations, and/or state health authorities. About 35 percent of respondents consulted information from the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) directly, and other federal and national groups were referenced less frequently. Some state election directors and state associations may have used resources from federal and non-governmental organizations to inform their recommendations.
Information from state elections offices and professional organizations was also deemed to be the most helpful, compared to most of the other sources (all of which received similar ratings). Local election officials participating in our survey also had the option to write in a resource they consulted if not reflected in our list. We were not surprised to learn that those who chose to do this also rated their write-in resources very highly overall. These other resources included local emergency management departments, regional election official groups, the United States Postal Service, and local and national news sources.
Managing a Surge in Absentee Voting and Voting by Mail
One of the biggest effects of the pandemic on voting was a large increase in voting by mail. States came into the November 2020 election with varying levels of experience conducting elections by mail. At that point, five states conducted all elections by mail, and five states allowed any voter to sign up for permanent absentee voting and automatically receive a mail ballot for each election. In the November 2016 election, about 20 percent of the public voted by mail, but this varied from less than 5 percent in states that required an approved excuse to vote by mail to more than 87 percent in states that conduct all elections by mail.
Responses to a series of questions about mail voting preparation indicate that the majority of administrators felt prepared to run an expanded vote-by-mail system in November 2020. As expected, this varied based on the state’s prior experience with widespread mail voting. Most officials felt confident that they could obtain enough ballots and envelopes to meet expanded demand for mail voting; those in states with less vote-by-mail experience were about 15 percentage points less likely to feel confident than those in experienced states.
Other measures of mail voting preparation showed a wider spread between more experienced and less experienced states. Close to 95 percent of officials in states with more mail voting experience were confident that they had sufficient staff and resources to process increased numbers of mail ballots; fewer than 65 percent of officials in states with less experience shared that confidence. Similarly, officials in states with mail voting experience expressed higher confidence than other states — by more than 25 percentage points — that their state’s timeline was sufficient for all of the steps involved in requesting, mailing, returning, and processing mail ballots. The gap between more and less experienced mail voting states was much smaller on the issue of whether voters were sufficiently informed about the standard U.S. Postal Service delivery times that would impact whether a ballot arrived in time to meet state deadlines and be counted.
Overall, local election officials felt relatively confident about their process heading into November 2020. Over 90 percent said they would be fully prepared to administer a safe, secure, and accessible election. As we have seen in other results, election officials are less positive in their assessment of things outside of their control. For example, one in five raised concerns about whether they would have adequate funding for their jurisdiction or whether the other offices in the state would be sufficiently prepared for November, and under half said that offices across the country would be prepared to run a safe, secure, and accessible election.
Stewards Rising to the Challenge
The 2020 election was historic and an outlier in many respects, but some of the changes and lessons it generated may endure. Some pain points reported by our respondents in that year — sufficient bilingual poll workers and insufficient resources and trained staff — may have been magnified in 2020 but have been evident in prior years of this research.
Moreover, local election officials accomplished something extraordinary in 2020. They engaged a variety of resources, and through rapid learning and adaptation early in the pandemic, took a range of steps to protect voters and workers during a public health crisis. They prepared for more Americans than ever to vote by mail, even in states less experienced with the practice. And generally, they felt well prepared to deliver democracy, even under these conditions. In rising to the challenges of 2020, election officials revealed not only their competence, dedication, and grit, but also possibilities and potential for further strengthening our election system.
Cookies Notice
This website uses cookies to provide you with an improved and personalized experience. By using this site you agree to our use of cookies. Please read our cookies policy for more information on the cookies we use and how to delete or block them.
