Election Workers Are in Crisis. Will Congress Actually Help?

Defiance County, Ohio, does not loom large in the story of the 2020 presidential election.

This rural slice of northwest Ohio—population 38,000—went for Donald Trump by more than 30 percentage points. The county has long favored Republicans, and it hasn’t been competitive in a very long time.

But for the people who run elections in Defiance County, the job has never been harder. “In the last three years, this job has basically tripled,” said Tonya Wichman, the county elections director.

It’s not just the endless stream of calls and letters. It’s what they entail for election workers these days: near-constant harassment and denigration from people who, largely spurred on by Trump’s election fraud conspiracies, have developed a toxic distrust of the election system and those who run it.

Kent Nishimura/Los Angeles Times via Getty

“It’s a disheartening thing… to have people tell you how bad you do your job when you’re going above and beyond what they expect from you,” Wichman says. “They’re listening to people speak about our jobs without asking us about our jobs.”

In response, the Defiance County elections office has upgraded every aspect of its security, and there is an additional physical barrier between staff and those who walk in. They instruct poll workers what to do if they see a suspicious car at a voting location, which Wichman says has not been necessary before.

Wichman stresses that election workers love what they do and are committed to protecting the integrity of the system—no matter what. But for some in the field, the work has simply become too overwhelming.

A longtime election official at the county recently resigned, citing the unmanageable workload, Wichman said. Some poll workers have decided not to volunteer anymore because they do not feel safe.

More than a year after the 2020 election concluded—and months away from the pivotal 2022 midterms—election officials around the country have strikingly similar stories. Whether it’s in jurisdictions where Trump sought to sow conspiracies, like Milwaukee and Atlanta, or sleepy counties like Defiance, there’s an unprecedented, nationwide wave of rage directed at election workers, from secretaries of state to volunteer poll workers.

Sometimes that rage takes the form of harassing phone rants directed at election officials, or filing reams of purposely burdensome records requests. Other times, it has taken the form of menacing personal messages scrawled near an election official’s home, or death threats that prompt law enforcement investigation.

Not every election office has been touched by this phenomenon, but it’s widespread enough to seriously alarm officials and election experts nationwide.

David Becker, a leading election lawyer, recently co-founded the Election Official Legal Defense Network, a group that seeks to provide legal resources to election workers facing various threats. He has spoken with dozens of them nationwide and told The Daily Beast that they “feel like no one has their back right now.”

“If we lose…