Nearly half of local election officials are concerned about politically motivated investigations targeting election workers, according to a new survey from the Brennan Center for Justice.
Forty-six percent of local election officials said they were at least somewhat concerned about politically motivated investigations of their work or the work of other election officials. Of that, 18 percent of respondents said they were “very concerned” about potential investigations.
Election officials have increasingly become targets of scrutiny in the wake of the 2020 presidential election, when President Donald Trump and his allies touted conspiracy theories about ballot processing to claim the results of the election — which he lost — were rigged.
Trump and other Republicans have repeatedly advocated for greater “election integrity,” while disavowing state and local election officials around the country. Project 2025, the conservative policy agenda laid out ahead of Trump’s second term, endorses investigating and prosecuting election officials. And following Joe Biden’s 2024 loss, similar conspiracies of a rigged election have percolated among some liberals online — although notably these theories have not been embraced by Democratic Party leaders or elected officials.
In April, Trump ordered an investigation into Chris Krebs, the former head of the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency during the 2020 election. The Justice Department is reportedly looking at possible avenues to criminally charge state and local election officials who violate election security guidelines, and the DOJ has been asking several states for information about their voter rolls
Lawrence Norden — vice president of the Elections and Government Program at the Brennan Center, which is a liberal-leaning think tank and advocacy organization that has pushed back against much of Trump’s election orders — said he believes the high level of concern about politically motivated investigations is a reflection of Trump’s rhetoric and his administration’s actions.
“If you had told me a few years ago that 46 percent of election officials would be concerned about a politically motivated investigation, I would have been shocked,” he said. “Having nearly half of election officials say that that’s a concern to them is shocking in a democracy.”
Seventeen percent of local election officials said they were at least somewhat concerned about facing pressure to certify election results in favor of a specific candidate or party, an increase from 12 percent who responded similarly in a Brennan Center survey conducted last year.
“If you want a free and fair election — almost one in five election officials say we’re concerned that there’ll be interference in the certification process,” Norden said. “That, to me, is a scary number.”
The survey also found 36 percent of local election officials have been harassed or abused because of their job, and 16 percent said they faced threats of violence due to their work. Fifty-two percent said they were at least somewhat concerned about the safety of fellow election staff.
The Brennan Center Research Department surveyed 858 local election officials between April 15 and May 17. The margin of error for the survey is +/- 3 percentage points. The 2024 survey reached 928 local election officials, with a margin of error of +/- 3 percentage points. 2024 survey data was reweighted, shifting that 2024 results by 4 percentage points or fewer.
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