Every Arizona county has lost high-level election workers since 2020, study shows

MARK BRODIE: The midterm elections are less than nine months away, with primaries set for this summer. But a new report finds Arizona counties have had more turnover among election workers than in any other Western state. The study was done by a nonpartisan group called Issue One. It finds all 15 counties in Arizona have experienced turnover, including in at least one chief election position.

Jerod MacDonald-Evoy has written about this for the Arizona Mirror, and he joins me now to talk more about it. Jerod, good morning.

JEROD MCDONALD-EVOY: Good morning.

BRODIE: How significant is this turnover?

MACDONALD-EVOY: It's pretty significant. When you look at the other states that Issue One looked at, most other states saw around 50%, some upwards to, you know, around 70%. Arizona saw around 100% of its counties — all 15 ... of Arizona's counties experienced turnover of at least one of its chief election administrators. Whether that be a recorder or one of the administrators that works in the chief role like an elections director.

BRODIE: And I would imagine that there are all sorts of reasons for why these employees have left. But I'm curious how much conspiracy theories and threats and that sort of thing has contributed to this?

MACDONALD-EVOY: Yeah, the report detailed a little bit about that, about how the environment that's been created since 2020 with the allegations of fraud have, have led to a heightened environment of political violence where we've had post-2021, after the attack on the Capitol, ... the Department of Justice created a task force that looked into threats against election officials.

A lot of the cases that got investigated, there were a few high profile ones. Five recent ones in Arizona where election officials were — there were calls for them to be killed. And we've had some high-level officials like in Yavapai County, where the recorder, I believe there was asking for the sheriff to be deployed to their home due to concerns of people spreading these conspiracy theories and believing that they were involved in them, and sending threats to them.

BRODIE: Well, so given that, how easy or difficult is it for counties and election departments to replace those workers who have left?

MACDONALD-EVOY: From the reporting by Issue One, some of the counties are struggling on that. You have some of the more rural areas, places like Cochise, they've gone through, I believe, about six different people in one of those roles within the past year. ... They've had six different people fulfill that role going in and out.

A lot of the turnover on that has been due to conflict within the realm of the election conspiracy stuff. You have the Board of Supervisors there has kind of had a conflicting relationship with the elections department. And that's caused some of those people to resign.

BRODIE: Well, I would think that, you know, in a place like Cochise or some of the more rural counties, losing even one or two people can be a huge problem. Whereas in Maricopa — not saying it's great to lose workers — but the departments are bigger, so losing one or two might not be as so problematic. Is that right?

MACDONALD-EVOY: That is one of the concerns that was shared with me from groups like Issue One and also inspiration speaking with election officials, both former and current. Who have said that, you know, when you look at all the counties, you know, places like Maricopa, they're going to get larger amounts of funding. There's more people working there.

There are more eyeballs on it as well. There's more people who are watching it, say reporters, observers. But in these smaller counties where there might not be, that things are going to fall through the cracks.

BRODIE: Well, so what does that mean for upcoming elections? That if some of these election departments have either people who are new to their jobs, maybe haven't gone through an election cycle before, or just have empty positions?

MACDONALD-EVOY: It could mean slower times for processing of elections, quite possibly. Or we've seen in the past, as Issue One pointed out in their report, that we saw some issues in regards to how the elections were administered in certain counties out here in Arizona. Not that the elections ended up not being correct, but we had issues with getting there.

And then we had issues between that that led to further conspiracies being created and more people kind of, it created a snowball effect, so to speak, of this kind of creating that environment more and more where more and more people became more toxic towards this environment and creating a more toxic work environment for election officials. So it kind of becomes this self-fulfilling prophecy in a way.

BRODIE: Yeah, well, so, I mean, did the people with whom you spoke, do they think this is kind of the new normal? Like, is this just kind of the way it's going to be?

MACDONALD-EVOY: There is some hope that ... there's a lot more eyeballs on this space than there have been in a lot of years. There's some progress. Northern Arizona University has a program that is training people to become professionals in this space. There's some other universities that are doing that. There's some grant funding here in Arizona, like the County Election Administration Fellowship that the Secretary of State's Office piloted.

That is kind of like an internship similar to like AmeriCorps. AmeriCorps that gives participants $15,000 to work in a county election department and kind of to encourage people to work in this space and get to understand and get to know how elections are run. ... Researchers found that it also helps kind of boost confidence in the system.

So there is hope among officials that despite there being a lot of intense pressure from conspiracy theorists, you know, the action we've seen in Fulton, Georgia, kind of adding on to that fire. ... There's hope that there's a lot more people that are interested in getting into this space and creating a more workable environment for elections going forward.