[chant] Stop the count.
They've been targeted by some in the media,
Poll workers deliberately were destroying Republican ballots.
demonized by politicians,
Tens of thousands of votes were changed by workers.
and threatened by election deniers.
[chant] Stop the count.
Being a volunteer election poll worker
I second guess everything that I do. It's affected my life
in a, in a major way﻿, in every way.
All because of lies.
All of this attacking, abuse, and harassment has added to a shortage
of people willing to facilitate the U.S.'s most democratic process.
This got us wondering: How did we get here?
Who benefits from this cornerstone of democracy being under assault?
How is it being addressed?
Democracy is in crisis.
As contentious partisan politics have continued to escalate,
people have been understandably discouraged from volunteering to work
as poll workers and officials.
[protester] We're not trying to break in,
we'd just like to watch you count the ballots.
To better understand election worker recruitment,
even before supporters and members of the GOP began working to invalidate
the 2020 presidential election, we spoke with Tiana Epps-Johnson,
the founder and executive director of the Center for Tech and Civic Life.
One of the most critical roles of local election
officials across the country is recruiting and training
people across their communities to serve to be poll workers.
Even before this year, that's been a challenge
for election departments: to be able to recruit enough volunteers
to make sure that the process has enough capacity to actually work.
And then, in 2020, we saw a challenge turn into a crisis.
Election departments across the country, as they were administering elections
during a pandemic, saw poll workers drop out in record numbers.
In part, that was because the average age of a poll worker at that time was around 72.
A lot of these folks were among the most higher risk for the pandemic.
And so, it made a lot of sense for them to step back from that volunteer role.
Epps-Johnson's organization supports election offices across the country
with resources to keep the voting process secure, efficient, and equitable.
She's also been personally working to support U.S.
elections for more than a decade, so she knows her stuff.
One of the best stories, I think, of 2020 was that, as a response,
we saw hundreds and thousands of people, especially young people,
raise their hands and volunteer to be poll workers for the first time.
But, we need, and election departments need,
and the voting process needs, folks to show up every election.
And so, right now, as we look at the 2022 midterm,
election departments, both small and large ones, are seeing anywhere between tens
and hundreds of spots that they still need to fill with poll workers
in order to have their operations work as smoothly as they hope it would.
Stop the theft of the presidential election.
[chant] Stop the steal.
As if recruiting poll workers wasn't already hard enough,
the 2020 presidential election took things from bad to horrifying.
[chant] Count the votes. Count the votes.
Poll workers in Michigan were duplicating ballots.
Where are those votes coming from?
What's going on?
[chant] Stop the count. Stop the count.
Poll workers illegally
backdating thousands of ballots.
[chant] USA. USA.
All of a sudden, election officials and volunteers
became targets of abuse, attacks, and harassment.
Some even feared for their lives.
Wandrea Arshaye Moss's testimony
before the Select Committee to Investigate the January 6th Attack
on the United States Capitol
really put into perspective how dire the situation had become.
The violent harassment and threats
she experienced as a 2020 election worker in Georgia forced her into hiding.
This turned my life
upside down.
I no longer give out my business card.
I don't transfer calls.
I don't want anyone knowing my name.
I don't want to go anywhere with my mom, because she might
yell my name out over the grocery aisle or something.
I don't go to the grocery store at all.
I haven't been anywhere
at all.
I've gained about 60 pounds.
I just don't do nothing anymore.
I don't want to go anywhere.
I felt horrible for picking this job and being the one
that always wants to help, and always there,
and never missing not one election.
I just felt like it was it was my fault for putting my family in this situation.
And poll workers weren't the only people being targeted.
We've seen election officials in communities like Al Schmidt,
a Republican election official from the city of Philadelphia
who oversaw the 2020 election, describe really publicly in forums about the ways
that harassment has not only been directed at him, but also his family.
It's something that we're not only seeing directed at poll workers,
but also election officials, and it's﻿ really impacting
sort of the overall environment that people are working in right now.
This all left us wondering: Who benefits from an environment
where people are afraid to volunteer to take part in the democratic process?
What is the result of this sort of chaos?
One of the biggest drivers of polling places
closing is because there's not enough poll workers.
And when we see polling places close,
that means that you end up with things like long lines
or really inconvenient voting options for communities.
And, ultimately, that can mean that voters are disenfranchised.
So, poll workers have a really direct impact on making sure
that there's enough voting options for everybody in their community.
A second thing that comes to mind about
why poll workers are just so critical
is that they are one of the only proven antidotes to one of the biggest challenges
that we're experiencing in democracy right now, which is a crisis in confidence.
Data shows that one of the few interventions that's proven
to up people's confidence in voting and that the process was fair
and accurately done is their experience with their poll worker.
When voters are disenfranchised and made to feel that their voices don't matter,
they stay home.
They stop participating in our democracy, which is great news for anyone
looking to exert complete, unchecked power over our country.
So, in between hyperventilations, we asked Epps-
Johnson what she seeing being done to combat this crisis.
Some of the concrete ways that we've seen election departments respond include
investing resources and increased security
at facilities where things like the counting process happens.
And we've also seen election departments
really improve their training on topics like how to de-escalate a conflict
at a polling place so that it might not rise to the place of violence
or help election workers understand how they might keep information
about themselves less public if they are being a volunteer.
So, there's some really concrete, practical ways that folks are responding
to make sure that they are doing the best that they can
to mitigate for this environment of harassment and violence.
Epps-Johnson also had some advice for how voters can support election
officials and poll workers.
If you're a voter and you're at a polling place
on election day, be sure to say hi to your poll workers.
They're volunteers that are taking time out of their day
to be there and make sure that the process really works for you.
And if you encounter a situation that feels tense or feels threatening,
really work not to make it exacerbated, but instead,
see if there's ways that you can engage directly with the poll workers,
see if you can support them, and follow their lead, and really go from there.
Poll workers have always been crucial facilitators of democracy,
and their services are more important now than ever.
And remember, sowing seeds of doubt in our elections is a key step along the path
toward a totalitarian government.
It's the kind of oppression that the U.S.
has spent decades trying to weed out in countries across the globe.