‘I can’t fix the anger’: Election workers see a system under strain

Nikki Bryan loves her job. Or rather, she used to.

After more than two decades as the top official overseeing elections for Nevada’s Lyon County, the third most populous county in the state, Ms. Bryan has announced that Tuesday’s election will be her last.

Many of the things she cherished about the work, like being able to serve her community “under the radar,” have evaporated over the past two years. She and her staff are under scrutiny like never before. And she’s gotten a steady stream of accusatory calls and emails, mostly from Republicans and mostly about fraud – which Ms. Bryan finds particularly exasperating, given that former President Donald Trump won Lyon County in 2020 by more than 40 points. 

“I love this county and I want to see elections done right,” says Ms. Bryan, a lifelong Republican herself, from her office in Yerington, as three voters cast early ballots on electronic machines in a nearby hallway. “But I can’t fix the anger. I’ve tried.” 

In 2020, thousands of veteran local officials like Ms. Bryan served as critical democratic safeguards, overcoming historic challenges – including a pandemic and a president refusing to admit defeat – to administer what experts hailed as a remarkably safe and secure election. But heading into Tuesday’s vote, that bulwark seems more precarious than ever.

With GOP candidates up and down the ballot echoing Mr. Trump’s unfounded claims that the 2020 election was stolen, only a bare majority of registered voters say they “trust elections to be conducted fairly and counted accurately.” And more and more election workers, pushed to a breaking point by harassment and distrust, have been throwing in the towel.

In Nevada, seven of the state’s 17 counties have seen registrars or clerks leave office since 2020, with many resigning midterm. Another two, Ms. Bryan and her Carson City colleague Aubrey Rowlatt, will depart after this election. 

“You’re just working so many long hours, and then you’re being called idiots. ... I had some man say he would sit outside my window and watch me,” says Ms. Rowlatt, who made the decision to leave after only one term.

Experts say this exodus of workers, and the loss of collective years of experience, is putting additional strain on a system that was already underfunded, understaffed, and outdated. Moreover, in some cases they are being replaced by their biggest critics – officials who insist the previous election was fraudulent and who are already instituting controversial changes. After appointing a new clerk, Nevada’s Nye County decided to hand-count all its ballots, before the state Supreme Court last week partially ruled in favor of the American Civil Liberties Union.

“There is a lot of strain on our election system, and it’s coming from a lot of different directions,” says Derek Tisler, counsel for the Brennan Center’s Elections & Government Program. “All those issues, either long-standing or recent, are layering on top of each other and adding to the already really complicated task of running a federal election where we expect to have high turnout.”

Behind the burnout

National analysts agree – and numerous audits have proved – that the U.S. system has many checks in place to prevent large-scale fraud. But local clerks say the system could still be improved to help balance their daunting workloads. “I can take the nasty calls and the nasty emails,” says Ms. Rowlatt, but “it’s the burnout.”

Many clerks like Ms. Rowlatt and Ms. Bryan have other duties such as issuing marriage or business licenses. Ms. Rowlatt motions to a stack of papers on her desk that are on her to-do list, a “dissolution of marriage” headline visible on the top sheet. In addition to her clerk duties, Ms. Bryan is also the county treasurer. These clerks suggest divvying up the vast roles of clerks or registrars by investing in more county officials, as well as investing in security to make the current officials feel safer.

In 2020, the pandemic prompted substantial election changes in many places. Nevada’s Legislature, like many others, passed a law allowing the state to mail ballots to all active voters; in 2021 it voted to continue this procedure. At the same time, jurisdictions must continue to staff a certain number of in-person polling places, which both Ms. Bryan and Ms. Rowlatt say is like “running two different elections” at the same time. 

The changes around mail-in voting passed the Legislature along strict party lines, with Democrats supporting and Republicans opposed. And many Republican candidates have continued to criticize mail-in voting, citing unsubstantiated theories and fueling distrust among their voters. 

Election workers in Ms. Bryan’s office say voters have torn up mail-in ballots in front of their faces, and then requested new paper ballots to vote with in person because they don’t trust electronic voting machines. 

“We printed the exact same ballot,” shrugs Anita Talbot, who has worked in election administration for six years, but says the past two have been unlike anything she’s ever experienced.

One of the most frustrating aspects of all of this, say many election workers, is that the criticisms and conspiracies make for no-win situations. Republican voters tell them that they don’t trust mail-in paper ballots, but they also believe Dominion voting machines are hackable. (The claims were so widespread on right-wing media that Dominion is suing Fox News, Newsmax, and others for $1.7 billion.) They want officials to hand-count ballots, a painstaking process, but they also become suspicious when it takes longer to know the results. Only 10 states currently allow early ballots to be processed and counted before Election Day.

Ms. Bryan did a back-of-the-envelope calculation for her county: It would take 37 straight days of 24-hour shifts to hand-count all their ballots.

“They don’t like the machines, but they don’t like the paper ballots, so what do you want to do? Sit in one big room and raise your hand?” says Ms. Bryan. 

Hand counts are in, Dominion technology out

In Nevada’s Lander County, election officials have replaced Dominion voting machines with another brand of voting technology. In Nye County, a rural area west of Las Vegas, Republican secretary of state candidate Jim Marchant persuaded the five-member Republican County Commission in March to “ditch” their Dominion machines in favor of hand-counting all ballots. 

Then-Clerk Sandra Merlino pushed back, warning that hand counts were prone to “a lot of error.” But the commission was undeterred, and Ms. Merlino resigned after more than two decades in the post. In her place, it appointed Mark Kampf as interim clerk. (Currently the Republican candidate for the position, Mr. Kampf is expected to win easily in a county that Mr. Trump won by more than 40 points.)

Mr. Kampf, a retired executive who had served as the county’s interim treasurer, began the unprecedented hand count last week along with about 60 volunteers, with some groups taking three hours to count 50 ballots after getting mismatched tallies.

But Nevada’s Republican Secretary of State Barbara Cegavaske ordered his office to stop the hand count last week after the Supreme Court of Nevada partially ruled in favor of an ACLU lawsuit, arguing that “the ability of observers to hear the read-aloud selections on ballots” violates state law. Mr. Kampf says they will count silently when they are allowed to resume.

In the waiting room of Mr. Kampf’s office in Pahrump, a sprawling desert town dotted with road signs warning of various animal crossings, copies of the Pahrump Valley Times with the headline “Ballot hand count stopped” are available for $1. A ballot drop box stands in the middle of the room, with two padlocks on the top.

Mr. Kampf’s desk is a flurry of papers, and he apologizes for the mess, noting he hasn’t had much time to unpack since he assumed the role three months ago. 

He’s hopeful they’ll be able to restart the hand counting as soon as possible, noting that for this election he plans to use electronic tabulators as well, since “there is no way I would jeopardize the election results using an unproven process.” But, he adds, he feels “very confident” that hand-counting ballots can work – with Nye leading the way for other jurisdictions to follow. While it may require more time and personnel, that’s ultimately a “function of resources.”

One resource that has been plentiful this year is volunteers. Mr. Kampf says he has already trained over 100 volunteers in the hand-counting process. And after reaching out to local Democratic groups, Mr. Kampf says he has an “appropriate proportion” of Democrats and Republicans covering shifts. 

“As clerk, my job is to produce as transparent a process as possible,” he says. “I met way too many people in this county who were frustrated [with the system]. ... They weren’t sure whether they were going to vote at all. And that was very disturbing to me.”

“This is not why I signed up”

Mr. Kampf is on the record denying the legitimacy of President Joe Biden’s 2020 victory, though he declined to repeat those claims in an interview, saying that as clerk, his job is to look ahead. 

But Nye isn’t the only Nevada county to appoint a new top elections official who’s discredited the 2020 election results. Jim Hindle, vice chair of the Nevada GOP, who led an effort to send illegitimate “alternate electors” from Nevada in December 2020, was elected clerk of Storey County this summer after the incumbent clerk-treasurer resigned. Mr. Hindle, who declined to comment for this article “because of all the misinformation going on,” is running unopposed for a full term.  

Some Nevada clerks worry that these new officials are already having an indirect effect on their own work. There has long been a sense of camaraderie among Nevada’s election officials, says Ms. Bryan – with clerks trading advice on various aspects of the job. But when Mr. Kampf and Mr. Hindle joined the Clerks Association, it caused some to think twice about sending questions to their email chain out of fear that it might be repurposed and used against them. Ms. Rowlatt says she’s seen participation in the group’s bimonthly calls drop off. 

Ms. Bryan worries that whoever replaces her next year won’t be able to lean on other, more experienced clerks. “When I was new, I counted on the older people a lot,” she says. “That goes away when all the older people say, ‘This is not why I signed up.’”

“I believe that most people who have a position like mine take it to heart and do the best they can,” she adds. “I know everyone who has this job in Nevada, and there isn’t one of them that I wouldn’t trust.”

She then clarifies: She is talking about the slate of Nevada’s clerks as it stood at the beginning of this year. Not as it stands today.