The first job many people take out of college usually doesn’t come with a lot of responsibility. Adam Byrnes’s first job is to make sure democracy works in a critical US swing state.
Before graduating with a political science degree from Emory University, Byrnes, 21, applied to be the director of elections for Swain county, a mountainous region of about 14,000 people in western North Carolina. He was offered the job before he had a diploma in hand and started at the end of May. He’s currently preparing for municipal elections in the county seat of Bryson City, which take place in November, while also laying the foundations for the 2024 presidential contest.
Although he’d worked with an on-campus civic engagement organization and an outside group that researched voter access in Georgia, Byrnes quickly learned that those outward-facing concerns were just the tip of the electoral iceberg.
“Administratively, there’s a lot to learn. For instance, right now we’re dealing with mid-year campaign finance reports,” he explained. “When you’re in a civic engagement group, that’s not really something you deal with.”
The decentralized system of elections in the United States places a lot of responsibility on county-level officials like Byrnes. And while he may be North Carolina’s youngest election director, he’s far from the only one learning the ropes during a crucial period for American democracy.
Over the last four years, at least 40 of North Carolina’s 100 counties have had to replace their election directors due to retirements, resignations and other career moves. Patrick Gannon, a spokesperson for the state Board of Elections, said that’s a significantly greater level of turnover than the state has seen before.
Similar trends hold true across the rest of the United States. A Boston Globe analysis of data from the US Vote Foundation found that county election official turnover had spiked after the 2020 election in battleground states like Arizona, Pennsylvania and Georgia. According to a 2022 survey by the nonpartisan Brennan Center for Justice, 20% of officials serving at the time said they planned to leave their posts before the 2024 presidential contest.
Those filling the vacancies are entering a high-pressure environment, especially in North Carolina, where Donald Trump defeated Joe Biden by fewer than 75,000 votes. Over 25% of the state’s county election directors have personally experienced threats, according to a March poll by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology Election Data and Science Lab, and 85% say their work-related stress has grown since 2019.
New election workers will help manage a voting system that’s among the most complex in the world, said David Becker, executive director of the Washington-based Center for Election Innovation & Research, a non-profit that works to build trust in the electoral process.
That system, Becker said, includes many checks and balances to ensure the outcome reflects the will of the people. Votes are counted carefully, and rates of fraud are negligible. He said he’s confident that even if those running the system have less experience than before, the candidate who gets the most votes will win.
No election is perfect, however. Inexperienced officials may take longer than usual to release election results or make minor administrative missteps. And in the current political environment, Becker said, bad actors can spin those hiccups into dangerous conspiracy theories.
“That could create a very volatile period of time where there are efforts to delay the counting and intimidate people who are counting ballots, delay the certification and intimidate people who are in charge of certification and perhaps delay or obstruct the meeting of the Electoral College members in each state,” he added. “All of which are unlikely to stop the duly elected individual from being declared the winner of the presidency, but could create a volatile situation that’s ripe for political violence.”
North Carolina’s elections in particular are undergoing a period of rapid change, which may place extra stress on new officials trying to grasp how the system works. For example, the state’s 2023 municipal elections will be first in which citizens must present identification in order to vote. The voter ID law had been struck down as racially biased by a Democratic-controlled supreme court in 2022, but after Republicans took control of the court this year, they overturned the previous ruling.
Josh Jones, who in 2022 became the director of elections for Greene county, said he expects voter ID to be controversial at the polls this year. Although the state’s voters backed a referendum on the requirement in 2018, many voting rights groups say the measure will harm Black and Latino residents.
“As elections officials and poll workers, we have to follow the law,” Jones said. “My hope is that the voting public, when they come to vote, realize that our election officials and poll workers are doing just that, following the law.”
Yet the rules aren’t always crystal clear, and election officials are often tasked with deciding how to put them into practice. Corinne Duncan, director of elections in Buncombe county since 2020, said the role has gained more responsibility in recent years as election law has become more complicated.
“We’re in charge of interpreting the law, which is unique. And law in the United States is a lot about case law and application,” Duncan said. “The longer that you’ve been around and seen how the law plays out, the more effective of a leader you are.”
When veteran directors leave, that leadership capacity leaves with them. And because each type of election only comes around once every four years, Duncan pointed out, new directors need a lot of time to build up practical experience in voting law.
“Directors are retiring and they’re not coming back. That’s a lot of knowledge lost,” Duncan said.
North Carolina’s legislature has proposed a series of bills that would introduce even more wrinkles into how officials are required to run elections. Republicans hold a supermajority in both the state House and Senate and can pass those changes without support from Democratic lawmakers or Roy Cooper, the Democratic governor.
Some elements of those bills seem likely to spark conflict, said Michella Huff, who has overseen elections in Surry county since 2019. She pointed to House Bill 772, which would allow observers appointed by county political parties to move freely around polling locations, record poll workers and stand just 5ft away as voters cast their ballots. Officials could be charged with misdemeanors if they interfere with poll observers, so new elections directors might give them freer rein than the rules allow.
“When I try to envision what that will look like, I do not see how that is not voter intimidation,” Huff said. “It’s going to cause some disruption to the process.”
None of the proposed bills provide new resources or financial support for county election officials, said Gannon with the state board of elections. In fact, budget constraints have led the board to cut four of its eight security and support technicians – experts who help train new election directors and provide advice to counties – since 2020.
The legislature is currently developing North Carolina’s budget for 2023-25. The state board has requested more than $7.6m in new funds over that period to “ensure the smooth implementation of” the voter ID law, as well as over $13.6m to update software systems it calls “antiquated, inefficient, and vulnerable to defects”. Without these resources, new officials will have a harder time making sure the new rules are applied consistently and fairly.
“We have been told that all those matters are being considered by budget negotiators,” Gannon said, although lawmakers have yet to release a draft of the spending plan. “We will continue to work with legislators to make sure they understand potential effects on election administration of any proposed statutory changes, as we do routinely.”
Regardless of these headwinds, North Carolina’s elections officials are trying to build trust in advance of 2024. In Swain county, Byrnes said he’s worked with local media to share details about the new voter ID requirements before polling starts and is meeting with both Republican and Democratic leaders in the area to build good lines of communication.
Despite being new to the job and having to run his first presidential election, he said he feels confident that he will be prepared.
“At the end of the day, if we do everything right and people still don’t like it, there’s not anything we can do,” he said. “It’s important to just control what we can.”
