'Carry that with me for the rest of my life': PA election worker lives under constant threat

23 March 2024

Election workers are preparing for yet another busy and hectic election season while having to grapple the fear that comes with the job. One such worker in a swing Pennsylvania county said indifference to constant threats is a necessity for her occupation.

In a recent interview with the Guardian, 26-year-old Emily Cook — who is acting director of elections in Luzerne County, Pennsylvania — said she's grown "very numb" to the inundation of threats that election workers face in today's tense political environment, even when she knows exactly who the threats are coming from.

"It would be lying if I said I didn’t take it personally," Cook said. "I know exactly who made those comments and I will carry that with me for the rest of my life."

Luzerne County, which houses the city of Wilkes-Barre, had long been considered a Democratic stronghold until the 2016 election, when it flipped Republican to help former President Donald Trump narrowly win the Keystone State's electoral vote haul. Trump won the county again in 2020, though President Joe Biden ultimately won his home state of Pennsylvania. The county's status as a hotly contested jurisdiction in a must-win battleground state has resulted in a hyper-partisan climate that often means election workers can face an onslaught of fury over simple human error.

"[Cook has] been through some s---," Luzerne County Controller Walter Griffith told the Guardian. "Some serious s---."

The publication reported that Pennsylvania in particular has a shortage of experienced election workers, with many being driven out of the profession due to grueling conditions. Between 2020 and 2023, the office of Pennsylvania Secretary of the Commonwealth Al Schmidt found that top election officials in 40 of Pennsylvania's 67 counties had quit. Notably, that period of time is when Trump made election denialism a key grievance, prompting many of his supporters to embrace conspiracy theories about the 2020 election and assume voter fraud or ballot tampering when they failed to achieve their desired result in any election.

Because of the lack of experience of many election workers, the probability for error goes up. In 2020, nine military ballots cast in Luzerne County mistakenly ended up in the trash. A subsequent investigation chalked it up to an error from a temporary employee who was later fired. Then in 2022, a paper shortage in 16 of the county's 143 voting precincts resulted in a congressional hearing and a delayed certification of results.

"[Poll workers are] leaving the field because in many cases they’re practically being driven from it. Because of the environment in their communities. Or because of the environment in their offices that they serve in," said National Association of Election Officials CEO Tammy Patrick. "That is new. That is different from what I’ve been seeing in the last 20 years."

"You do have that loss of institutional knowledge. Elections are incredibly complex. They’re complicated. The devil is in the details and there are many details," she added.

Pennsylvania is likely to be just as hotly contested in 2024 as it as in the previous two cycles. Biden won the state by less than 81,000 votes in 2020, after Trump won it by approximately 54,000 votes in 2016. Census records estimate the population of Luzerne County to be roughly 327,000 people, meaning whomever wins the county in 2024 may very well take the state.

Click here to read the Guardian's full report.

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