It’s 12 months before the next general election, and the Peoria Election Commission is about 30% short of what it needs to fully staff an election.

There’s still time to enlist people to help.

Peoria Election Commission Executive Director Elizabeth Gannon says, “Prior to the 2020 General Election, we had over 200 election judges cancel due to the pandemic. The majority of these cancellations came from judges ages 70+. They never returned to service.

“We have also had many judges state that serving as an election judge today is too stressful — the stakes are too high,” she continues. “So, I think both have contributed to the lack of volunteers.”

The situation is serious but not yet urgent, Gannon says.

“I wouldn’t say dire, but we want to be fully staffed for next year,” she says. “We are attempting to recruit from the
30-55 age group.”

Peoria needs 470-500 election judges and currently has 320, Gannon says.

“Nationwide there is a shortage of poll workers, and I think it has always been an issue,” she adds, “But it has become even worse since 2020.

To help meet the need, the commission is expanding its outreach.

“We will be recruiting at all of the high schools, and we are hoping to have about 100 student judges,” she says. “The post-war generation and a majority of the Boomer generation have served for decades. It is time for the younger generations to pick up the torch and fill their positions as election judges.”

Steely resolve

The position has responsibilities — and compensation: $200 for working Election Day, and minimum wage ($14/hour in Illinois next year) if they work with Early Voting or mail-ballot verification.

Some judges’ concern with stress is justified, according to an April poll of election officials nationwide conducted by the Brennan Center for Justice. It shows almost one in three election officials have been harassed, abused or threatened because of their jobs; 20% know someone who left the job for safety reasons; and 73% said threats and harassment have increased in recent years.

Spurred by online claims, exaggerations and lies, some accuse election authorities and workers of cheating or having vulnerable machines or processes, or they file frivolous requests that interfere with officials’ work, or they demand unnecessary recounts, or paper ballots. (Peoria, Gannon notes, has paper ballots and all the state’s voting equipment is certified by the State Board of Elections and the U.S. Election Assistance Commission.)

“Misinformation and disinformation needlessly [are] eroding confidence and integrity of elections,” said Matt Dietrich, a spokesman from the Illinois State Board of Elections. “We’re all working hard to debunk these attacks.”

The attacks continue. Last month, ex-President Donald Trump’s re-election campaign revived false claims about stolen elections. Senior advisers Chris LaCivita and Susie Wiles on Oct. 2 demanded that the Republican National Committee cancel the Nov. 8 debate in Miami “and end all future debates in order to refocus manpower and money on preventing Democrats’ efforts to steal the 2024 election.”

Besides interfering with elections and staff, such partisan activists and conspiracy adherents also could jeopardize voter turnout, which broke records in the last three federal elections, according to Stanford University political science professor Justin Grimmer, who studies election denialism.

Noble cause

Indeed, the effects are widespread.

“We all need election judges,” said Tazewell County Clerk John Ackerman, a Republican speaking in Pekin at one of a series of Sept. 26 press conferences statewide. In Pekin, where 27 counties and the state Board of Elections appeared together, Ackerman said they’re “breaking the cycle of misinformation [and] welcome you [to] get involved, engaging with the process.”

Several of the officials also stressed that they’re not outsiders, but neighbors.

“We are from your community,” Gannon said, “everyday people [working] to ensure free and fair elections.”

Still, election workers in many states and counties are leaving their jobs in large numbers due to an increase of harassment, the proliferation of conspiracy theories, and heightened workloads, according to a new report, “The High Cost of High Turnover,” released this fall by Issue One, a nonpartisan nonprofit democracy advocacy group. The turnover rate among the nation’s local election officials since 2020 is far higher than it was before.

Shaken ground

“Tom Bride, the [Peoria Election Commission’s] former Executive Director, resigned in part due to the overall pressure, stress, and ridicule of managing elections,” Gannon says. “If I’m being honest, I think about leaving daily. What keeps me here is knowing that my experience, professionalism, and overall election knowledge is needed now more than ever to safeguard our democratic process.”

Also federal agencies hope to safeguard voting, government and democracy. The U.S. Justice Department in 2021 set up its Election Threat Task Force to enforce laws about intimidating and threatening others. Through this summer, 14 people nationwide have been charged with threatening election workers, nine were convicted, and two were sentenced to prison. And the Department of Homeland Security in May issued a national advisory bulletin warning of domestic terrorism this early in the 2024 campaign (that advisory expires this month).

Ironically, the more that disinformation and disruption affect election authorities, the more likely problems could occur.

“If we chase off election workers with this insanity, we’re going to make elections run more poorly,” Stanford’s Grimmer told the Center for Rural Strategies. “We’ll be hemorrhaging so much experience and expertise for no reason other than the sort of falsehoods that are in people’s brains.”