Running last-minute elections

WASHINGTON—In late 2015, Colorado decided to begin using Dominion Voting Systems in its elections moving forward, part of a statewide plan to switch to a uniform electronic ballot system. The state had spent three years evaluating the change, and now it was ready to make the leap. Deputy of elections Jennifer Morrell was one of the people responsible for making the new system work.

“We wanted to make sure that by the following year for the 2016 presidential election, that people were very comfortable using that system,” she told me. “So we were thinking a year in advance: How do we start socializing change, what sort of materials can help our voters feel comfortable, how do we train staff? There’s so many cascading effects and we knew we needed at least a year to make sure we hadn’t missed any of those.”

After administering elections in Colorado and then in Arizona for 10 years, Morrell in 2020 started the Elections Group, an organization that trains and offers best practices consultation to state election officials. Thanks to recent changes to election law, officials now face a mountain of potential “cascading effects” with less than six months until the midterm elections on Nov. 3.

“This is a resilient bunch of folks. In fact, probably as resilient as they come in terms of being able to adapt,” Morrell said. “But when things happen simultaneously and really close to an election, it really does create operational pressure.”

Last week, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that Louisiana’s congressional maps had misused the Voting Rights Act by drawing districts specifically based on race. In the wake of the ruling, Louisiana and three other states have begun procedures to redraw their own maps to overturn districts that allegedly wrongfully favored black Americans.

But it’s not the only change that could hit election administrators this year. The Supreme Court has yet to rule on Watson v. Republican National Committee, a case that may determine whether states can continue to accept mail-in ballots after Election Day. Meanwhile, Congress is still debating the SAVE America Act, which at the request of President Donald Trump now includes a provision to ban mail-in ballots entirely. The act would also require voters to prove citizenship and identity when registering to vote and when casting a ballot. In an attempt to move ahead of the legislative and judicial branches, Trump in March signed a now-paused executive order meant to shift the oversight of mail-in ballots to post offices.

All of that means extra work at the precinct level. At the local level, every state employs county and municipal elections officials to administer elections, but the field is understaffed and underfunded. Turnover among election officials hit 41% in 2024, according to the Bipartisan Policy Center.

In the run-up to Election Day, any precincts that receive newly drawn district lines have to communicate with voters their new district number and the slate of available candidates. They’ll also have to ensure all ballots have the correct information printed. For mail-in ballots, the deadline for proofing comes even earlier.

The president’s executive order on mail-in ballots could also cause confusion between election officials and the U.S. Postal Service. The order stipulates that the post office must manage which voters receive mail-in ballots, verifying that they are citizens and allowed to vote. It also directs the Department of Homeland Security to create its own roster of voting-age U.S. citizens in every state, verifying age and citizenship status. Several election advocacy groups and state secretaries of state sued the White House over the order, which remains blocked until a judge determines whether it is constitutional.

“It is a dramatic shift,” Tammy Patrick, chief programs officer for the National Association of Election Officials, said of the executive order. “You go and you drop off 10 invitations to your party, the post office is going to take the invitations and deliver them. They’re not going to look and see whether or not those people are approved to be an attendance.”

The order does not explain how the post office and election officials should shift responsibilities. And none of the proposed measures from Congress or the White House involve earmarks for additional funding. Yet even small changes can add up: It cost North Carolina roughly $1 million simply to remove Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s name from the presidential ballots in 2024. In Washington state, Clark County Auditor Greg Kimsey estimated the SAVE America Act would add $35 million in costs to administer this year’s elections, and another $12 million during presidential election years, States Newsroom reported. And every state has a different system for paying or reimbursing election officials. Nevertheless, roughly one-third of election offices do not have a single full-time employee, according to a 2022 Reed College survey.

“There’s an adage that we like to adopt: You want elections cheap, accurate, and fast, but you can only pick two of the three,” Patrick said. “And we don’t ever want to set aside the accuracy piece.”

If the Supreme Court determines that states may not accept ballots past Election Day, officials would need to either mail them out earlier or invest in additional communication to inform voters of the cutoff date. If several states draw new districts, it is unclear whether they would delay primaries or give extra time for offices to communicate the new district lines to voters.

“If all these things were to happen individually, they are manageable,” Morrell said. “But not all at once.”

Regardless of the timeline, voters often need several cycles to get used to new rules. In March, thanks to decisions by local Republican Party chapters that changed voter polling locations, two counties in Texas kept the primary-election polls open at least one extra hour because voters kept going to the wrong location. But the state Supreme Court later invalidated the late-cast ballots, deeming that the accommodation was not legal.

All of the uncertainty means many states may be poised for chaotic election seasons this year. Morrell says the key question is how new changes, if they move forward, are implemented.

“I understand that a lot of these proposals are rooted in a desire to strengthen confidence and integrity in elections,” she said. “Even well-intentioned changes can create challenges if they’re introduced too quickly or they’re introduced without sufficient resources for local offices to carry them out effectively.”