Electing America’s Election Officials

This chapter examines the role of elected officials  in administering America’s elections. After exploring the historical roots of directly electing local election officials and recent trends in election administration, we detail the responsibilities these officials hold, where and how they are elected, and the descriptive characteristics of those who are elected. We use comprehensive original data on local election administration in the United States as well as the 2020 Democracy Fund/Reed College Survey of Local Election Officials to shed light on the ever-important local level of U.S. election administration. We focus on six dimensions of election administration: the degree of uniformity within states, the number and type of independent election administration authorities, the geographic level of responsibility, the selection method, and the partisan nature of these offices. These dimensions are mapped between states and jurisdictions as well as over time, providing a complete picture of local election administration in the United States. We conclude by tackling the tricky question of whether election officials should be elected.