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Abstract

Recent attacks on election integrity and the dehumanization of civil servants have raised concerns about the health of American democracy. Democracy administration rests on four pillars: trust/transparency, resources, education, and accountability/oversight. Election administrators, their employees, and poll workers administer democracy through these mechanisms. Ideally, centering these important public administrators via research in a way that re-humanizes the administrative process may be the ultimate strategy to stabilize the foundation upon which these pillars rest. In addition, we must incorporate election administration into the classes we teach. However, many public administration scholars do not understand the daily challenges election administrators face as our programs do not center election administration as a field of study or interest. This academic-practitioner disconnect leads to roadblocks that minimize public administration’s stated goal of democracy promotion.

Keywords

Election administration resilience public administration teaching civic education democracy

Introduction

American democracy is based on the idea that public servants facilitate free and fair elections for their fellow citizens. These public servants are aided by a temporary, but essential, group of (Barsky, 2024) local community members who staff polling locations and perform other tasks in the electoral process like answering voter questions, preparing and processing mail ballots, and participating in recounts. While no administrative endeavor is perfect, the U.S. system has been remarkably successful in administering efficacious elections in small towns, large cities, and everywhere in between. Voting is framed as a patriotic duty, and while Americans are not quite as festive as Australians with their democracy sausages (Kim, 2022), voting is celebrated as a way to participate in the community and to be heard. Looking around a supermarket or workplace on Election Day, the celebration of voting is evident, with flag “I Voted” stickers adorning a broad cross-section of the public.

Despite their success and increasing professionalization (Hale and Slaton, 2008), today’s election administrators are facing increased attacks and threats from people that do not understand what they do. Worse, popular rhetoric is priming people to blame election administrators for results they do not like, a fundamentally undemocratic activity. As academics with practical experience in election work, we were interested in illuminating this situation and making known the struggles and opportunities faced by today’s election workforce. Voting, and access to it, is a form of power. As public administration scholars, we deal with questions of power in trying to answer questions about policy; who creates it, who benefits from it, who loses because of it, and whose voice is included or ignored (Gooden, 2014; Johnson and Svara, 2015). Public perceptions of power, and the loss of it, inherently contributed to the violent contestation of 2020 general election, resulting in increased harassment of local election officials. The implicit and explicit threats directed towards public servants are of grave concern for the hallowed tradition of voting and its ability to give voice to communities.

A mass exodus of experienced election administrators due to a toxic environment, and challenges in recruitment, harms democracy and the values we profess to uphold in our field. Yet, the administration of elections is largely overlooked by U.S. public administration programs, leading to an academic-practitioner gap that creates roadblocks in conducting actionable research. Why would these public servants trust that (1) academics understand their work and (2) can produce research that helps them in their professional roles? Practitioners have often lamented about the disconnect between theory and praxis (Ancira et al., 2022; Macaulay and Ormston, 2024). As public administration scholars, we need to be better partners in creating communities of focus in this critical area of public service.

Our main research question is how can public administration programs and scholars humanize the profession of democracy administration and realize opportunities to bridge the scholar-practitioner gap? In addition, how can a focus on election administration, within the broader concept of civic engagement, foster public administration’s commitment to democracy? In order to better connect election administration to our field’s stated values and goals, we propose a heuristic model of democracy administration. This model rests on four pillars: trust/transparency, resources, education, and accountability/oversight. Elections are deeply personal, localized, and heavily reliant on people from all different walks of life. They are a fitting environment in which to recommit to the promise of a more inclusive, representative, and democratic society.

First, we will briefly outline the literature on teaching democracy promotion and civic engagement while pointing out this rich history often ignores the actual work of election administration. Second, we will briefly describe the work involved in election administration and the important challenges that face the field today. We will then introduce our model of democracy administration, exploring how the heuristic can help public administration scholars and students understand the dynamics of democracy administration and guide lessons in the classroom. Finally, we will end the paper by discussing the implications of the democracy administration heuristic on future avenues for research and pedagogy.

Democracy and civic engagement in public administration teaching

Defining civic engagement can be a tricky endeavor. As noted in a recently published volume on civic pedagogies, no one term can encompass “the diverse set of activities that contribute to students’ civic learning” (Bell et al., 2024: p. 9). Civic engagement, citizen participation, community organizing, experiential learning, service learning, community service, and democratic citizenship are all terms (among others) that are used to describe projects within the political sphere of teaching students about being more involved civically engaged. The Haas Center for Public Service at Stanford lists 6 pathways of public service and civic engagement that include terms like community engaged research, social entrepreneurship, and community organizing and activism (Haas, n.d.). Activities to encourage civic learning include interviewing local politicians, attending public meetings, community service projects and internships, and voter registration drives (APSA, n.d.). Yet, a dedicated focus on how elections are administered and by whom is not present.

At the secondary education level, less than 20% of U.S. states require a full year of civics; civic knowledge has been declining in the U.S. for some time, and many point to this decline as directly impacting democratic health (Bell et al., 2024; Fitzgerald et al., 2021). Institutions of higher education play an integral role in reversing this trend. Civic education can help reduce partisan sorting and political resentment while forcing people to talk across these divides (Campbell, 2019; Cramer, 2016; Glover et al., 2021; Whaley and Clapp, 2022). Yet, many challenges remain in incentivizing higher education institutions to center civic engagement: declining levels of trust in institutions, including universities (Strachan, 2024), a tenure and promotion system that prioritizes publication over engagement programs (Seligsohn and Grove, 2017), and the siloing of civic engagement curricula within political science and similar programs (Millett McCartney, 2017).

In democracies, the execution of, and public trust in, free and fair elections provides a legitimizing process for political winners and losers. In systems of representational government, elections act as a crucial link between the individual and their government via elected offices (Atkeson and Saunders, 2007). Representation of marginalized identities in public institutions, like election administration, “has a positive effect on trust in administrative procedures” (King and Barnes, 2019: p. 16). Therefore, a loss of public confidence in the electoral process, and by extension the administrators responsible for its implementation, ultimately signals a crisis in democracy.

Election administration

One way in which public administration scholars can approach these challenges is to center election administration as an area of study. Election administration is an important, even vital, form of government bureaucracy and, given the large number of citizen poll workers required to deliver elections, among the largest examples of civic engagement in the U.S. Many Americans vote but are somewhat ignorant of everything that needs to happen to make that process work for them. Unfortunately, today, a lot of the information they hear about how elections work is based on mis-, dis-, and mal-information (MDM). Ignorance thrives in a vacuum; deeper, more meaningful academic-practitioner connections through pedagogical approaches in this arena are essential. As teachers of public administration, creating a better vision of how and why elections happen, as well as humanizing the process, is integral to furthering social justice goals and civic values.

The unique attributes of election administration, specifically the myriads of career paths administrators take to these positions (Manson et al., 2020) provides rich data and stories. Public administration scholars, whether they specialize in qualitative or quantitative methods, can find space in this subfield. While quantitative methods can tease out patterns of behavior or offer glimpses of national trends, qualitative research may offer a more nuanced representation of decision-making. Studying and teaching about election administration offers avenues to explore topics like administrative burden, emotional labor, and discretion.

Public service jobs require interpersonal contact; for instance, the work election administrators undertake requires emotional labor (Clark et al., 2023; Newman et al., 2009). Election administrators must be informed, service-oriented, problem solvers, with excellent people skills to effectively and accurately perform their work. Some election administrators do double duty as city clerks or fulfill other municipal roles, with elections only being a small part of their job responsibilities, while others are full-time election administrators with many staff. Older white women are overrepresented in election administration, suggesting identity implications in street-level interactions, and opportunities to recruit diverse voices into the field (Guy and Newman, 2004; Humphrey, 2022).

After the 2020 elections, there was an “exodus of election officials” due to the toxic environment, with over a thousand reports of election worker threats in the year following the election (Cassidy, 2022; Stein and Hamburger, 2022). Because there is no universally-understood definition of what constitutes election violence and harassment, we know that reports may not fully reflect the state of the field. In our work, election administrators have shared stories of their car tires being slashed while parked in front of their home and enrolling in residential mental health treatment due to workplace stress. Yet, when surveyed, these individuals do not report that they have been the victim of election violence or threats.

Furthermore, we understand from some election officials that even when threats are reported to the appropriate authorities, they feel unsupported. In one instance, a local election administrator told us they reported threats up the chain of command, but that due to perceived political reasons, little public support or repudiation was offered. Another election administrator disclosed that when they notified local law enforcement of an individual with a weapon threatening them and their workplace, they were mocked for seeking police protection. As a result, they said they no longer report issues. In response to whether she would leave her post due to concerns for her safety, a county clerk commented, “my dad served in the military, my grandfather served in the military…I don’t feel it’s bad enough yet to feel that my public services is too much” (Katharine Clark in Cassidy, 2022).

Election administrators, their employees, and poll workers make up the human resources of election administration. They are dedicated members of our communities. Despite these local connections, the violence, threats, and intimidation seen since the 2020 election cycle has affected everyone involved in the process. Ruby Freeman, a poll worker from Georgia, said to Congress:

There is nowhere I feel safe. Nowhere. Do you know how it feels to have the President of the United States target you? The President of the United States is supposed to represent every American, not target one. But he targeted me, Lady Ruby, a small-business owner, a mother, a proud American citizen who stood up to help Fulton County run and election in the middle of a pandemic…[I] won’t even introduce myself by my name anymore…I’ve lost my name, and I’ve lost my reputation. I’ve lost my sense of security (as quoted in Gardner, 2022)

This dehumanization of the people who work in elections is a direct threat to the functioning of our democracy. Clearly, Ruby Freeman is articulating how her humanity has been denied. The constellation of public values in Jørgensen and Bozeman’s (2007) study include citizen engagement, transparency, and accountability, among others. Prior exploration in the public sphere uncovers the impact of dehumanization as a critique of the economic and productive value of an individual to society; in their exploration of death and the COVID-19 pandemic, Zavattaro et al. (2021) suggest that a public values failure results when an individual is dehumanized, a finding echoed in Clark and Nickels (2021) discussion of austerity and administrative evil.

In the end, dehumanization produces negative consequences, felt more acutely by socially marginalized groups and individuals (Zavattaro et al., 2021) and significantly influences people’s civility and belief in democratic values (Utych, 2018). Should running elections in a modern democracy be compared with war-time service? And is public administration complicit in the dehumanization of election administrators by not engaging with and embedding ourselves in this community?

The Pillars of Democracy Administration

With rising concern about the durability and resiliency of U.S. democracy, and younger Americans believing that signing a petition is more meaningful and impactful than a career in public service (Kosek, 2022), we see the need for a new heuristic model envisioning democracy administration as a vital public service. We created this model to help guide pedagogy and scholarship by explaining election administration as public administration to public administration students and practitioners. The pillars of democracy administration enable public administration scholars to situate election administration in the classroom. We provide an example of how recent threats to democracy administration impact each pillar and offer suggestions on what research needs to be done to ameliorate these threats. The foundation of our model is built on operationalizing the term “dehumanization” to mean any denial of humanity to others (Haslam, 2006). Simply, we include election administration as a key arena in a humanized public service model. See Figure 1.

Trust/transparency

Democratic theory asserts that government legitimacy is inherently an issue of trust: constituents must trust the process and outcomes of elections. Transparency is generally considered to be related to the degree that an individual or organization “reveals relevant information about its own decision processes, procedures, functioning, and performance” (Grimmelikhuijsen et al., 2013: p. 573). In the context of democracy administration, transparency means voters should be able to easily contact an election official and receive an answer to queries in easy-to-understand language. Public testing of election equipment, information sessions at public events, and tours of non-sensitive areas are also ways to increase transparency. If mistakes are made, election administrators must have ways to rectify and explain those mistakes. However, the public must also reciprocate that trust and recognize election administrators’ professionalism, expertise, and knowledge. This level of understanding between all involved can only be achieved through embedded co-production with the community.

Recent concerted efforts to delegitimize election outcomes which have created distrust in American elections. Campaigns to malign the legitimacy of mail ballots, despite their successful use for decades across the U.S., were used to directly harass election administrators and accuse them of fraud (Gordon, 2021). To counter this narrative, campaigns to pre-bunk and debunk misinformation regarding the election administration have emerged. At the federal level, the National Association of Secretaries of State (NASS) began the #TrustedInfo campaign in 2020. “The goal of #TrustedInfo2022 is to drive voters directly to election offices’ websites and social media pages to ensure voters are getting accurate information” (Center for Tech and Civic Life, n.d.); in other words, transparent information that they can trust.

We propose that the first pillar of democracy administration requires a move towards the stories of street-level workers (Maynard-Moody and Musheno, 2003) in order to advance values of trust and transparency. Beginning in 2021, Verified Voting, a nonprofit advocacy group focused on building trust in elections, created a “Spotlight on Election Officials” blog where election officials shared what they like about their jobs, while also answering questions about threats to their personal safety. Issue One, another nongovernmental organization, started a #FacesofDemocracy campaign spotlighting election administrators, poll workers, and other volunteers, identifying everyone by name and photo, and also offering personal details like hobbies and careers. The hashtag #ElectionHeroes, which began during the 2020 election to thank election workers for putting themselves at risk during a pandemic, is still in use today. However, the meaning has shifted and now seeks to protect these workers from violence at the polls.

While these public information campaigns are important and ongoing, it is also notable that some local election offices, government offices, struggle to be “verified” on social media platforms. So, their ability to promote (using public dollars) nonpartisan information is hampered. In our experience, and from larger subdiscipline-wide conversations, we have come to understand how democracy administrators feel unsupported in the public arena to do their jobs effectively. Public administration programs and scholars could help draw attention to this problem through community-focused research with these important civil servants and the work they do.

Resources

Second, the electoral process must be provided with adequate resources, including a full-time workforce, to execute its public duties. U.S. election administration is under-resourced and under-funded, and election administrators “express pride in pulling off the complicated logistical maneuvers necessary to conduct elections on a shoestring budget” (Stewart, 2022: p. 1). The problem of under-resourced elections was uncovered publicly in the wake of Bush v. Gore, eventually resulting in the single-largest outlay of federal funds for elections via the Help America Vote Act (HAVA). While welcome, in the 20 years since the passage of HAVA, federal financial resources for elections have been “infrequent and reactive” (Stewart, 2022: p. 1).

To meet the emergent needs of election administration during the COVID-19 pandemic, federal funding via the CARES Act was supplemented by private philanthropy. Together, the CARES Act and nonprofit Center for Tech and Civic Life (CTCL) made $750 million of new funding available in 2020. CTCL funds were given with no strings attached, all an elections administrator had to do was apply and they could use the funds at their discretion. While welcome, this financial infusion is only a portion of the estimated four-to-six-billion-dollar price tag of U.S. elections in a “normal” year, and a drop in the bucket of the spending for 2020, which was estimated to reach $10 billion (Stewart, 2022).

Financial resources are imperative to the delivery of accessible, free, and fair elections and also to the efficacy of democracy administration. However, acquiring appropriate budget resources for election administration is becoming increasingly difficult (Mohr et al., 2024). Even though CTCL funds were provided with no requirements for their use, they became a convenient target for conspiracy theories (Vigdor, 2022). Since 2020, 23 states have passed laws restricting, either in terms of use or outright prohibition, the use of private funds for election administration (NCSL, 2023). Proponents argue that private dollars could provide philanthropic individuals and organizations with undue influence over the electoral process and its administration. It is notable that in states that disallow this type of funding, no evidence of increased state appropriations for elections administration can be discerned (Stewart, 2022), suggesting an increased resource gap in these jurisdictions.

Successful democracy administration not only requires financial resources, but also robust human resources. Concerns about cultivating the workforce necessary for successful election administration are well documented. Most poll workers are elderly, an issue that caused staffing shortages in 2020 during the pandemic (Manson et al., 2020). Important research shows that trust in elections increases when voters are served by poll workers who look like them (King and Barnes, 2019); yet most election administrators are white (Manson et al., 2020). In addition, threats and harassment of election workers has hampered recruitment (Cassidy, 2022). To increase the safety of this vital workforce, the U.S. Election Assistance Commission (EAC) created a new resource on “Election Official Security,” noting that while “no one should have to face violent threats at work” that this is “unfortunately…the reality for many election officials” (EAC, n.d.). The Department of Justice (2021) recently added guidance on its website urging people to send tips of election worker harassment to the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI).

Both NASPAA and the American Society for Public Administration (ASPA) call for the promotion of democratic participation and engagement in their mission statements. As a field, lending our academic talents to the co-production of actionable research and partnering with election administration for internships and experiential student projects would help spotlight resource needs, from people to budgets. Furthermore, drawing back the curtain on how elections are run through dedicated webinars, class presentations, and guest speakers would help counter disinformation. The commitment to democracy administration as a viable and essential career path in public service creates opportunities to engage in and learn with our local communities.

Education

Elections should be run by those with sufficient experience and timely training in election administration and law. In addition, the public should receive regularly updated information via multiple outlets including websites, social media feeds, in-person events, and other trusted, community sources. Continuous training, of administrators or poll workers, increases satisfaction in voter experience and the quality of results, yet training requires funding (Chapin, 2019). Successful educational efforts also require deep, local knowledge. In what languages should election materials be translated? How are communities affected when polling locations change? Why is it important to offer early voting on Sundays? These questions and their answers are deeply personal and localized. Simply, civic engagement requires civic education.

Indeed, in 2017, NASPAA, the global accreditor of master’s degree programs in public affairs, public administration, and nonprofit studies, identified civic engagement as a key initiative, calling for programs to more actively advocate for students to vote and learn more about democracy. Although NASPAA offers a template for election administration courses, only 13 schools¹ indicate offering courses in election administration; of those, five are housed in schools of law, not public administration, policy, or affairs programs (NASPAA, n.d.-a). Public administration must promote democracy administration as a valid career path, create the requisite courses to aid in this goal, and provide a megaphone to support scholars doing this work.

The education pillar of democracy administration can only be achieved by centering the experiences and voices of public servants. The 2022 Election Sciences, Reform, and Administration (ESRA) conference brought together practitioners, nonprofits, and scholars from across the country to discuss election administration issues and strategies. Most practitioners at the event discussed the importance of academic research and support; however, they also expressed the importance of actionable research that can bolster their work. Because elections are local and steeped in a history of inequity, solutions that work in one community might not work in another.

Education is a necessary pillar of democracy administration as election workers leave the field through retirement, fear for their safety, or incapacity. The exodus of experienced election workers creates a vacuum into which nefarious actors may insert themselves for the purposes of changing election results or access to the ballot, weakening the entirety of our proposed heuristic of democracy administration. Strong participation of public administration in this field can serve as a backstop to institution capture. These efforts can also develop research on messages and framing to best communicate with the public, research vital to election administrators, thereby cultivating deeper connection to local communities.

Accountability/oversight

Overman and Schillemans (2022) note that in the public sphere, “accountability mechanisms have an important function in securing democratic and constitutional control” (p. 12). Election administrators accomplish most of their work in the public eye, giving public notice of major events like equipment testing (logic and accuracy), ballot counting (canvassing), and other key aspects of the electoral process. In some jurisdictions, all the activities that make up election administration are subject to video surveillance, which may be viewed in real-time by interested members of the public. Furthermore, opportunities to interrogate the electoral process exist in the form of poll watchers and policies that allow for the public challenge of voters.

Democracy administration has become increasingly professionalized over the last 20 years as is evident by the increased number of training programs, professional associations, and networking events across the country (Chapin, 2019). The 2020 election was deemed the “most secure election in history” (CISA, 2020), with record turnout during a global pandemic. Counterintuitively, some of the biggest critics and roadblocks to effective democracy administration are other elected officials. Free and fair elections result in partisan outcomes; however, their administration is not partisan. Elected officials would benefit from a comprehensive understanding of how elections work (trust/transparency), what resources are needed (resources), and how they can craft laws in ways that support, rather than stymie, election processes (education).

Today, some state governments are legislating to protect people during elections: California, Maine, Minnesota, New Mexico, and Washington all introduced or passed laws that would increase protections for election workers, create misdemeanor charges and fines for people convicted of harassment, and allow election workers to shield their home addresses from public searches (Rodriguez, 2022). At the same time, some states have passed bills restricting citizen voting access or election workers themselves, increasing their culpability for mistakes (Brennan Center for Justice, 2022).

Furthermore, laws to increase “integrity” of the elections, drafted in response to unfounded claims of fraud, disproportionately impact communities of color and diversity (Lopez, 2022; Morris, 2022). In Florida, the newly-enshrined election crimes police force made 20 arrests for “voter fraud” in August 2022 - mostly people of color in Democratic counties, who had been told by the state that they were eligible to vote. Most experts believe the convictions will be overturned (Stern, 2022). Other Republican-led states have followed Florida’s lead, with Georgia, Ohio, and Virginia creating “election integrity” units. They have found little wrongdoing (Fields et al., 2022). However, the chilling effect of arrests on voters and election administrators, and democracy administration broadly, remains.

Our field, public administration, is positioned to support practitioners with research illuminating the harm that these changes cause and advance our progress in supporting democracy. The pillars of democracy administration, while distinct, are also part of a reinforcing system. Weaknesses in one pillar of democracy administration has consequences for the strength of the whole endeavor. For instance, proper accountability/oversight mechanisms are crucial to trust/transparency. But, as seen in Florida, erroneously arresting voters causes distrust in government institutions. Resources are essential to building community connections and educating poll workers and the public. Yet, budgets are stagnant and ill-equipped to deal with electoral challenges facing administrators today.

Bringing election administration into the public administration classroom

Public administration curricula are dedicated to advancing five universal required competencies (see Table 1) (NASPAA, n.d.-b). Likewise, public administration programs generally require coursework covering the domains of leadership and management, public policy and analysis, financial management and budgeting, human resources and performance measurement, organizational theory, and research and evaluation. Our call for public administration to center election administration as an area of study offers opportunities to deeply connect the themes and theories underpinning the teaching and learning of public administration with contemporary challenges in applied practice.

Table 1.

NASPAA standard 5.1: Universal required competencies.

Five domains that demonstrate the ability to
Lead and manage in the public interest
Participate in, and contribute to, the policy process
Analyze, synthesize, think critically, solve problems, and make evidence-informed decisions in a complex and dynamic environment
Articulate, apply, and advance a public service perspective
Communicate and interact productively and in culturally responsive ways with a diverse and changing workforce and society at large

In the following subsection, we offer suggestions for how election administration can be incorporated into existing public administration courses and advance the synthesis of the universal standards in Table 1. Appendix A provides suggested readings, activities, and connections to practice for teachers of public administration and their programs to consider incorporating in their existing practice.

Leadership and management

Election administration can be effectively integrated into courses on leadership and management and foster the ability to lead and manage in the public interest. Core themes including leadership in election administration, intergovernmental relations, ethical decision-making, technology management, and innovation are situated at the intersection of public and election administration. Additionally, election administration provides myriad opportunities for developing communication and engagement skills. In the leadership and management context, election administration can advance cultural competence, adaptive communication, accessibility, and community engagement techniques necessary for leading and managing in the public interest.

Public policy and analysis

Incorporating election administration into courses on public policy and analysis can help students develop a comprehensive understanding of critical elements of democratic governance. By developing a nuanced understanding of electoral processes, including legal and statutory, technological, and policy challenges, public administration students can hone their policy analysis and evaluation skills. Election administration is deeply affected by the interplay between federal, state, and local governments and therefore provides the foundation for understanding how various governments are responsible for and interact with election policy. In turn, election administration offers timely and contemporary opportunities to engage with emerging issues impacting the administration of democratic governance. Incorporating election administration with the public policy and analysis curriculum enhances students’ knowledge of policy implementation, their ability to evaluate policy, and the skills necessary to navigate complex systems.

Financial management and budgeting

Including election administration in financial management and graduate courses can provide students with a thorough understanding of the dynamic relationship between electoral processes and public finances. Analyzing complex scenarios for funding elections and exploring the relationship between election law, procedures, and budgetary constraints can help students think critically about complex systems and information. In financial management and budgeting courses, engagement with election administration can strengthen evidence-based decision-making skills by enhancing data analysis and performance measurement techniques. Likewise, students can learn to assess financial implications of policy strategies by developing their cost-benefit analysis skills related to elections - for instance, in calculating the cost per vote of one voting mode versus another (e.g., in-person vs mail).

Human resources and performance measurement

Bringing election administration into human resources and performance management courses can create a powerful synergy that empowers students to identify and articulate public service perspectives. The unique makeup of the election administration workforce, from demographic composition to recruitment and retention to required skills and training, provides a unique content for studying human resource practices and their effectiveness. The high-stakes of successful elections and temporary nature of the electoral workforce present compelling challenges to traditional public administration human resources models and offer students the opportunity to explore nimble, public service solutions. Examination of the election administration workforce provides insight into how human resource practices, employee outcomes, and organizational performance interact in the central component of democratic governance. Insights gained from including election administration in human resource and performance measurement courses may illuminate applications in other areas of public service that require the swift mobilization of skill, temporary workers.

Organizational theory

Incorporating election administration into organizational theory classes in public administration can provide insights into the practical application of theoretical concepts while advancing democratic and public service values. Election administration is an excellent context to examine and test several organizational theories including principal-agent, network, institutional, and contingency theory. The election administration context provides a compelling framework for explaining organizational behaviors. For instance, the heterogeneity of approaches to selecting election officials and systems for leadership and management at the state level may offer insight into successes (or failures) of election administration performance.

Research and evaluation

Research and evaluation methods have been intertwined with election administration since Campbell and Kahn (1948) pioneered survey sampling and methodology in their study of the American voter. Incorporating election administration into today’s public administration research and evaluation courses offer an excellent opportunity for students to develop the analytical, problem-solving, and decision-making skills critical for public servants. Election administration offers opportunities to apply various research methods from surveys to focus groups and provides an interesting environment to learn and understand comparative analysis techniques. Working with real-world election data, students can develop and strengthen their analytical skills and consider the role of evaluation in evidence-based decision-making. The complex and changing nature of election administration provides a compelling context for applying theoretical concepts to real-world challenges.

Figure 1.

The pillars of democracy administration.

Discussion and implications for future engagement

Democracy administration rests on four pillars: trust/transparency, resources, education, and accountability/oversight. The ongoing campaign to dehumanize the people that run our elections, cast doubt on every electoral process, and threaten (and commit) violence with each electoral loss (or win) will cause untold damage to our current system by weakening these key concepts. School levies, ballot initiatives, races for local school boards and city offices, and the expertise necessary to provide basic public health and election guidance, will be impacted by lower voter turnout and candidate slates made up of individuals representing the antithesis of the offices they seek. Resilient democracy depends on supported election administrators and an informed public.

Lower turnout and the capture of offices by individuals unsupportive of their purpose will not affect all communities equally. Instead, those with historically and continuingly marginalized identities, our LGBTQIA2S+, immigrant, communities of color and diversity, the disability community, and many, many others may rightly refrain from participation as their very lives, livelihood, and basic humanity may become threatened. Further, we are gravely concerned about what a more homogenous population of democracy administrators may mean for trust and confidence in American government as we slip further from the promise of representative bureaucracy.

Public administration’s commitment to election administration is vital when considering the 7 Es² (Norman-Major, 2022); increased knowledge and support of electoral processes and the people that administer them will create engagement, increase equity, promote empathy, and instill an ethical obligation to defend democracy. The field of election administration, via our model of democracy administration, into our teaching will create career pathways in politics and policy from a new perspective. In bringing to light the lived realities of election administrators, we will elevate the voices and experiences of public servants working daily to serve democracy, combat mis- and dis-information, and help realize a fairer system of representative governance.

We can also center election administration in our classrooms by highlighting the work done by local election officials, partnering with local election offices through internship and poll worker recruitment programs, assign readings on election administration (see Appendix A) and promote the theoretical links between public administration’s commitment to social equity, democracy, and public service ethos through the very practice of democracy. Bringing in guest speakers from the local election office and touring election facilities can help create connections between our students and the real work of administering elections. Finally, we can work with local nonprofit organizations that promote voter education and registration; we should partner with or create centers of civic education within our universities.

Supplemental Material

Supplemental Material - Public administration’s role in building resilient election administration in the United States

Supplemental Material for Public administration’s role in building resilient election administration in the United States by Amanda D. Clark, and Christina S. Barsky in Teaching Public Administration

Footnotes

Declaration of conflicting interests

The author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

Funding

The author(s) received no financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

ORCID iDs

Amanda D. Clark

Christina S. Barsky

Supplemental Material

Supplemental material for this article is available online.

Notes

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