Experts are sounding alarms just over a year out from November 2024 that the presidential election could suffer from chaos and confusion after high turnover of local election officials and workers in key states.

Threats and scrutiny often linked to false claims of voter fraud have contributed to a surge of local election officials leaving their posts in recent years. The exodus could mean understaffed and inexperienced teams are left to grapple with continued conspiracies and misinformation surrounding the election process in 2024, with some running a high-stakes presidential election for the first time.

Richard Hasen, an election law expert and a professor at the University of California, Los Angeles School of Law, said he’s “quite worried” about the attrition of election officials and workers nationwide but argued it’s “not surprising” given the threats and harassment lobbed at many in the jobs.

  • specseaweed@lemmy.world
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    1 year ago

    If you care about this issue, you can go and be a part of the solution. Go to your state’s Secretary of State website and sign up to help.

    I did it and it was super easy and a little boring.

    This whole thing depends on normal ass people like you doing it. Give it a shot.

    • Psythik@lemm.ee
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      1 year ago

      Hell no. My big fat mouth will end up saying something to the first MAGAt that brings up voter fraud, and I’ll* wind up either dead or in jail. Hard pass.

      Edit: Added a missing word, which explains the downvotes.

      • captainlezbian@lemmy.world
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        1 year ago

        Yeah it’s something I’d absolutely do in theory. In reality I’m a trans woman in a red state and that would have just enough possibility to go astoundingly poorly for me

      • specseaweed@lemmy.world
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        1 year ago

        I mean obviously if you can’t interact with some… fuck I don’t know how to say it nicely… some fuckhead ignorant asshole who’s there to fuck with people because they’re the lowest common denominator shithead…

        then don’t do it.

        I only had two real issues when I worked it in Texas in 2019 and 2020. The Republicans opened late for a primary and their voters were standing there waiting before work while they were fucking around. I called the SecState line and that shit was open like 3 mins later and suddenly those assholes had a purpose.

        The other was an electioneering issue. A dude with signs all over his car for a Democrat parked in a school parking lot illegally, right next to the entrance. I called that one in and he realized I was doing it and actually got in my face and tried the whole intimidation thing. I’m a pretty big guy so I stood there and tried not to escalate by laughing at him, but he was by far the worst interaction I had and that was a Democrat.

        Having said that, those kinds of issues were exceedingly rare.