Paper
Members of the Ash Center’s Executive Session on Elections and Election Administration present a comprehensive strategy to recruit, support, and retain election administrators by reducing barriers to entry, strengthening professional networks, improving workplace support, and utilizing workforce data address burnout and prevent attrition.
This Executive Session on Elections and Election Administration report examines how the United States can strengthen its election-administration workforce amid growing complexity, public scrutiny, threats, misinformation, and high levels of burnout and turnover. In “Improving the Pipeline of Election Officials: Strengthening Recruitment, Retention, and Professional Development in U.S. Election Administration,” the authors argue that addressing workforce shortages requires more than recruiting new employees. Instead, leaders must build a durable pipeline that supports candidates throughout the entire process, from considering an application to succeeding on the job and remaining in the field.
Drawing on evidence-based recruitment strategies, the authors offer election officials and policymakers concrete steps to develop a more resilient, supported, and sustainable election-administration workforce.
Tina Barton is a vice president at Ready for Tuesday, a nonpartisan organization focused on election administration and security, and co-chair of the Committee for Safe and Secure Elections.
Judd Choate is director of the Division of Elections at the Colorado Department of State and president of the National Association of State Election Directors.
Ruth Greenwood is an assistant clinical professor and the director of the Election Law Clinic at Harvard Law School.
Elizabeth Linos is the Emma Bloomberg Professor of Public Policy and Management and faculty director of The People Lab at the Harvard Kennedy School of Government.
Veniece Miller is the policy director at Boston City Council and former manager of operations and outreach at the Election Law Clinic at Harvard Law School.
Tammy Patrick is chief program officer for the Election Center and a former Maricopa County, Arizona, election official.
Commentary
Allen Lab Policy Fellow Hillary Lehr provides a late-October 2026 snapshot of the multiple ways that AI and the midterms are intersecting, including campaign use cases, policy issues, and voters’ use of LLMs.
Feature
Amid rising threats, harassment, and political polarization, panelists at a recent Ash Center webinar discussed how law enforcement and election officials can collaborate to protect voters and election workers while safeguarding public trust.
Additional Resource
The Shorenstein Center’s 2026 Voting Information Trends project—developed in collaboration with the National Internet Observatory at Northeastern University, the Ash Center for Democratic Governance and Innovation’s Program on Democracy and the Informed Public, and The Civic Health and Institutions Project—provides new insights into the voter information landscape in the United States ahead of the 2026 midterm elections.
Among the resources, an interactive dashboard maps where Americans are finding voting information and learning about key aspects of the voting process—from sourcing polling locations to voter registration. Also included are a series of trends reports gauging perceptions of voting in the lead up to the 2026 midterm elections.
