Nate Mueller of Iowa City has worked every election — general, local, primary, and special — since 2016.

Mueller became a poll worker in college after an internship at the Johnson County Auditor’s Office. While there, Mueller saw firsthand the struggles of recruiting and retaining poll workers and decided to step up to the challenge.

Now, after working more than 10 elections, Mueller is what the auditor’s office calls a rover — a person who supports staff with technical issues or answers questions in six assigned precincts in an assigned district.

Mueller is one of hundreds of poll workers who will man the polls this November at the 64 precincts in Johnson County, Iowa’s fourth largest county.

With the general election just 41 days away, ballot officials have been working to prepare since the last presidential election in 2020. False claims about widespread voter fraud, however, have eroded public trust in the voting process and brought threats to more than a third of poll workers nationwide.

Iowa’s election officials remain confident in both the security of the November general election and the safety of Iowa poll workers. Despite all the preparation, distrust remains among American voters.

According to a July 2023 AP-NORC nationwide poll, only 44 percent of respondents said they felt the 2024 election votes would be properly counted. 27 percent of respondents said they had no confidence that the votes would be counted correctly.

Experts typically interpret these results as stemming from the false claims made by former President Donald Trump, stating he lost the last election to President Joe Biden due to widespread voter fraud.

The conspiracies have led to death threats toward poll workers and election officials, poll worker shortages in key swing states — where the most scrutiny will take place.

Nationwide, election officials have reported harassment, both in person and over the phone. A May 2024 survey conducted by the Brennan Center for Justice, a non-partisan law and policy institute, found that 38 percent of local election officials around the country experienced threats or harassment for doing their jobs.

The same survey also found more than half of local election officials reported feeling worried for their and other officials’ safety.

The U.S. Justice Department’s Election Threats Task Force announced in April 2024 it is investigating dozens of threats against election workers, according to NBC News.

But here in Johnson County, residents have been respectful, according to Mueller. He said he has not ever experienced threats or harassment while working the polls.

However, Mueller said national narratives about threats toward election workers did make him apprehensive before the 2022 elections. In the days leading up to the 2022 election, there were reports of armed militias protecting ballot drop boxes in Arizona.

Mueller said he is not worried about the upcoming election and expects it to go smoothly in Johnson County.

“I don’t feel that there’s been a lot of animosity or distrust, or people coming through the precinct saying that we are rigging the vote in some way, or we are disenfranchising people in some way,” Mueller said.

Iowa’s election system is a big reason there has not been a lot of mistrust in the results locally, he said. Iowa requires a paper ballot and uses computerized tabulators calibrated and tested publicly before every election. While other states like Louisiana use computerized ballots to mark their votes, however, most states rely on a mix of computerized ballots and paper ballots.

While Iowa may not be a hotspot for threats toward poll workers, election officials nationwide are preparing for a close race that could flare tensions and mistrust.

Thousands of poll workers at work

With 64 polling places in Johnson County, it takes hundreds of polling workers to ensure the election runs smoothly, especially in high-volume presidential elections.

No counties in Iowa have reported poll worker shortages, but nationwide studies show record-high turnover among local election officials, according to NBC News.

Iowa Secretary of State Paul Pate said in a statement to The Daily Iowan that the state has not been affected by nationwide poll worker shortages because of the statewide recruitment efforts led by the Secretary of State’s office with the deployment of pollworker.iowa.gov.

The website was launched in 2020 to combat the shortage. Since its inception, the site has connected more than 21,000 Iowans interested in being a poll worker with local officials.

Johnson County Auditor Erin Shane said the auditor’s office has seen high turnover, and it isn’t out of the ordinary. Shane said Johnson County has enough poll workers for election day.

Linn County Auditor Joel Miller shared similar sentiments, stating Linn County is also fully staffed for election day.

Miller said many poll workers are adamant in their commitment to working the polls despite the national rhetoric surrounding election workers.

“I think the attitude of poll workers, not only in Linn County but likely across the state and other states, is that ‘we are not going to be intimidated by all these conspiracies and ensure that those kinds of things that people talk about don’t happen here,’” Miller said.

Despite a lack of recruitment struggles, Iowa election officials still must train staff on safety procedures and prepare them for the possibility of violence, threats, and other disruptions.

Adams County Auditor Rebecca Bissell, who is also president of the Iowa County Auditor’s Association, said election officials are worried for the safety of their precinct officials this upcoming election. She said they are working with local authorities across the state to ensure their officials’ safety.

“We are starting to hear more and more around the country of [Precinct Election Officials] being too stressed out to even sign up to do this anymore, because of the constant watch and criticism that they are getting from the voters or from outside entities that are trying to watch them like a hawk — and not that anybody’s doing anything wrong but when people are putting extra stress on you, it’s just very uncomfortable,” Bissell said.

Bissell said before the 2020 election, auditors didn’t have to worry much about polling site safety and threats, but now it is a sizable portion of their training.

“We didn’t have to go into such great detail about being scared to do their job, their civic duty,” Bissell said. “That’s been a little disheartening to have to have those conversations with them, and then the look on their face when they realize that it’s kind of scary now and then.”

Local election officials have been working with state and federal authorities to ensure the security of their elections and that their polling sites are top-notch ahead of the election. This includes training exercises where officials work through possible threats and scenarios with the Secretary of State’s office and national law enforcement officials from the U.S. Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency.

“Keeping election workers safe is a top priority for this office,” Pate said in a statement to the DI.

Shane said they work through possible scenarios with poll workers to help dissuade fears and work with local law enforcement agencies to ensure they are readily available if something were to occur.

Skeptics invited to participate

With high levels of distrust in the election process, local and state election officials have worked diligently to educate skeptics on Iowa’s process.

State law requires voters to fill out paper ballots, counted with a vote tabulator that is calibrated and tested publicly before every election.

State law requires one precinct in every county to do a hand recount after every election and compare that total with the machine-tabulated results. The tabulators are not connected to each other or the internet.

State and federal officials are also constantly working to ensure the security of both the count and the computers used to report results.

Bissell said she and other county election officials across the state have looked for ways to educate voters on the process and show that elections are safe and secure in Iowa.

Efforts, she said, include combating disinformation about the safety and security of the election. She specifically mentioned widespread misinformation that large numbers of non-citizens will vote in the 2024 election.

Some Republicans including Trump have made baseless claims regarding mass amounts of non-citizens voting in federal elections.

Trust in election results has historically been low, according to an article in the Journal of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, but it has become more polarized in recent years.

A recent survey by the nonpartisan World Justice Project found that 46 percent of Republicans and 27 percent of Democrats polled said they would not trust the results of the election if the other party’s candidate won.  The survey also found that 34 percent of Republicans and 67 percent of Democrats believe election officials are trustworthy.

Bissell said in Iowa, voter registration is cross-checked with several databases before becoming active, and registration at the polling place requires several identifying documents brought by the voter to prove their identity and residency.

“We have all these checks and balances in place that [are] going to catch that,” Bissell said. “So, I just think that it’s brought a heightened awareness of it, which I think is wonderful that people are talking about voting and they are interested in it.”

Despite Iowa’s election security measures, Iowa Attorney General Brenna Bird recently announced her office would be prosecuting a non-U.S. citizen for voting in a special election on July 16. Cases like this, however, are incredibly rare, according to reporting from the Associated Press.

Bissell encouraged voters to not believe online rumors and instead contact trusted sources of information like their local auditor’s office with questions about elections or election security.

Miller, the Linn County auditor, echoed Bissell.

“I think the message is clear from the top down, from the federal government to the state government to local government and people involved in elections, you know, go to a source you trust,” Miller said. “Don’t just take it off social media.”

Miller said his office has become more adamant about transparency and also encouraged those distrustful of the election process to sign up to work the election and take part in the process.

“We invite them to engage in the process, see for themselves that we count votes accurately and we report results accurately,” Miller said. “We’ve always done that, but I think we’ve even been more adamant, more persuasive, more encouraged to invite the same people that are criticizing us to get involved in the process and see for themselves.”

Lack of recount reform could pose issues

Following the 2020 election, Iowa’s election laws underwent several Republican-led changes in the state.

Reforms from shortening early voting and absentee ballot windows to increasing penalties on election law violations have become law in the last four years.

Iowa lawmakers failed to reform the state’s laws on candidate-requested recounts following the 2020 election, despite lobbying by the Secretary of State’s office and the Iowa County Auditor’s Association.

The state does not have a uniform process for recounts and leaves the process to candidate-appointed recount boards.

Bissell said boards can choose to do hand recounts or computer recounts, and the process is not uniform across the state. She said these inconsistencies could lead to some voters and the public feeling frustrated with the process.

“It really does have a lot of election officials concerned that if we do have a recount, it’s going to be scrutinized and it’s going to be misinterpreted in the news,” Bissell said.

However, lawmakers are able to require counties to ensure recount board results are accurate and that hand counts and machine counts match before results are certified.

“When the votes are totaled at the end of the election, the recounts need to match, so Iowans are confident their vote was counted accurately and fairly,” Pate said in a statement to the DI. “There is more work to be done, and I look forward to continuing work with the Iowa legislature to do that.”