Policy Stability and Policy Change: Understanding Staffing Challenges in Oregon’s Local Elections Offices

Abstract

Local election administrators stand at a key intersection in the United States’ election system managing registration, ballot access, early and Election Day voting, and reporting election outcomes. The elections policy landscape within which these administrators and their offices operate has rapidly changed over the past quarter century, yet because of the complex and decentralized nature of elections, there has been not much progress made in applying theories of policy stability and change to election administration. This research begins to rectify this using “policyscape” and “policy drift” as two lenses to conceptualize stability and change in election administration. The research shows that policy drift helps to explain a disconnect between the current service expectations from these offices and existing models of staffing and workforce development, shown from an inductive analysis of in-depth interviews conducted with election officials in the State of Oregon. Finally, we argue that research on local election administration needs more theory building and would benefit from the use of qualitative research to understand the nuances and details of election administration and the needs of administrators.