Since the turmoil of the 2020 election, where numerous county election departments faced recalls, vote challenges and even threats of violence, more than half of Americans in the Western United States are served by new election officials — because so many experienced ones have left.

And those election officials who left — often because of harassment — took with them more than 1,800 years of combined experience, leaving new civil servants with a steep learning curve to support complicated voting processes, often with little federal support, according to a new report from bipartisan political reform group Issue One.

“This exodus of election officials isn’t happening in a vacuum and isn’t happening out of the blue,” said Michael Beckel, research director for Issue One. “There has been a concerted and coordinated campaign of harassment against many election officials.”

Issue One researched 11 Western states — Arizona, California, Colorado, Idaho, Montana, Nevada, New Mexico, Oregon, Utah, Washington and Wyoming — and found […]