As journalists report on the high-stakes 2026 midterm elections, questions abound regarding voting registration, high rates of election official turnover, and mail-in ballots.
To address these issues and others that are top of mind for reporters, the National Press Club Journalism Institute partnered with the Bipartisan Policy Center for a midterm coverage briefing on April 23.
The BPC’s Elections Project Director Wren Orey led the briefing, offering insights into challenges that elections officials are facing this election season. Orey oversees BPC’s election administration policy and researches reforms to improve the security, accessibility, and trustworthiness of elections.
Here are the top takeaways:
What you need to know about the election workforce
When it comes to covering elections, Orey emphasized the importance of understanding the scope of the election workforce. They encouraged journalists to make an effort to build relationships with local election officials early — and not reach out for the first time amid the chaos of Election Day.
Elections are “complex and decentralized,” and Orey noted that the office size and policy for elections varies greatly from state to state and county to county.
By the numbers, here’s what that looks like:
- There are 10,000 chief election officials, including county clerks and municipal clerks, working across the U.S.
- State chief election officials — typically secretaries of state — are supported by 25,000 full-time staff.
- In federal election years, 900,000 temporary workers join this force of workers.
- The most common local election official is a white woman in her mid-50s with a college degree who earns just over $50,000 a year.
- Seventy-five percent of local election officials serve just 8% of voters, mostly in rural jurisdictions.
- Eight percent of local election officials serve 75% of voters in large jurisdictions like Los Angeles County, California; Fulton County, Georgia; and Maricopa County, Arizona.
- Local election official turnover reached its highest level on record in 2024, which Orey attributed to underfunding of the Election Administration and the effect of technology on local election offices.
The federal policy landscape
With three federal election bills under consideration by Congress — the SAVE Act, the SAVE America Act, and the Make Elections Great Again Act — it can be hard for reporters to keep track. But Orey notes that the throughline in all three bills is the requirement for voters to provide documentary proof of U.S. citizenship in order to register to vote.
Despite these and other efforts by the Trump administration meant to curtail noncitizen voting, Orey noted that noncitizen voting and registration is already illegal — and research shows that it’s also very rare.
Data from the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services’s Systematic Alien Verification for Entitlements (SAVE) program, which allows state, local, and federal agencies to check citizenship and immigration status, indicates that only 0.04% of registered voters are noncitizens.
Proposed legislation would require anyone registering to vote to provide additional documentation like birth certificates, which are not uniform across states, plus photo IDs. Orey and the BPC argue that the complications arising from these requirements puts the onus on voters, rather than government bodies that already track citizenship.
Further complicating matters, if documentary proof of citizenship is required for voting, Republicans could be at a greater disadvantage than Democrats.
Trump’s executive order on federal elections
In addition to the proposed legislation sitting in Congress, President Donald Trump in March signed an executive order regarding citizenship verification in federal elections.
While legal challenges could render the order unenforceable during the midterms, the mandates on mail-in voting bring to the forefront some of the most hot-button election topics.
The executive order notably involves the U.S. Postal Service in verifying voter eligibility, a process that Orey and the BPC says will be challenging to implement due to time restrictions that conflict with the order’s mandates.
The order also requires the USPS to submit a list of voters who are eligible for mail-in or absentee ballots without clarifying how that list will be used in tandem with other citizenship lists that already exist or are likewise mandated in the executive order.
But the bottom line, Orey said, is that mail-in voting is already safe and secure.
Additional resources:
- On mail voting
- On the SAVE Act and voter list maintenance
- On election official turnover
- Post-2024 election turnover data: Election official turnover rates through the 2024 election
- More in-depth report: Election official turnover rates from 2000-2024
- On election reporting
About the speaker:
Wren Orey (they/them) is director of the Bipartisan Policy Center’s Elections Project where they are responsible for the organization’s election administration policy and professionalization efforts. Their research focuses on evidence-based and data-driven reforms that create secure, accessible, and trustworthy elections. Orey currently serves as an adjunct professor of computer programming at Georgetown Law and obtained their Master of Public Policy and Certificate of Data Science from George Washington University.
Orey has served as an expert source for the New York Times, Wall Street Journal, Politico, Votebeat, and more. They regularly publish op-eds on state elections issues and have represented BPC in speaking engagements at dozens of state and national conferences.
Prior to joining the BPC, they supported research efforts at the Brookings Institution’s Governance Studies program on the topics of congressional oversight, election administration, and the Federal Reserve. They also served as a legislative intern for former U.S. Senator Kamala Harris.
Read: The 2026 Midterms: Key Dates and Events (Bipartisan Policy Center)