The Monroe County Board of Elections, and in particular its poll workers, are ill prepared for a contentious 2024 general election, according to a recent report to the Legislature from a polling site supervisor.

Carrie Remis, a good government advocate and polling site co-chair in the town of Irondequoit, told the Legislature that the local election apparatus is “woefully under-prepared to handle the palpable increase in voter frustration and distrust.”

“Despite the demand for it, MCBOE has allotted little to no additional training time for leaders to ask questions about how to handle disgruntled or belligerent voters, role-play or learn from real-world case studies, all considered best practices in adult learning,” Remis wrote in her memo, dated May 23.

State data shows that Monroe County has an unusually high level of turnover among poll workers, something Remis attributed to increasingly stressful conditions at polling places.

One in four poll workers in 2022 were serving for the first time, twice as many as in any other large county and four times the state average, state data shows.

She said the two top local election officials, Jackie Ortiz and Lisa Nicolay, “have kept a lid on the problem and dismissed good faith efforts aimed at addressing the underlying reasons for the shortage.”

Ortiz, a Democrat, and Nicolay, a Republican, pushed back on the criticism, saying there has been no measurable increase in confrontations at the polls and accusing Remis of seeking “salacious headlines,” in Ortiz’ words, rather than actual improvements.

“I feel like this woman is complaining about things that don’t exist either for her own self-promotion or because she’s an instigator,” Nicolay said.

Remis sent her memo to the Legislature and various elected officials and voter advocacy groups, but not directly to the media.

“It’s disappointing that the county would shrug off poll worker concerns without so much as an investigation or hearing,” she wrote in an email. “If Commissioners Nicolay and Ortiz spent any time at all listening to the poll worker corps and the larger voting public, they would know that we are uneasy and looking to them for reassurance. Turning a deaf ear to concerns and ideas for improvement is not leadership. I hope they reconsider.”

Harassment on the rise — but not here?

Since 2020 there have been widespread reports from around the United States of poll workers and elected officials being harassed and intimidated by disgruntled voters and self-appointed election inspectors, including many on the far right who have come to doubt the very validity of democratic elections.

The U.S. Department of Defense’s Election Threats Task Force in March announced it was investigating dozens of threats to election workers across the country and highlighted the challenge for local and state elections boards. A poll by the Brennan Center for Justice found that more than half of local election officials were concerned for the safety of their staffs.

“It’s a tough time (for poll workers) and some of them have said, ‘I don’t need this,'” said Paul Smith, senior vice president the Campaign Legal Center.

In Monroe County, though, Ortiz and Nicolay said they haven’t seen the same effect.

“We do not have this plethora of complaints or incidents that (Remis) is talking about,” Ortiz said. “If it’s happening, it’s not being documented.”

Grosh cited reports to her organization of “Republican poll workers sitting around and talking about whether you can even trust elections these days.”

“That strikes me as a bad, bad thing to have going on,” she said. “If the poll workers are spreading those kinds of rumors, it’s pretty hard to fight.”

Ortiz said that while there have been isolated instances of that sort of forbidden chatter, she believes they are few are far between, in part because of the law requiring a Democrat and Republican to serve together. “They’re not allowed to talk about anything like that,” she said. “If they’re a Republican, they know they’re sitting next to a Democrat. So why would you even have that conversation?”

Does turnover matter?

Ortiz and Nicolay said they didn’t know why Monroe County has such high turnover among poll workers compared to other counties but said it doesn’t matter as long as they’re well trained.

“I bet there’s a lot of turnover at McDonald’s, too,” Nicolay said. “Does anybody care about that?”

They also cast doubt on Remis’ assertion that “there are election deniers in the poll worker ranks” — a concern repeated by local League of Women Voters President Barbara Grosh.

They said the training provided to poll workers adequately covers safety issues, including how to escalate problems to law enforcement.

“Even though it’s only one or two slides during the training, it generates a very robust discussion,” Ortiz said.

The poll worker manual posted on the county Board of Elections website contains no reference to safety precautions.

A slideshow on “verbal de-escalation techniques” recently posted to the website includes instructions that poll workers “stand at an angle so you can side step if needed,” and “keep your hands out of your pockets (and) available to protect yourself.”

That physical combat advice may be of limited value to the 25% of Monroe County poll workers who are over the age of 70, according to state statistics.

“The training is pretty superficial,” Grosh said. “So far nothing terrible has happened, but I’m a long way from knowing what to do in a million different situations. … There’s nasty, angry people coming in to vote.”

The poll workers are not only relatively inexperienced; there also will be fewer of them in 2024. The county has a target of 3,500 poll workers this year, down from 4,800 in 2020.

Nicolay said 3,500 will be sufficient because more people are expected to vote early compared to the last presidential election.

Recommendations not heeded

Remis’ memo calls on the Legislature to take several concrete actions.

• Form a standing elections oversight committee

• Create a local election workers’ code of conduct

• Require greater transparency with data about poll worker staffing and safety as well as registration processing

• Use county and community resources “to dispel election disinformation” and recruit and train poll workers”

The transparency recommendation notes in particular a sharp drop in new local voter registrations in 2022: 29,000, down from 106,000 in the most recent mid-term year and far off the 125,000 projected. That information was never shared with the Legislature or the public, Remis said.

Dave Long, a Democratic legislator from Irondequoit who met with both Remis and Ortiz, said he doesn’t believe there is any need for legislative action.

“I didn’t find anything I was immediately concerned about,” he said. “There hasn’t been discussion really with others that I’ve heard about this.”

A spokeswoman for Monroe County Executive Adam Bello referred to Ortiz and Nicolay for comment. They said they didn’t see a need for any additional resources or legislative oversight.

“If they want to have an oversight committee – yeah, whatever,” Nicolay said. “That doesn’t intimidate me one bit.”

Primary day is June 25, with early voting from June 15 to 23. The general election is Nov. 5, with early voting from Oct. 26 to Nov. 3.

— Justin Murphy is a veteran reporter at the Democrat and Chronicle and author of “Your Children Are Very Greatly in Danger: School Segregation in Rochester, New York.” Follow him on Twitter at twitter.com/CitizenMurphy or contact him at jmurphy7@gannett.com.

This article originally appeared on Rochester Democrat and Chronicle: County officials dismiss concerns over poll worker safety, turnover