An Interview With Local Election Official Valerie Fox

Elena Christenfeld is a sophomore at Barnard College and a Research Fellow for ColumbiaVotes. Since working as an Assistant Town Clerk for her hometown of Lincoln, Massachusetts, Elena has been passionate about promoting civic engagement.

The 2020 election cycle culminated in the Presidential election on November 3rd which garnered the largest voter turnout in American history, with 159,633,396 votes cast. 2020 also saw unprecedented scrutiny on the electoral process (Lindsay, 2020). But how did this historical year of elections impact the officials who oversee the polls, the votes, and the tallying? 

COVID and the 2020 election triggered the introduction of over 600 new voting bills across the United States.  While some added temporary or permanent restrictions such as photo ID requirements, most expanded voting options. Many involved expanding opportunities for Early Voting, relaxed requirements for absentee voting, and created new mail-in voting options. In Massachusetts, the legislature passed temporary bills that allowed voters taking precautions due to COVID-19 to qualify for absentee voting, sent Vote By Mail applications to all eligible voters, and permanently expanded hours for Early Voting. With the new legislation [came] “hours of learning, keeping track of changes, learning new voting systems, and hours spent creating processes to incorporate all the changes,” says Valerie Fox, Town Clerk of Lincoln, Massachusetts. Fox served as the Assistant and then Deputy Town Clerk in Lincoln before becoming Town Clerk in 2018. 

During a normal election cycle, Fox explains that about 75% of her work life is dedicated to the election, while much of her time remains devoted to her other duties as Town Clerk, which include vital records management, archive directing, and acting as a cemetery agent. The election responsibilities of clerks across Massachusetts include certifying nomination papers and petitions, administering campaign finance laws, managing absentee and mail-in applications and ballots, maintaining voter records for the state databases, overseeing the polls and election workers, and submitting vote counts. Election officials across the country, whether they be clerks, recorders, or registrars, share these responsibilities each election. This year, however, Fox explains that the new demands meant a lot more late nights and many long days.

That extra work and time for these 2020 elections is due in large part to the increase in voting by mail and early voting; votes cast prior to election day doubled from the 2016 presidential election (Miao, 2020). Lincoln saw 56% of its voters vote by mail, a method that, while secure and encouraged for those taking COVID precautions, creates more work for those in the Clerk’s Office (DeCosta-Klipa, 2020). The shift to a plurality of mail-in votes has drastically increased the amount of time each ballot takes to process. Fox explains that “it’s really made a massive change. People coming to vote at the polls take an average of about 5 minutes, from the time they check in, mark their ballots, and leave. An absentee or a vote by mail ballot probably takes 25 minutes to process from beginning to end.” 

The process of recording absentee or vote by mail ballots starts with the application. Each voter who wishes to vote by mail must send an application to their local election office. The process is different in each municipality and across each state, in Lincoln, the applications are recorded onto the State Voter Registry Information System (VRIS) and then sorted alphabetically and filed into binders. Once an application is received and recorded, address stickers and unique voter ID barcodes are printed and attached to previously prepared ballot envelopes. As each ballot is mailed, the date of mailing must also be recorded in the VRIS. Upon receiving completed ballots, affidavit signatures are checked against the original application, and the date of receipt is entered into the VRIS and their application is changed to reflect receipt of the ballot. Any issues with individual ballots (i.e. signature discrepancies, missing affidavit) must also be reported and the voter must be notified. Fox acknowledges that “all of that is a huge amount of additional time.” 

Despite the additional work, Fox says that these options have allowed more eligible people to vote: “these are good options, because we get more people involved, which is the whole point of what we do. But yes, it has been a shift in how we do it.” 

In the weeks leading up to the election, local election officials including Valerie Fox work 7 days a week, sometimes for 10 or more hours each day preparing, mailing, certifying, receiving, and tracking votes. These election workforces are made up of both paid and volunteer workers who spend time prior to and on the day of helping to conduct elections. 

“You still have to do every single step for each election,” Fox said. “It’s like having an easy going baby or a difficult one, some are more time consuming, but it doesn’t change the effort or the care you put in.” No matter the scale of the election, or the outside criticism, local election officials are still working as they have done for many years. And Fox is already working on the two upcoming local elections in 2021. 

When asked why young college students, and any interested Americans, should help in the future elections, Fox explains that participation means knowledge. Once young people are able to volunteer and work directly in elections, they gain a greater appreciation for the election process as a whole. “People can participate at so many different levels, and some people have the opportunity to help out which is fantastic. And our work thrives on volunteers,” Fox said. “When people say there’s no integrity, it’s really great to be able to say, well these are all the people who are taking care of this. So to get involved is fantastic because then the people doing it know how it runs and they’re able to verify and stand up for the process. It’s their democracy. So I think that’s really important.” 

Her number one piece of advice: “the thing that gives the clerk the most joy is that you vote-- that you actually vote. We love it. That is what gives us so much joy.”