By james art RENO, Nev. — One morning last month, Carrie-Ann Burgess did something completely unremarkable: She made a quick stop at a coffee shop on her way to work.
For Burgess, the top election official in a northern Nevada county, such exits can be uncertain. While waiting for hot tea and a breakfast sandwich, an older woman approached.
“She kept telling me that I should be ashamed of myself — that I’m a disgrace, I’m a disgrace to Washoe County, and I should crawl into a hole and die,” Burgess said in an interview with The Associated Press the next day.
There would no longer be a morning stop at the cafeteria. It was added to a growing list of things Burgess no longer does because of his job. She had already stopped shopping for groceries and other necessities. Food is eaten at home.
“I go to work, come home and go to church — that’s it,” Burgess said. “Now I’m very careful about where I go.”
Still, Burgess said he’s looking forward to November and watching the presidential election with his team in Nevada’s second-most populous district. That ended one day in late September when she was invited to a meeting with county officials.
The district said Burgess requested medical leave to deal with stress and characterized her departure as a personnel matter. In a statement, it said it was “focused on holding smooth and fair elections.” Burgess said she was forced out after she refused to agree to staffing changes requested by the county manager’s office. She said she repeatedly begged to stay, even provided a doctor’s note vouching for her health and hired a lawyer.
Overseeing the office now is Burgess’s deputy, the fifth person in four years to lead the county’s election operation. All staff are new since 2020. Turnover is one symptom of a district that has been tightly divided politically and has been subject to election conspiracy theories since Republican Donald Trump lost the state to Democrat Joe Biden in the 2020 presidential election.
Burgess, in his first public remarks since his sudden departure, told the AP last week that he was worried about his team and didn’t know what to do next.
“I gave 110% of who I was, who I am to this job. And then all of a sudden I come out and I don’t understand,” Burgess said as he considered his next steps. “I don’t understand how we got here.”
AP reporters were in Reno in September, a week before she left, and spent several days with Burgess, which included time at the Washoe County elections office and at her home. As with those before her, Burgess and her team were on a roll under pressure, under fire at public meetings and forced to answer conspiracy-fueled claims about voting machines, boxes and electoral rolls.
Working with elected county committee members who do not believe in elections made the job even more difficult.
Burgess was an extreme example of the kinds of challenges local election officials across the country face after four years of false allegations that have undermined public trust in elections and those who run them. Across the country, election officials have faced harassment and even death threats, and this year took extra security measures that included adding bullet-proof glass and panic buttons.