In 2020, Al Schmidt counted ballots in Philadelphia, did his job honestly, and got rewarded with a presidential insult campaign that put his safety at risk. Now he's the chief election official for the entire state of Pennsylvania, and he's preparing for another national election while local officials across the country describe themselves as 'on edge.' Welcome to American democracy, where doing the paperwork correctly is a hazardous occupation.
NPR's Dave Davies talked with Schmidt on Fresh Air about what it takes to run the midterms in a country where the guy who counts the votes can end up a target.
The Man Who Counted the Votes and Paid for It
Al Schmidt is not a celebrity. He is not a cable news fixture or a political operative with a podcast and a supplement line. He is a Republican who served as a city commissioner in Philadelphia, which means his actual job was making sure ballots got counted accurately. That was the whole assignment.
When the 2020 count came in and the result did not please Donald Trump, the president went after Schmidt by name. Trump's insults put Schmidt in danger. Read that sentence again. A government official did his duty, and the leader of the free world pointed a crowd in his direction.
That's the backdrop for everything Schmidt says now. He doesn't get to treat election season as a quiet administrative exercise. He remembers what happens when the person with the biggest microphone in the world decides you're the problem.
From Philadelphia Commissioner to Statewide Chief
Schmidt has since moved up. He's now the chief election official in the state of Pennsylvania, which is about as high-stakes a job as exists in American civic life. Pennsylvania is a swing state in the most literal sense. Presidential races have turned on it, and the whole country watches its count like a hostage negotiation.
So the guy who got targeted for running Philadelphia's count honestly now oversees the whole operation statewide. There's a grim kind of promotion in that. The reward for surviving the attacks is a bigger target and more ballots.
Why Local Officials Are 'On Edge'
The framing NPR used for this conversation is that local officials are feeling on edge as Election Day approaches. That phrase deserves some respect, because these are not people who rattle easily. County clerks and election directors are the most boringly competent people in America. They love checklists. They have strong opinions about ballot paper stock.
When those people say they're nervous, it's not about the machines. It's about the harassment, the threats, and the knowledge that a bad-faith claim from a powerful person can turn a routine canvass into a security incident. Schmidt lived that firsthand, so when he talks about preparing for the midterms, he's talking as someone who knows exactly what the worst version of this looks like.
The midterms are not even a presidential contest. These are the elections that are supposed to feel low-stakes. And yet the people running them are bracing.
What Preparation Actually Looks Like Now
Here's the part that should embarrass everyone. Election preparation used to mean testing equipment, training poll workers, and printing enough ballots. Those things still matter. But now the job includes planning around the possibility that officials themselves will be threatened for doing it.
Schmidt's conversation with Davies centers on exactly that shift. The audio of the Fresh Air interview was slated to be available later in the day, so the full detail of what Schmidt said about his specific preparations will be in that conversation. What's already clear from the framing is the central point: the chief election official of a major swing state has to think about the midterms as a stress test, not a routine event.
That's a failure of our political culture, full stop. We built a system where the people who guarantee the integrity of the vote have to guard against the people who claim to care most about it.
A Republican Defending the Count
Don't skip over the biographical detail that makes this story sting. Schmidt is a Republican. He isn't a liberal partisan who got caught fudging numbers. He's a guy from the president's own party who looked at the ballots and reported what was in them.
That's what made the 2020 attacks so corrosive. The message to every election worker in the country was simple: it doesn't matter what team you're on, and it doesn't matter if you're right. If your accurate count contradicts the preferred story, you become the story.
Plenty of officials took that message and quietly left the profession. The ones who stayed, like Schmidt, are the ones holding the line.
The Dingo Take
Why is it considered normal that a man who counted votes honestly needed to worry about his safety? Think about how bizarre that is. We don't threaten the guy who inspects the bridge. We don't send a mob after the person who certifies the elevator. But the person who tells you what the voters decided, that one gets a target painted on his back by a sitting president.
Al Schmidt did nothing but his job, and he did it as a Republican, which should have made him untouchable to the people who attacked him. Instead it made him an example. The lesson was clear and ugly: accuracy is optional, loyalty is mandatory, and anyone who confuses the two can expect the consequences.
Now he's back at it, preparing for another election with the memory of the last one still fresh. That's not a heartwarming story about resilience. It's an indictment. A country that makes its election officials feel 'on edge' about basic arithmetic has already lost something, and the people who made it that way should have to explain themselves every single day until November.
Comments