CARROLLTON, Ohio (AP) — With early voting less than three weeks away, Nicole Mickley was staring down a daunting to-do list: voting machines to test, poll workers to recruit, an onslaught of public records requests to examine.
And then, over a weekend, came word that the long-time county sheriff had died. To Mickley, director of elections in a small Ohio county, that added one more complication to an election season filled with them. It meant a new contest was needed to fill the position, so she and her small staff would have to remake the ballots for the fall election for the second time in a week.
“I feel like ever since we took office in '19, it’s just been a constant rollercoaster,” said Mickley, whose 36 months on the job qualify her as the senior member of her four-person staff in the Carroll County elections office.
The office Mickley oversees is tucked in a corner of the 137-year-old county courthouse in Carrollton, a close-knit town of 3,200 that sits amid the farm fields and fracking wells of eastern Ohio. She and Deputy Director Cheri Whipkey's son graduated from high school together.
The director and her deputy seem an unlikely pair to be contending with the wrath of a nation.
Yet ever since former President Donald Trump began falsely claiming that the 2020 presidential election was stolen, Mickley, Whipkey and local election workers like them across the country have been inundated with conspiracy theories and election falsehoods, and hounded with harassment.
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