- Supply chain slowdowns, shortages, and rising costs of paper are threatening this year's elections.
- Paper ballots, voter registration forms, and even "I Voted" stickers are all at risk.
- "We're a little bit paranoid," said Ricky Hatch, an election official in Weber County, Utah.
Supply chain backlogs, supply shortages, and rising costs of the paper that the US election system relies on could wreck havoc on the 2022 midterms, officials and experts warn.
Election administrators have "backup plans for the backup plans," said Ricky Hatch, the county auditor and top election official in Weber County, Utah, especially after the past two years.
But Hatch told a group gathered at the Capitol for a Friday morning roundtable on paper supply issues that this year "we're a little bit paranoid."
Election officials, paper and printing industry leaders, and voting equipment vendors who attended the Capitol Hill roundtable said the election system isn't prepared for a shortage of the paper needed to print ballots, voter registration forms, envelopes, voter guides, and even "I Voted" stickers.
"The paper shortage is acute," said Ford Bowers, President & CEO of the Printing United Alliance, adding it's "not going to be resolved all on its own."
'Costs are a huge issue.'
The US election system has seen a rapid shift back to paper after Russia's 2016 election meddling campaign and high-profile malfunctions with electronic voting machines highlighted the vulnerabilities of voting equipment that doesn't produce a paper trail.
A record 92% of American voters live in jurisdictions that primarily vote on paper ballots, according to nonprofit group Verified Voting, up from 72% of voters who voted on paper in the 2018 midterms and 50% in 2006.
Election security experts agree that voter-verified paper ballots are the gold standard. But it all relies on a steady supply of paper — and not just any printer paper, but ballot paper with specific dimensions and thickness.
Bowers explained that widespread paper mill closures, which were accelerated by the COVID-19 pandemic, have "constrained the amount of paper available" while the shift to e-commerce spurred by the pandemic rapidly increased the demand for certain kinds of paper.
"Once you've taken a mill offline," he said, "you're not putting it back."
Persistent shortages of the truck drivers needed to transport all kinds of goods including paper are throwing another wrinkle in the complex supply chain issues.
Brad Thompson, who runs a printing press in Michigan and is a paper vendor for county clerks in the state, said he put in his purchase orders far earlier than normal, but doesn't know when the paper will show up at his warehouse — or how much it'll cost when it arrives.
Those costs are passed on to election officials, many of whom are already underfunded and understaffed.
"Cost is a huge issue for us," said Tammy Smith, an election administrator in Wilson County, Tennessee. And in smaller counties and jurisdictions especially, "budgets are very low."
Redistricting and new voting laws are complicating the paper squeeze.
The once-in-a-decade redistricting process is also throwing a wrench into the process, with ongoing lawsuits leaving district lines unsettled and election officials unable to finalize and print ballots.
Wilson said she "tends to order early" when it comes to paper supplies. But this year, she was delayed in printing and sending out wallet-size cards to voters with their registration information because of the redistricting process.
"We now have a primary in June, so it does push the deadlines a little further, which could help," Davis, the ranking member of the House Administration Committee, said of his own primary in Illinois.
"However, the products might have been cheaper for a March primary for our local election officials. The cost may have gone up," he said. "So it has its positives, it has its negatives. But the bottom line is...I'm afraid that many election officials might not be aware that there's there's a possible shortage."
Commissioner Christy McCormick of the Election Assistance Commission said that election officials can adapt to paper shortages by ordering supplies well ahead of time and being flexible with materials and design for envelopes.
But stocking up on supplies doesn't help officials in the many states that passed voting and election overhauls in 2021 that require new voter registration or ballot request forms.
Georgia's 2021 election omnibus bill, for example, added a requirement for voters to submit identifying information when applying for an absentee ballot and also requires ballots to be printed on more expensive special security paper.
This means "backstock doesn't meet the need for election officials who stock up" on forms that are outdated and no longer useable, said Amy Cohen, executive director of the National Association of State Election Directors.
Already this year, paper shortages exacerbated the numerous problems in the primary elections in Texas, where election officials and voters struggled with a new rule in a bill the legislature passed in 2021 that requires voters to provide identifying information with their absentee ballot request forms and ballot return envelopes.
The secretary of state's office in Texas, which does not allow most voters to register to vote or request absentee ballots online, scrambled to print enough new registration forms and new absentee ballot request forms in time.
"All the old forms, which some people have stockpiled, including the League of Women Voters and a lot of campaigns and a lot of political operatives, have to be thrown away. They are no good," former Travis County Clerk Dana DeBeauvoir explained of absentee ballot request forms in January.
Issues in the primaries, Cohen said, "are going to exacerbate any problems for November."
States have their own deadlines for finalizing ballot designs, and federal law requires officials to send out ballots to overseas and military voters 45 days before a federal election, including the upcoming midterms, creating the perfect storm for a looming supply crisis.
"Elections are time-sensitive," McCormick said. "Time is one thing we can't get back."