A US county is under enormous pressure after election woes. Is it ready for November?

Everyone seemed determined not to jinx it.

Jim Rose, the director of administrative services in Luzerne county in north-eastern Pennsylvania, had been listening to the radio all morning and had not heard “a single peep” about problems at the polls during Pennsylvania’s primary on Tuesday. When he ran into Emily Cook, the county’s acting director of elections, she wasn’t ready to celebrate. It was, after all, only mid-afternoon, and the polls would be open until 8pm.

“If you say that, you have to go outside, spin around on your left foot – it has to be your left foot – and throw some salt,” she said.

She may have only been half-joking.Cook had reason to be superstitious. While the political significance of Pennsylvania’s primary on Tuesday was somewhat low, the stakes were extremely high. Luzerne county has had a number of high-profile errors in running its elections in recent years, including when multiple precincts ran out of paper in 2022 and ballots were found discarded in the trash in 2020.

It has also had extremely high turnover. Cook, 26, is the seventh person to lead the election office since the fall of 2019. Previously the deputy director, she took over the position about two months ago.

“I am very conscious of how important it is that I get this right, not just for the department or the county on the whole, but for my own job,” she said in her office. “It feels like a test and preparation for what comes in November.”

Election day is a thankless task for Cook and the thousands of other officials charged with the nuts and bolts of administering voting across the US. In a best-case scenario, they are invisible – everything goes smoothly and no one notices the incredibly delicate ballet of details that need to take place