Elections decide who governs. However, Electoral Management Bodies (EMBs) and
electoral practitioners are often overlooked by governance scholarship. This article
examines who these EMB workers are, the professional challenges they face, and
how they evaluate the quality of elections. We draw on an original survey of
Portuguese electoral officials (N=28, with a response rate of 66.7%), conducted
between December 2024 and April 2025, to measure sociodemographic
characteristics, perceptions of electoral integrity across electoral stages, EMB
organizational performance, and job satisfaction. Descriptive and multivariate
analyses show that elections are managed and administered by an overwhelming
majority of women, with academic qualifications, and ages comprised between 51
and 60 years old. The overall perceptions of electoral integrity and organizational
performance in the 2024 legislative elections were high, particularly for stages that
required a deeper involvement of EMBs. On the contrary, assessments were
comparatively lower for stages related to media, disinformation, and financing,
consistent with the field’s literature. More significantly, these perceptions were
strong and positively related to work satisfaction (electoral integrity: r=0.758,
p<0.001, N=25; organizational performance: r=0.752, p<0.001, N=25), indicating
work satisfaction may mold assessments of electoral quality and EMB performance.

Moreover, the relationship between perceived organizational performance and
perceived electoral integrity is positive and statistically significant (r = 0.861, p <
0.001; N = 28), suggesting EMB performance matters for electoral integrity. We
conclude by discussing the (lack of) self-acknowledgment of EMB responsibility for
eventual flaws, the meaningful divergencies between the two EMBs studied (CNE
and SGMAI) regarding work satisfaction and organizational culture, and the
limitations of our study. We believe it can have significant implications for human
resources management within these organizations, cooperation between the bodies
and the capacity to implement electoral process reforms at a national level.