Serving as the No. 2 staffer in the Arlington Office of Elections long has been a launch pad for those who occupied it. You can now add Tate Fall to the list.
Fall, currently deputy director of elections for Arlington, has been appointed elections director of Cobb County, Ga. She will start in early December.
“It’s been a privilege to serve the voters of Arlington County and I am eternally grateful to the Arlington County elections staff, board and election officers I have had the pleasure of working with for the past two years,” Fall told the GazetteLeader.
Before coming to her current position, Fall worked for the U.S. Election Assistance Commission. According to officials in Cobb County – Georgia’s third largest county with a population of about 750,000 – Fall and her husband are looking forward to moving back south (they originally are from Alabama).
“It was difficult to find someone with the level of experience needed along with the zeal for this job,” said Tori Silas, who chairs the Cobb County Board of Elections and Registration. “We believe we have found the right person at the right time.”
Gretchen Reinemeyer, Arlington’s elections director, offered her best wishes.
“We’re certainly sad to see Tate go and hope that Arlington has helped prepare her for this exciting opportunity,” Reinemeyer said. “We wish her and her family the best.”
While election administrators do their work in a nonpartisan manner, Fall will be moving to a community with at least somewhat more viable two-party system than currently is in place in Arlington. In the 2020 election, Democrat Joe Biden received 56 percent of the vote from Cobb County voters (compared to 81% in Arlington) while Republican Donald Trump received 42 percent (vs. 17% in Arlington).
Fall will be the fifth Arlington deputy registrar in a row dating back to 1993 to have moved on to lead a city or county elections office, whether in Arlington (Reinemeyer and her predecessor, Linda Lindberg) or elsewhere.
With the current national political polarization, it seems to have become harder for localities across the nation to recruit and retain top election officials. And that may be no more true than in battleground Georgia, where four of the five counties that comprise the Atlanta metro area have seen election-director turnover just since the 2020 presidential election.
