Thread: Become a Poll Worker

I would like to urge everyone who can to become a poll worker. The best way to ensure election integrity is from the inside. See https://www.eac.gov/voters/become-a-poll-worker/ for a compendium of each state's requirements.

I have been poll worker for many years. You work 1-3 long days a year. The pay isn't great but the experience is. Usually there are not enough people from one party (Democratic in rural areas and Republican in urban areas) so getting appointed is usually not a problem. I haven't seen any shenanigans in my suburban town but there are occasional foul-ups. This is because many of the people doing the work aren't competent or don't really care. They often don't bother to look at the reference material supplied to them on how to do their job. The work is neither hard nor complicated but there is a bit to learn.

I've long been of the opinion that if you want to see that something is done right then do it yourself!

A Poll-Worker Shortage Plagues Elections, Even After 2000 Drama

By STEPHENIE STEITZER Staff Reporter of The Wall Street Journal

Updated May 23, 2002 12:01 a.m. ET

California's March primary election was "one of the worst-run in Los Angeles County history," says Conny McCormack. She should know. As the county's registrar-recorder, Ms. McCormack runs elections there.

But she is hardly alone on Election Day, and therein lies one of the biggest problems plaguing America's most basic exercise of democracy: A chronic, and worsening, shortage of the more than 1.2 million poll workers needed at precincts nationwide to help guide voters through elections.

On March 5 in Los Angeles, 121 polling places opened late and 236 volunteers didn't show up. One forgot it was Election Day, then refused to report to her precinct with essential ballot materials. Another insisted Election Day was the following day, and a sheriff had to go to her home to retrieve ballots. Another volunteer was called to work as a substitute teacher, and left ballots locked at his house.

Ms. McCormack, one of the country's most respected election officials, sounds resigned -- even sympathetic. "What would motivate anyone to spend their day in a cold garage with abusive voters and confusing laws?" she asks. "Thank God we have anybody to do it."

Election officials have been railing for years about what they see as a crisis in the availability and competence of poll workers. At their conventions, they long have swapped horror stories of inept or no-show poll workers; there is the one about the primary-election volunteer who mistakenly gave a Republican voter a blue Democratic ballot and then told him, "It's a democratic country, you can vote on a Democratic ballot."

Voting-Rights Suit to Focus on Language Issues, Voting Lists


The problem was evident in Florida's botched 2000 presidential election as well, though machines and poor ballot designs stole most of the nation's attention. But with baby boomers and younger people failing to replenish the typically older ranks of poll workers, officials have increasing cause for concern. Moreover, they fear the problem will be exacerbated by post-Florida election changes across the country, with numerous cities and counties in at least 10 states introducing new machines and procedures that will need to be explained to countless voters in many of the nation's 152,000 polling places.

But the Florida experience also has prodded a number of locales to seek creative ways to solve the poll-worker problem. Among the new ideas: recruiting high-school students and people with disabilities to staff the polling places, and drafting voters who are in line when a precinct opens. Local election officials, taking advantage of the rare post-Florida reform movement in some statehouses, have won funds or approval to increase poll workers' pay, remove partisan limitations on who can volunteer and allow even students who aren't of voting age to volunteer. Ten states have passed such laws in the past two years.

Meanwhile, the House and Senate each passed broad election-overhaul measures, and their ultimate compromise is expected to include subsidies to the states for covering expenses such as poll-worker incentives and training.

Help (Desperately) Wanted

...for a job that has long hours, low pay and lasts only a day: Election Day. States and local governments chronically face crises enlisting volunteers to help at polling places. Since Florida's 2000 election chaos, many are innovating to boost recruitment.

Florida: Approved $6 million for county programs to recruit and train poll workers and educate voters.

Indiana: Allowed 16- to 18-year-olds to work.

Maryland: Authorized local election boards to use students as poll workers, and raised poll workers' pay in two counties.

Mississippi: Authorized students as poll workers.

New Jersey: Permitted high-school students to be excused from school, and increased pay for poll workers.

New Mexico: Increased pay to $125 a day, from $7 an hour.

North Carolina: Extended to poll workers the same job-protection accorded jurors, so they can volunteer without threat of job loss.

Pennsylvania: Repealed its prohibition on poll workers sharing duties, so two people can split a day's shift.

South Carolina: Will allow 16- and 17-year-olds to work in polls.

Texas: Stipulated that local authorities must pay poll workers at least minimum wage.

Source: National Conference of State Legislatures


Yet the low pay, long hours and complicated procedures remain hurdles to recruitment. An average workday is 14 to 16 hours, usually starting before 7 a.m. and not ending until after 8 p.m. Average pay is $6 an hour, usually taxable.And in some places, such as Los Angeles County, workers sometimes have to handle ballots in several different languages.

Recruiting in high schools is one of the more popular innovations for replenishing the poll-worker ranks, which long have relied on retirees and unemployed women. Election officials say teens catch on to technology quickly, and pay close attention to details. An added bonus, officials say, is getting more young people involved in voting themselves.

More than 500 Chicago-area teenagers worked as precinct "judges" in the Cook County, Ill., March primaries, and officials were pleased. "The teen judges have been very competent and are very enthusiastic," says Scott Burnham, spokesman for the Cook County clerk's office.

Another remedy is increasing poll workers' pay, though that isn't so simple a solution now that many states' fiscal problems are growing, and memories of Florida's chaos are receding. Raise the pay and more people will step up to bat, says Neil Tiger, a Suffolk County, N.Y., elections

commissioner. His county has increased the compensation to $152 from $120 a day, plus about $40 for time spent in training. Maryland, New Jersey, New Mexico and Texas passed laws in 2001 allowing for pay increases.

Election officials have taken other, smaller steps. In Pennsylvania, for instance, poll workers can split shifts with a spouse or friend. More places are encouraging local private employers to free their workers to volunteer. In Ms. McCormack's Los Angeles County, election officials can enlist city or county workers from other departments to be poll workers for the day. And North Carolina has given poll workers the same job-security protections as jurors get, so they aren't penalized for missing work to perform a civic duty.
But some places have opted for more radical solutions to addressing the shortage of poll workers, such as relying more on mail-in voting, or drafting poll workers much as juries are selected from the pool of local voters.

Washington is among just a few states that allow voters to cast their ballots by mail, without an approved excuse for not voting in person, such as illness or travel. Some officials believe voting by mail, and perhaps someday online, will eliminate the need for polling places and poll workers in the future. "It's certainly the wave of the Washington future," says David Elliott, the state's associate director of elections. But elsewhere, election officials wince at what they see as the potential for voter fraud in this method.

Nebraska has turned to a poll-worker draft. For the 2000 election, Douglas County drafted 1,500 of its 2,500 workers.

Poll workers are excused if they can find a replacement, but employers can't penalize workers answering the call to staff the voting precincts. The draft "would work in some places, but I think it might be more difficult in others," says elections expert Dick Smolka, who publishes a newsletter from his Washington, D.C., home.

Rhode Island, North Carolina and most recently Indiana have begun recruiting people with disabilities to work at the polls.

"People with disabilities are an untapped resource," says Julia Vahn, who is helping to launch the Indiana program.

Nationwide, about 60% of people with disabilities are unemployed, yet many are capable of working.

Among elections officials, accustomed to election-eve panic attacks about whether enough workers will be in place to assist voters the next morning, few think the recent flurry of recruitment initiatives will be a panacea for their poll-worker shortages. "I'm afraid," says Suffolk County's Mr. Tiger, "that this is a problem that will always be with us."

http://www.wsj.com/articles/SB1022117688479078120

Prepared to be shocked at what you see here in California. In my neck of the woods if things aren't actually corrupt, they easily could be. The system that is supposed to protect the integrity of the system is a popular joke, ignored and abused and if you express concern about it, expect to be removed from it.

There is also the problem of voters themselves, there is a real appetite out there to abuse and scam the system. Being uncooperative to such types makes you vulnerable too.

Voting by mail is a better way

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http://www.alipac.us/f9/voting-mail-better-way-338281/

Jeffrey J. Land is chairman of the Cherry Hill Republican Organization.

"There is a paper record of the vote you cast. No one can hack your paper ballot."


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