COLUMBUS, Ohio — With less than a month to go before Election Day, the push for poll workers is on.
What You Need To Know
- More than 19,000 people are needed to be poll workers for Election Day
- The state is actively recruiting students on college campuses
- The state is also recruiting high school seniors age 17 and older as a part of their Youth at the Booth initiative
- To become a poll worker, click here
The latest numbers show nine of the 88 counties in the state have all of the poll workers they need, but the state is counting on more than 19,000 people to fill the rest of those slots and they’re hoping there will be a lot of young people.
With early voting underway, Ohio Secretary of State Frank LaRose is hoping to avoid major problems at the polls Nov. 3.
“It takes 35,000 poll Ohioans to staff the close to 4,000 polling locations that we traditionally have,” he said.
Franklin, Cuyahoga, and Hamilton counties lag behind. They need a combined total of 7,302 poll workers to get the job done. –
Although older Americans typically work the polls, COVID-19 has changed that.
“Many of them are concerned about the impact that the virus has on, on older Ohioans and so a new generation of younger allow us to sign up to be poll workers, so we’re actively recruiting on college campuses and everywhere else,” LaRose said.
With absentee voting now being highly encouraged on college campuses, LaRose is counting on college students to fill in some of the gaps.
“Once they take advantage of absentee voting that frees them up on Election Day to sign up to be poll workers,” he said.
While there’s a big recruitment strategy, officials at Ohio Wesleyan University wanted to know if there was going to be possible changes in precinct locations, since many college students already have trouble with registering and voting anyway.
“If we recruit 35,000 poll workers, then the goal is to open absolutely every polling location, but we can’t have is the last minute scenario like what our friends in Milwaukee had where they had to make a last minute consolidation of polling locations a drastic consolidation polling locations that resulted in lines,” LaRose said.-
“If there does need to be a consolidation of polling locations we need to arrive at that conclusion sooner rather than later, so that we can notify voters of where the new location is to vote,” he added.
LaRose hopes county boards of election can avoid that challenge altogether by getting young people to answer the call to democracy. Right now, there are at least nine different initiatives to get people as young as 17, along with older citizens, to sign up to be poll workers. Some include paid days off from work, continuing education credit, and the chance to donate your earnings to a nonprofit.
Anyone interested in becoming a poll worker may click here.
