For what it’s worth, I don’t blame @What_Exit for choosing not to participate when they found out the hours required. It’s a very long day, plus travel, and that’s not going to fit in everyone’s schedule. It sounds as though they didn’t mention the required shift until well into the training when it should have been in the first five minutes.
There’s a reason why it’s traditionally retired people or other people with ample free time who are working as election judges/poll workers. Had they just not shown up the morning of, that would have been crappy. Saying “This isn’t going to work for me” before they assigned positions seems reasonable enough to me.
It doesn’t compare to complaining about working a soup kitchen and dealing with homeless people. That would be poll workers complaining about dealing with Republicans/Democrats – part of the job. But if I thought “I’ll take a shift at the soup kitchen” and realized a 16+ hour shift was untenable for me then it makes sense for me to decline and back out.
I did for extra credit / brownie points when taking an American Government course in community college shortly out of high school. I think I was a judge (?) for a primary in a small suburb that didn’t have many registered voters to begin with, Rosemont, Illinois. It was a dull day mostly filled with the old timer head guy talking nonstop.
Their participation will have zero impact on my election experience unless they live a lot closer to me than I would have guessed. In any event, unlike jury duty, poll work is completely optional. You do it because you want to do it. If, for some reason, you don’t want to do it then you decline.
I’ve been a poll worker in Minneapolis, MN for many years.
But not a volunteer – we get paid. Including for training.
Polls are open 7am-8pm, so shifts are from 6:30am setup to about 9pm. But now they offer half-day shifts; I work from 2pm to close, usually. Most of the poll workers are elderly. Lately, they’ve been adding high-schoolers, who get a day off school to do it. We get to specify our top 3 choices for work location; most people go back to the same precinct each year, many in their home precinct. Lots of us have worked together with the same group for years.
You can also sign up to be a relocatable poll worker; you get a phone call the day before or even election day telling you what location to report to. (You get paid mileage for doing this.)
We are an urban, metro precinct with a very high voter turnout. Usually 2500-3,000 in-person voters, roughly 200/hour (but not steady, varies by time). With an increasing percentage of absentee vote-by-mail, about 15-20% recently in our precinct. (About 1/3 of Minnesota Precincts do only vote-by-mail, mostly rural, low-population precincts.)
We keep close track of voting numbers all day long, so are generally audited, packed everything up, and done within an hour after polls closing. (In the 1st Obama year, we still had a long line of voters waiting when the polls closed – took nearly an hour for all of them to finish.) And back when we used paper poll-books, it could take much longer to verify that the poll-book signatures, ballot receipts, and cast ballots counts all tallied. We still use paper ballots, but the electronic voter registration, poll-books and ballot counter really help make it work better.
I worked the polls for my state’s presidential primary. There were two main shifts, one starting at 6 and the other ending after the polls closed, and i spoke with the town clerk and said i couldn’t do either. So she assigned me to their new “swing shift”, which was 9-3, to be an extra person so the main people could take breaks. It was fun.
The two women in charge of the polling place worked from before polls opened until after they closed, with a lunch break. Everyone else worked a normal shift.
I was a paid election official for years in California because I was a civil servant. The shift didn’t start until after our regular day ended and for big elections (presidential years), we always worked till after midnight.
I volunteered to work elections here in Oregon this year, which is also a (nominally) paid position, but I haven’t heard back from them. I’m probably too late for the election in May. They might be able to use me in November. We’re an all-mail-vote state and that limits the number of poll workers needed. The expected hours to work were published in the job descriptions. The days are long, for sure, but I expected it.
I knew what shift i was working before i went to training. (I didn’t know what polling place i would be assigned to, but it would be in my town, which isn’t very large.)
When i got there they asked if i wanted to be paid or to volunteer. I asked to be paid, but i don’t think i have been. No biggie, as i didn’t even know there would be an option to be paid when i signed up. But a little weird.
I’ve been doing it for about 10 years. IMO, the county could do with a lot fewer poll workers. The sites are always ridiculously overstaffed and we end up tripping over each other and being massively bored
Eh, people don’t want to or can’t be bothered to volunteer in this state, or at least this county for whatever reason.
The last couple of elections have been worse, they’ve had to co-locate several polling stations so that the volunteers could pull double duty for two precincts.
I’m sure it had nothing to do with the change in leadership at the county elections office making things more difficult and less efficient and less friendly than it had been in the past
I’ve been a poll worker in nebraska for the last 4 year election and one special election. We do paper ballots with the limited exception of one machine in each polling place for handicapped voters. Our window for voting is 8 AM to 8 PM. We are expected to be there at 7 to set everything up and be ready by 8, then anyone still in line at 8 PM we will stay until they have voted. It’s paid hourly, just a bit over minimum wage. We’re usually out of there slightly before 9 PM, so yes it’s a long day. We do take individual breaks for lunch and leg stretching. Usually a minor rush at 8 AM, bigger one over noon hour, then most people showing up after 5. The presidential general election was the only one I worked that we had lines, and that was only after 6. I plan to keep doing it as long as I can.
Polls are open here in CT from 0600 to 2000. We can work the full day or a half-day shift. Those opening the polls have to be on site at 0515 in order to set everything up; those who are closing usually get out around 2045, so a full-day shift is around fifteen and a half hours.
I’ve worked four or five times, full-day shifts, and plan to continue. My wife (usually full-day shifts), and our daughter (usually half-days) started doing it several years before I did.
We’ve always been paid; not sure what poll workers are getting nowadays, but I think we’re due to be paid this Friday for the primary a couple weeks ago.
My sister is a poll volunteer in Mercer County. She’s retired and it’s a very long day for her. She’s not happy unless she’s complaining about something so it’s a feature.
I was not aware of this and pleased that you posted your experience. I have been looking for volunteer activities for when I retire in the near future and had actually considered doing this. Now that I understand how long the potential shifts are I will have to take that off my list.