An odd thought popped into my head last night:
What training or certification does someone need to become The Flip Switcher on the Electric Chair involved in Capital Punishment cases?
Or is it done by drawing straws?
This is a really good question. Surely there must be a Doper out there with prison connections who knows the answer.
Whatever you do, don’t forget to wet the sponge.
“THE” electric chair? As opposed to the electric chairs that we all have in our homes?
I just bought my wife an electric chairfor Christmas.
Check out Pierrepoint: The Last Hangman
I think for that job they do not force people to do it, they just ask senior level prison people if they are willing to do the job.
Oh. So “electric chair” is a pun? We don’t have electric chairs here, in either sense (well we do, but we wouldn’t call motorised chairs that).
Speculating here, but I think the actual flipping of the switch doesn’t require a lot of expertise. OTOH, the team that straps the convict into the chair probably needs to be trained on how to do that job correctly, lest the convict wriggle free, suffer excessively, or completely fail to be executed.
Stephen King’s The Green Mile will tell you more about electric chairs than you could possibly want to know.
Does one need to be a licensed and/or union electrician?
Yes. Insert laughter here.
Shocking, I know.
I see. Things like electric Lay-Z-Boy chairs would probably be called something like motorised chairs, but they’re not really popular enough to have a name. At least, not in current usage. 
Warden: Your resume says your previous job was at the Humane Society, euthanizing animals. Why did you decide to apply for this job?
Applicant: I wanted to work with people.
Obligatory Prince reference.
Boy was it ever an awkward day in the office when I learned that one!
Only if you wanted your knowledge to be limited to circa 1930 (or whenever in the past that film was supposed to take place).
I see I’m the first one in this thread to think of “The Far Side” cartoon showing Electric Chair school instruction. 
Texas used the same electric chair from 1924 to 1964 and Florida appears to have used the same one from 1924 to present (not counting replacing non-electrical parts of the chair itself), so it doesn’t appear that the basic technology has changed much. Some states used actual electricians to perform the executions, but in Texas from 1936 to 1964 the executions were performed by Captain Joe Byrd, captain of the guard and assistant warden, so it doesn’t appear that much beyond “on the job” training was needed.
Is there just one switch? If I were designing it, there would be 3 or more with a randomizing device so it would not be certain who threw the switch that actually mattered…sort of like loading one blank for the firing squad.