Resources

This resource provides an online application template that election officials can use for recruiting prospective poll workers and gathering their information and qualifications. It allows election administrators to effectively manage and track poll worker data, including availability, skills, and training.

This toolkit contains templates and guidance for election officials to create visual inventories of the supplies needed at stations. This resource is designed to support poll workers by helping them easily identify, find, and organize supplies when setting up a polling place.

This resource, published by the U.S. Election Assistance Commission, provides election officials with practical ways to improve poll worker retention.

This resource contains powerpoint templates for creating bite-sized checklists for election day tasks. The checklists can be printed so that poll workers can carry the checklists as they move around the polling place.

This resource, published by the U.S. Alliance for Elections Excellence in collaboration with the Center for Civic Design and the Elections Group, provides workbooks and templates for election officials to revise or build poll worker manuals from scratch. This toolkit is for anyone writing or updating their jurisdiction’s poll worker manuals.

This page contains materials created by the U.S. Election Assistance Commission to support election officials in recruiting, training and retaining poll workers. It contains powerpoint templates, customizable graphics, social media templates, and sample press releases for recruiting poll workers as well as links to EAC publications on the topic such as as the 2026 report "Election Worker Recruitment, Training, Retention, and Evaluation."

This report highlights key factors influencing poll worker recruitment and retention, including poll worker pay, implementation of partisan balance requirements, and harassment. It also offers potential strategies legislators can use to improvement address these factors and improvement poll worker recruitment and retention.

This June 2023 report outlines best practices for improving poll worker recruitment. It identifies barriers such as overly restrictive residency and age requirements, heavy reliance on political parties for hiring, and insufficient compensation and training standards. The report recommends concrete reforms to help election administrators build a more diverse and sufficient poll worker workforce.

This toolkit helps election officials design and produce the materials poll workers need to set up and operate a polling place or vote center, including layout diagrams, signage, and procedural materials. It covers both traditional polling places and vote center models.

This resource provides strategies for election officials for recruiting and retaining election workers. It features direct examples from local jurisdicitions that have had success implementing these strategies.

This article, written during the COVID-19 pandemic, discusses the overarching trend of poll worker shortages in U.S. elections. Authors identify potential strategies to address shortages, rooted in the practices of state and local election officials. While the pandemic serves as the backdrop for this article, its recommendations remain relevant to elections today.

This resource provides an overview of state poll worker policies, highlighting the variance between states and need for unique approach to designing and implementing poll worker programs. Statutory references are provided for state laws related to poll worker qualifications, youth poll worker programs, residency requirements, and partisan distribution.