Resources

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 study aims to understand poll worker incentives and motivations. Authors analyze original data from a 2015 survey of poll workers during the 2015 British general election. They found that a range of relationships exist between individuals' decision to serve as a poll worker and various incentives, as well as poll workers' socio-economic, social capital, and satisfaction profiles.

The 2023 State-by-State Compendium cites statutory requirements for serving as a poll worker in each state, including voter registration qualifications, age, residency, political affiliation, term requirements, compensation, and training, among others.

This report surveys temporary election-worker policies across all 50 states, highlighting both the protections in place and the gaps that remain. It includes a dataset of election worker requirements, including data points for what trainings are required, who is required to attend them, if election worker oaths are required, and what policies are in place to achieve political parity of poll workers.

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.

In this paper, Jones and Stein test an expanded explanation for poll worker recruitment focused on reducing the demand for poll workers through efficiency gains. Based on the results of a national panel survey of election officials, authors find that in-person precinct voting on Election Day is a significant source of difficulty in obtaining poll workers. They offer widely available and political neutral strategies aimed at reducing poll worker scarcity.

Hostetter argues that portable poll worker registration—permitting registered voters to work statewide in any election precinct—increases the ease of filling poll worker positions. She uses the 2008-2018 Election Administration and Voting Survey to test her hypothesis. She finds support for her hypothesis, suggesting that potential benefits would arise from allowing citizens to work in any precinct.

The 2020 State-by-State Compendium cites statutory requirements for serving as a poll worker in each state, including voter registration qualifications, age, residency, political affiliation, term requirements, compensation, and training, among others.

Through interviews with 24 poll workers from the city of Chicago, Suttmann-Lea assesses how poll workers make decisions about voter eligibility under Illinois' signature matching law, finding that personal perspectives and experiences influence their evaluations. She also discusses how these poll workers stated they would proceed in the instance of a mismatch signature. These findings shed light on how poll worker interpretations of election law shape their application of the law.

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 research focuses on whether voters’ confidence is shaped by the racial or ethnic representation of poll workers and election staff.

This paper evaluates the role of state policy and election precinct evaluations on citizen confidence in individual and nationwide electoral outcomes. King finds that valuations of voting precincts, specifically poll workers, polling locations, and voting machines have an effect on electoral confidence. However, confidence is not consistent and varies based on racial identification and partisan affiliation.