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 report summarizes existing academic literature related to election official and poll worker recruitment, training, and retention. Authors discuss the demographic characteristics of the elections workforce, methods of selection, training programs and barriers to retaining elections workers.

The 2023 Local Election Official Survey provides insight into the challenges and successes facing election administrators, including the impacts of misinformation on job satisfaction, high turnover and rising workloads. It also analyzes demographic characteristics of election officials and the voter education methods they use.

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.

In this paper, authors examine whether the main predictors of election administration opinions, particularly partisanship and jurisdiction size, are similar for LEOs and the public. They analyze results from two national surveys with identically worded questions administered to both groups, finding that these groups diverge on the topic of election integrity but share similar opinions on election security and reform proposals.

This brief provides recommendations for the U.S. Department of Justice Election Threats Task Force aimed at strengthening protections for election workers against threats of violence. Recommendations include issuing additional guidance for law enforcement, noting the limitations of federal laws protecting election officials and addressing them as well as identifying alternatives to criminal prosecution to help deter threats and esnure the safety of election workers.

The 2022 Local Election Official Survey provides insight into the challenges and successes facing election administrators by analyzing their workloads, job satisfaction, and efforts and views related to voter education and election confidence. The survey also highlights election officials' growing workloads, feelings of preparedness for the election, and growing voter-centric attitudes.

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.

The 2022 Local Election Official Survey explored the views and opinions of 596 local election officials, finding that most election officials need more support in their roles overall. Election officials noted the mounting stress of political attacks on the election system and threats against election officials. Concerns regarding the impacts of misinformation related to elections were also widespread.

This paper explores whether officials in county governments follow their partisan allegiances when selecting and siting early voting locations. Authors find that the partisanship of county governments does not influence the location of early voting sites, but has modest effects on the number of early voting sites.

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.

The 2021 Local Election Official Survey explored the views and opinions of 233 local election officials. The survey finds that most election officials are motivated by desires to serve their local community, are concerned about harassment while on the job, and believe that social media is increasing political division.