The Quantities and Qualities of Poll Workers

Successful election administration depends on an army of poll workers who are responsible for front line interaction with voters at the polling place. Despite their important role in elections, we know surprisingly little about how recruitment and training of poll workers translates into performance. We review research on poll workers and present descriptive information about poll worker characteristics, recruitment, training, and evaluation. We suggest that widespread concern about the quantity of poll workers has distracted from examining the quality of poll workers. More systematic evaluation is necessary to understand how various inputs affect poll worker performance. Election officials are tasked with the recurring challenge of recruiting and training an army of temporary poll workers to assist the public in exercising the right to vote and to enforce the rules governing the voting process. Success or failure in these endeavors is widely assumed to be crucial for voter satisfaction and confidence in the integrity of elections, which may in turn influence voter participation and trust in government generally. Despite their critical role on the frontlines interacting with tens of millions of voters each election, poll workers typically decide to serve for little or no pay, so they may not be the most qualified. Further, poll workers are geographically dispersed across many jurisdictions simultaneously, so they may have discretion to shirk their duties. The Election Assistance Commission and other organizations have offered ‘‘best practices’’ and guidance on poll worker recruitment and training. However, these recommendations are not based on scientific evaluation studies of which practices actually impact voter satisfaction and confidence, or minimize problems at the polls. The recommendations typically rely on case studies, focus groups, media coverage, and discussions with election administrators and other stakeholders without much vetting of the suggestions. To be sure, there may be important lessons to be gleaned from describing current practices and sharing of opinions of election administrators. But absent systematic study it is no simple task to discern which aspects of the conventional wisdom are correct and which are ill informed. Given the present dearth of scientific evidence, our article focuses on descriptive information about poll worker characteristics, recruitment, and training, and identifies robust correlations among Barry C. Burden is a professor in the Department of Political Science at the University of Wisconsin-Madison in Madison, WI. Jeffrey Milyo is a professor in the Department of Economics at the University of Missouri in Columbia, MO. We thank Robert Stein for useful comments. Between one and two million poll workers are employed in a presidential election (e.g., < http://www.pewtrusts.org/uploaded Files/wwwpewtrustsorg/Reports/Election_reform/ERIPBrief19_ final.pdf >). A popular estimate is 1.4 million (e.g., < http:// library.lwv.org/sites/default/files/2007_06_ElectionDay.pdf >). That is roughly the number of active duty military members and translates to approximately one in every hundred voters serving as a poll worker. Thad E. Hall, J. Quin Monson, and Kelly D. Patterson. 2009. ‘‘The Human Dimension of Elections: How Poll Workers Shape Public Confidence in Elections.’’ Political Research Quarterly 62:507–22. R. Michael Alvarez and Thad E. Hall. 2007. ‘‘Controlling Democracy: The Principal-Agent Problems in Election Administration.’’ Policy Studies Journal 34:491–510. 4 < http://www.eac.gov/election_management_resources/poll_ worker_best_practices.aspx > . ELECTION LAW JOURNAL Volume 14, Number 1, 2015 # Mary Ann Liebert, Inc. DOI: 10.1089/elj.2014.0277