How are poll workers treated in your state? Please discuss!

[theHandpuppet]

I'm asking this now because we need to give this subject some serious consideration before the next election cycle.

I don't know about where y'all live, but here in my part of WV getting people to volunteer for poll worker duty is like pulling teeth. There are never enough and frankly, it's downright exhausting. My partner and I have served as poll workers twice this year and we're so damned tired it takes us days to recover. I can't imagine what it must be like for a majority of the pollworkers who are senior citizens.

We left the house at 4:45 am and didn't get home until 9 pm that night. There are no "spare" poll workers so you have to work without any breaks, not even for a meager lunch (all you can do is bring your own snacks). Just taking a bathroom break means that no one can vote until you get back. I was not feeling well that day and was in considerable pain for over eight hours but knew there was no way I could leave my post. I was so brain dead by the end of the day (as were my fellow volunteers) it's a miracle we didn't screw something up. But of course it's at the end of this exhausting day that you are required to fill out a mountain of official forms and tallies and deliver them to the county courthouse, which is another wait of over an hour.

Really, something has to change but it's a Catch-22 situation. Ideally, there would be two shifts of poll workers so that no one group works more than eight hours at a time, but if you can't get people to volunteer you simply don't have enough people to provide for two shifts. Asking folks with children to volunteer for a 16-hour day automatically cuts down on the number of volunteers and the pay certainly isn't an enticement. My partner and I do it because we see it as a civic duty and she takes a (well-paying) day off from work to do so. Our neighbor takes care of our four dogs while we're away.

Exhausted poll workers translates into confusion and mistakes when it comes time to vote. Many folks don't realize this and wait until the end of the day cast their ballots. Really, something has to be done to improve this system.

[OhioBlue]

1. In Ohio

it is a 6:30 a.m. - 7:30 p.m. shift. In my county, poll workers get about $100 for the day. They also have to attend at least 1 training class. The machines are kinda junky and the new ID requirements were probably a pain in the arse for them. The shift of course doesn't end at 7:30 - in my County, there was only one precinct with a line that required them to stay for a significantly longer period, but then you have to close out the machines, clean up and the presiding judge has to take the cards, machines and materials to the BOE.

[theHandpuppet]

3. Sounds similar to the setup we have here in WV

But we're paid better, at least. $50 for the class, $150 for the day of voting, and an extra $15 if you're the "ride back" or the person delivering the ballots and paperwork to the courthouse. Still, there has GOT to be a better way. I really believe in doing this as my civic duty, but to be honest I am dreading '08 and am not sure if I can take it.

[Boomer]

2. A post-script to theHandpuppet's message

Here's how to lose poll workers:

To account for early and absentee voting in our area, every precinct is given a list of names to check against the poll book in case someone from that precinct tries to vote twice. In our case, the list had fewer than a dozen names.

Ideally, every time a voter presents their registration card or ID, one poll worker checks the name against the early voting list, then passes it on to the poll worker who has the poll book. This Tuesday, we had a new volunteer, a man in his 60s, who was at the poll book table along with theHandpuppet, who had at least done this once before.

Lunch time was predictably hectic with a sudden surge of people who needed to vote in a hurry. One man (a Republican, btw) talked non-stop as the poll workers tried to get him through the process, then went on to the voting machine. At the very last moment, after the machine had been prepped for his vote, he confessed that he had already voted and that his name was on the early voting list.

He proceeded to lecture the poll workers on how he was doing this to prove there were holes in the system and to "help them tighten up" the procedures. He also admitted he had purposely distracted them in order to see if he could slip through.

Well, he definitely made his point, but he also greatly upset the volunteers who were working THEIR TAILS OFF under trying circumstances. And the new volunteer was upset for the rest of the day over this incident.

Truth is, mistakes will happen. That's just the nature of human enterprise, and the best we can hope for is to just keep those mistakes to a minium and prevent deliberate corruption. Overall, our team -- a bipartisan group of Dems and Republicans -- did a heck of job for 16 hours, and if the worst that happened on our shift was that one unethical person voted twice, well, I can live with that.

And I bet it'll be a cold day in hell before that man ever volunteers to work the polls himself. It's far easier to smugly point out our lapses than it is to jump in and help.