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Young Poll Workers
"6 of the trainees are high school-age first timers – that is first time poll volunteers, not first time voters."
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to this Commentary!
By Jacob Schneider
When you go to vote today, don't be surprised if the person who hands you your ballot looks like they are too young to vote. Elections officials are facing a labor shortage to the tune of 250,000. Their regulars – retirees and union members - are getting older; the average poll worker is 72. In some places the solution is - recruit and train high school students. Youth Radio's Jacob Schneider reports.
About a hundred people fill an elementary school cafeteria in the San Francisco suburb of El Sobrante. There are a lot of wrinkles and gray hair at this training for poll workers. But 6 of the trainees are high school-age first timers – that is first time poll volunteers, not first time voters. None of them are old enough to vote in this election. Contra Costa County election official Cathy Gover says young poll workers are the future.
GOVER (on tape)
They have better eyesight… They're real sharp as far as picking up names on the roster and finding the cross street index.
JACOB
Gover says teen workers are most helpful when it comes to computerized voting. I’m 16, people my age have grown up with touch-screen ATMs, while folks my grandparents age are happy to wait in line for the teller.
GOVER (on tape)
There are so many retirees who are afraid of the electronic portion of it. Just not comfortable. They want to see the paper, they want to touchy feely that paper.
JACOB
Paper or electronic – voting can be complicated. For this training, Contra Costa election officials spent two-hours on a PowerPoint presentation explaining how to set up the precinct, manage the ballots, and check ID for first-time voters.
Slide after slide went into excruciating detail: what constitutes a legal signature, how to schedule lunch breaks – even where to put the ballot box.
I could barely control the yawns… Neither could high school senior Sara Buono.
SARA (on tape)
It actually…seemed too simple for this meeting to be this long!
JACOB
Sara’s high school government teacher recruited her and her friend Stephanie Wong to volunteer at the polls, but Stephanie says it wasn’t exactly a sense of civic duty that convinced them to sign up.
STEPHANIE (on tape)
It was mostly ‘cause we got to miss a day of school and cause we we're getting paid.
JACOB
The 85 dollar stipend for one day’s work is a lot of money when you’re 16. But the paycheck isn’t what brings back my grandparent’s generation, election after election. My impression was that the older poll workers return half out of habit, and half out of a sense of duty to democracy. If you want more young people to work the polls, here's my advice: paint a bigger picture. Tell us why each ballot counts, appeal to our hopes for our country, and maybe serve a few donuts and Frappucino to keep us awake during the whole PowerPoint thing.
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