Work Elections Project

Fair Elections Center’s WorkElections aims to help recruit a fresh and diverse cohort of poll workers by providing centralized, accessible information on becoming a poll worker for thousands of jurisdictions nationwide.
Check Out the Work Elections Project

timeline of work

2018: WorkElections.org Launches

Based upon a prototype developed in 2016, Fair Elections Center created a new project in 2018 to promote the important role of poll workers through piloting WorkElections.org, a unique web portal designed to centralize and simplify information on poll worker requirements and links to local jurisdictions’ applications. The work is an effort to create a more diverse pool of poll workers, so they more closely reflect the communities of voters they help.

2020 – 2022: National Expansion

Leading into 2020, we expanded WorkElections.org to include comprehensive information on poll worker requirements — including voter registration and training requirements, hours, pay rates, and links to applications — for more than 5,000 jurisdictions across the country. WorkElections.org is the first portal to compile all this information in simplified form and in one place.  In the face of the pandemic, Fair Elections Center co-founded Power the Polls, a project powered by WorkElections API and data that helped 700,000 people apply to be poll workers during the pandemic in 2020 and 265,000 in 2022.

2024: Our Work Continues

As we embark into another major election season we’re ready to once again serve thousands of jurisdictions across the country and aim to assist in recruiting even more poll workers than previous years.

Power The Polls Partnership

For the 2020 general election, Fair Elections Center partnered with businesses, coalitions, and online companies promoting increased civic engagement among their employees and customers — including The Civic Alliance, Time to Vote, Comedy Central, Levi Strauss & Co., MTV, Patagonia, Pizza to the Polls, and We Can Vote — to expand our recruitment efforts with a major new initiative called Power the Polls. The initiative and our partnership has continued on every election since. 

We’ve saw the effect the COVID-19 pandemic had on primary elections, with thousands of mostly older poll workers deciding to stay home to protect their health. Many polling locations were shuttered as a result, contributing to long lines at the few remaining voting sites. If nothing was done, the same crisis was expected to impact the elections in the fall.
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To help remedy this, we and our Power the Polls partners committed to recruiting 250,000 people to step up and serve as poll workers. 
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Efforts included an improved website — powered by WorkElections — as well as a host of other outreach and support activities, including:

  • Connecting people and poll working: PowerThePolls.org directed visitors to sign up to be poll workers in their election jurisdictions, while retaining the information of those who expressed interest in serving for follow-up communications.
  • An effective follow-up strategy: To remind potential poll workers of their commitment to help the election go smoothly and to direct them to local jurisdiction information from WorkElections. 
  • Information to help recruit new poll workers: Created materials to explain what is involved in being a poll worker and sharing some testimonials.
  • Partnering with the business community: We worked with businesses to help recruit their employees to work at the polls—either by encouraging businesses to give employees Election Day off as a day of service or provide gift packages (merchandise, gift cards, etc.) as a “thank you” to those who serve.
  • Getting the word out: We reached out to nonprofit allies that could spread the word to their members, with a particular focus on recruiting younger and more diverse workers and promoting the need for bi-lingual speakers in areas with large numbers of language minority voters.
  • Helping keep poll workers and voters safe and informed: We provided up-to-date information from states on their efforts to keep voters and poll workers safe at the polls and referred potential poll workers to the latest CDC guidelines.

Footprint

Poll Worker Recruitment
Resources

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Research

This 2023 report outlines recommendations focused on strengthening and streamlining poll worker recruitment to better meet the needs of election administrators and create larger, more diverse pools of prospective poll workers ahead of the 2024 election.
These include:
  • Launching Online Poll Worker Applications
  • Allowing College Students to Serve in Jurisdictions Where They Study
  • Implementing Flexible Residency Requirements
  • Creating Opportunities for Unaffiliated Voters to Serve
There are no “off years” when it comes to election preparation. Recruiting and training skilled poll workers is a year-round effort and vital to improving election administration nationwide. Even in non-federal election cycles, poll workers are essential to our democracy and ensure the strength and integrity of the voting process.
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