Wanted: Poll workers. Must love democracy.

Poll workers check in a voter during Georgia’s May primary at a Marietta polling place. Local election officials across the country face a poll worker shortage, and a coalition of election leaders, nonprofits, and businesses are making a push for more on Aug. 1, National Poll Worker Recruitment Day. (Matt Vasilogambros | Stateline)

This week, a coalition of election officials, businesses, and civic engagement, religious, and veterans groups will make a national push to encourage hundreds of thousands of Americans to serve as poll workers in November’s presidential election.

Poll worker demand is high. With concerns over the harassment and threats election officials face, and with the traditional bench of poll workers growing older, hundreds of counties around the country are in desperate need of people who are willing to serve their communities.

On Aug. 1, there will be a social media blitz across Facebook, TikTok, X, and other platforms that will encourage Americans to spend a few hours helping democracy. They’re being asked to wake up before sunrise, welcome voters to polling places, hand them a ballot, and make sure the voting process goes smoothly.

In New Hampshire, which holds its state primary on Sept. 10, voting advocacy groups are still taking stock of which town and city voting wards have enough volunteers and which ones need more.

“Right now we have volunteers that are calling clerks to confirm polling hours and availability (of volunteers),” said Olivia Zink, executive director of Open Democracy New Hampshire, which helps recruit poll workers.

The organization has not yet reached all 234 towns or municipal polling wards, Zink said. But Zink says she’s hoping that outreach in August will inspire more volunteers.

“These are important roles on election day, and in order to have a strong democracy, we need really good, strong volunteers,” she said.

Many sites will see long lines and frustrated voters; they may face unexpected problems such as a power outage or a cantankerous voting machine. Nearly all will hand out scores of tiny “I Voted” stickers.

The U.S. Election Assistance Commission, a federal agency that works with election officials to improve the voting process, established the recruitment day in 2020. The commission offers a social media toolkit , full of suggested hashtags and cartoon video snippets, to help local election officials reach potential new workers. There are 100,000 or so polling places across the country, and the agency’s website shows potential workers how to sign up.

“Serving as a poll worker is the single most impactful, nonpartisan way that any individual person can engage in the elections this year,” said Marta Hanson, the national program manager for Power the Polls, one of the leading nonpartisan groups in the recruitment effort.

“Poll workers are the face of our democracy and the face of our elections,” she told Stateline.

Launched in the spring of 2020 during the throes of the COVID-19 pandemic, Power the Polls gathered nonprofits and businesses together to help election workers close the gap left after many poll workers, who tend to be older, decided to no longer serve due to health concerns. Nearly half of the poll workers who served in 2020 were older than 60.

The group’s effort recruited 700,000 prospective poll workers nationwide.

“It is our vision that every voter has someone who looks like them and speaks their language when they show up at the polling place, and that election administrators have the people that they need,” Hanson said.

Polling places still need poll workers. This year Power the Polls is tracking more than 1,835 jurisdictions, spanning all 50 states and the District of Columbia, that the group identified through outreach to election administrators, monitoring local news and working with on-the-ground partners.

Of those jurisdictions, Hanson said, 700 towns and counties have “really, really high needs.”

For example, Boston needs 500 new poll workers by its Sept. 3 primary, while Detroit needs 1,000 more people to sign up before November. In small towns in Connecticut and rural California, officials are desperate to find 20 people to help. Los Angeles County is looking for people who speak one of a dozen languages that are prevalent in the area.

In suburban Cobb County just outside of Atlanta, Director of Elections Tate Fall said recruiting poll workers has been difficult, but not at the level she’s heard about in other communities nationally. Her team has found success at farmers markets, Juneteenth festivals and senior services events.

Among her challenges, she said, is that many of the poll workers who have signed up this year are new and need more training and practice before November. She also worries about reliability.

“It’s just we have a lot of people sign up and then they never mark their availability, or they only want to work in their precinct,” Fall said. “We need people that are a bit more flexible. But overall, we’re doing good.”

In New Hampshire, the picture of which communities are in need is still emerging. But towns will need to move quickly: The Secretary of State’s Office is holding a series of trainings for voluntary ballot inspectors in the first few weeks of August, Zink said.

While state statutes and guidelines apply, much of New Hampshire’s election day operations are the discretion of the moderator – including how to recruit and deploy volunteers. Some cities and towns, like Manchester, will pay volunteers an hourly rate. Others make it strictly a volunteer position.

Moderators are encouraged to pick a group of volunteer ballot inspectors with an equal balance of party registrations, if possible. And while volunteers are usually residents of the polling districts, sometimes moderators may recruit from outside the town for certain positions, if necessary.

Those who are interested in helping out should first contact the clerk for their town or city polling ward, Zink said.

“I think that it’s important for us to find younger poll workers,” Zink said. “Our poll workers have been doing that for 20 or 30 years, and it’s important that we find some new, younger volunteers that might be willing to spend election day registering voters and checking folks in.”

Over the past four years, local election officials have been bombarded by misinformation, harassment and threats fueled by the lie that the 2020 presidential election was stolen.

To ease voters’ skepticism about ballot security, officials will often welcome them into the elections office and give them a tour.

In Nevada, Carson City Clerk-Recorder Scott Hoen goes a step further by inviting skeptical residents to see the election process firsthand as a poll worker.

“Lo and behold, once they go through the cycle, they understand and they can touch, feel it, see it, know it, understand it, that we run a really good, tight election here in Carson City,” Hoen said. “I think they have a better comfort with me now doing that, teaching them what’s going on.”

In Marion County, Florida, Supervisor of Elections Wesley Wilcox has been worried about people who believe the 2020 election was stolen working as poll workers and potentially disrupting the voting process. But the required training to become a poll worker has alleviated some of that concern.

“We’ve had them, and they actually become some of our advocates in this process,” he said.

Joseph Kirk, the election supervisor for Bartow County, Georgia, said that, beyond learning about the voting system, being a poll worker is just fun.

Kirk tells voters that it’s an opportunity to take a day off work, get paid, meet new people, see the characters of the community and enjoy a good meal, since some poll workers bring in homemade food to share.

And for the high school government students he recruits in their classes, it’s a way to participate in elections as early as 16.

“It’s a community,” he said. “And being part of it is really special.”

Bulletin reporter Ethan DeWitt contributed to this report.