The Toll of the Coronavirus Pandemic on Poll Workers

Election day goes on through hurricanes, fires, or even a pandemic. The precedent was set in the 1918 midterm during the Spanish Flu, where poll workers and voters alike wore face masks.

This pandemic puts the older poll workers who are already at risk because of their weakened immune system at an even higher risk of contacting someone with coronavirus.

The CDC reports that nearly eight-in-10 of Covid-19 related deaths are from people over the age of 65.

According to a study by the Pew Research Center, 58% of poll workers are over the age of 60. 

This led Faith LeMay, a junior at UW-Milwaukee, to work as a poll worker during the 2020 Presidential Election on November 3. 

“In the beginning, it wasn’t something I was super interested in,” said LeMay. “But then I looked into it and this is just a really historic election. In the past, they haven’t had enough poll workers. In the last election, we went from 180 stations to five. Me and my friends just didn’t want that to happen again.”

Milwaukee only had five polling locations open for the 2020 Presidential Primary, lines stretched farther than normal and many were waiting in line for hours.

In an interview with The Poll Hero Project, Barry Burden, a political science professor at UW-Madison, said without poll workers, polling places can’t function the way they are meant to. 

“Shortage of poll workers can lead to longer lines, it can result in difficulties dealing with problems or irregularities that arise during election day,” said Burden. “It is necessary to have lots of poll workers in order to operate polling places as they should.”

On November 3, Milwaukee had 168 polling places open. Thanks in part to the number of poll workers. Some of these workers were recruited through the Poll Hero Project. 

The Poll Hero Project recruited younger poll workers across the nation to get involved and help fill the missing spots. 

The Poll Hero Project said that in two months, they recruited 10,000 poll workers through their outreach initiative. By the end of the election, they had recruited 37,398 workers. 

Part of their success was because of how they recruited these younger workers. 

They couldn’t contact them through voter information sites because most of these younger people, had never voted before. So they took to social media sites with a predominantly younger audience, like TikTok, Instagram and Twitter. 

In an interview with NPR, Leo Kamin, one of the founders of the Poll Hero Project said that having efficient polls is a necessity.

“If you’re forcing people to wait in line for three hours, that’s definitely a form of voter suppression because people who work hourly jobs can’t take three hours out of their day,” said Kamin. “We have to have more than just the ability to vote. We have to actually make voting efficient and easy.”

The Poll Hero Project site states: “We had observed the election disasters in Wisconsin and Georgia and came to appreciate that a lack of poll workers — typically older Americans who are at a higher risk of serious complications from Covid-19 — was one of the driving forces behind these debacles.”

However, LeMay said that despite the number of poll workers, she still encountered some problems.

“It was kind of messy though. I was essentially on call from 6:30 to 8:30 in the morning and then 12:30 to 2:30 at night,” Lemay said. “Luckily, I got called at like 7 am, cause that was the shift I wanted.”

Luckily, LeMay said they didn’t have any issues with people not wearing masks. However, they did have a procedure in place if someone did refuse. Since you can not legally turn someone away from a polling location, they would just try to get them in and out as fast as possible, to minimize their time in line.

In early September, Milwaukee Mayor Tom Barrett announced additional incentives to attract poll workers. Barrett increased the incentive pay from $130 for the day to $230.

Despite this, Milwaukee voter turnout was relatively the same as in the 2016 election with only a 4% increase in voters, according to the Wisconsin Election Commission.