Coronavirus creates election worker shortage ahead of November

[brooklynite]

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Source: Politico

First it was toilet paper. Then it was cleaning supplies. Now, a new coronavirus-era shortage is threatening the November election: Poll workers.

Recruiting volunteers to check in voters, supply ballots and deal with issues has never been easy for election administrators. But in interviews and public statements, more than a dozen election administrators and voting advocates warned that slow poll worker recruitment could be a major vulnerability for the 2020 election.

Election officials across the country are seeing early shortages and scrambling to recruit a new generation of poll workers for Election Day, looking to maintain a volunteer force that has relied heavily on senior citizens in the past — the cohort most vulnerable to the coronavirus. Poll workers are responsible for everything from making sure voters get the right ballots to helping people with issues as they vote, and shortages could add confusion, long lines and delays to an Election Day process that has already been upended by the pandemic.

“We need 39,870 people for Election Day and early voting, and we don’t have anywhere near that. We have 13,021 vacant positions, [about] 32 percent statewide,” said David Garreis, the president of the Maryland Association of Election Officials. “The hardest thing that we have to do in any election is to recruit election judges. And in this year, it's impossible.”

Read more: https://www.politico.com/news/2020/07/31/coronavirus-election-worker-shortage-389831