When you enter a poll on Election Day you are greeted and helped by your neighbors who have cleared their schedules to work the entire day ensuring every vote is counted.
Poll workers are selected by the Democratic and Republican party chairmen. The lists of residents who will work this primary Election on May 3 are due to the Brown County Clerk by April 8.
With electronic voting equipment and requirements for data records under new voting laws being a poll worker is no easy task. On March 21, the Brown County Council unanimously voted to increase the pay for county poll workers as a way to help local political party chairs attract more workers and adequately pay them for their work during inflation.
On Election Day, each precinct has one inspector, two judges, two clerks and two sheriffs working. The inspector is responsible for opening and closing the polls, making sure voting equipment runs correctly and for delivering results to the county clerk at the end of the night.
Poll clerks check voters into the poll books while poll judges are tasked with making sure all driver’s licenses are valid. The sheriffs at the polls ensure that there is no campaigning inside or outside of the polls in the chute that is so many feet from the poll doors.
The initial request from the Brown County Election Board to the county council was to increase poll worker pay by 10%. With that increase, inspectors would earn $165 for working Election Day with judges, sheriffs and clerks earning $121. Workers would also receive $30 for attending training and $30 for meals.
“Is 10% the right number? Does 10% fully compensate for the cost of living and the cost of spending a long day working for the county? I suspect it doesn’t, but provides recognition to those citizens good and true who are willing to work and they know the county recognizes that life is more expensive in 2022 than it was in 2020,” said election board President Mark Williams.
Paying workers an extra 10% at the 11 precincts this primary election would equal $14,201 then an additional $14,201 would be needed for the general election, according to Williams. Williams is the Republican representative on the board and Kevin Fleming is the Democrat representative. Both attended the county council meeting to request the additional pay.
“I don’t think it’s enough, personally. You’re not raising it enough because those people will spend 14 hours there. You’re going to pay them the same range as you make at McDonald’s and they are doing a very important job,” said council member Dave Critser.
Fleming asked if it would be possible for the county’s American Rescue Plan Act funding to cover the additional cost in paying election workers more. No answer was provided at the county council meeting.
Following discussion about how much more to pay election workers, council member Darren Byrd motioned to pay inspectors $180 and clerks, judges and sheriffs $140. Workers will get $50 for training and $30 for meals. The motion was approved unanimously.
In May 2021, a committee was formed to review election worker training in hopes of avoiding problems that occurred during the primary and general elections of 2020. During spring 2021 election board meetings, multiple election workers’ experiences were shared about how the 2020 elections went.
By many accounts, they didn’t go well.
There were multiple challenges to start with, such as the pandemic, polling place changes and new election equipment. Comments were compiled by Republican Party Chairman Mark Bowman from nine election workers — mostly Republicans, but also one Democrat — which mentioned other challenges that could have been mitigated.
The common thread tying them together was training. In recent election board meetings, planning for the trainings and the materials to be used have been discussed.
Brown County Clerk Kathy Smith was responsible for training workers for the 2020 election.
The ad hoc Brown County Election Board Training Advisory Committee reported its findings to the election board last September. The committee was tasked with providing advice on the preferred location for poll worker training sessions ahead of the elections this year as well as how many trainings to have, who should attend them, the subject matter for trainings, methods and teaching tools to be used and how the board can ensure all workers understood the training.
The findings were used to draft a resolution outlining actions for the election board related to enforcing training policies and how the absentee voter board will conduct the early voting process including, processing applications for absentee ballots.
At the March county council meeting, Williams told members that training has been “revamped” for this election season. Williams wrote a new set of PowerPoint training materials that will be used in three hours of training scheduled for April 26 and 27.
Williams will lead workers through the training materials and three breakout sessions are scheduled that will focus on how to open the polls with hands on training using poll books and voting equipment. A second session will focus on operating the equipment at the polls to “deal with a lot of the issues that were very thorny and gave us some problems in the 2020 election” along with reduce the number of provisional ballots that were cast, Williams said.
Provisional ballots are offered to voters if there’s some question about their eligibility to vote in that election or at the poll where they are trying to vote. In the 2020 general election, 187 provisional ballots were cast by Brown County residents and the election board later determined 96 could be counted.
The third and final training session will train workers on how to close the polls.
Finding workers
Last week, Bowman and Democratic Party Chairman Rick Bond said they were still working on getting their list of poll workers together for each precinct.
Bond said he had received a couple of inquiries after posting to the local party’s Facebook page.
“I’m finding it’s easier to find people since we’re not in the pandemic,” he said.
When picking poll workers, Bond said he tries to find workers who have worked an election before.
“Those are the best ones to get people who have done it and are experienced at it,” he said.
“A lot of it is people work outside of the county and it’s hard to find people to even work. A lot of people say ‘I don’t want to get involved with this.’”
He also tries as much as possible to have the Democratic poll workers live inside of the precinct they are working in. The Cordry-Sweetwater area is where Bond has the most difficulty finding residents to work at the polls for the Democratic Party.
“That is important because that is their neighbors. They are going to vote in their neighborhood and in their precinct. They see someone in there familiar they know. It is a little bit more of an ease to the voters,” he said.
“It’s best that these people live in their precincts, so they know the voter. They can actually say ‘Hello Jim’ instead of saying ‘What’s your name?’”
The election board also authorized the chairmen to nominate high school students to work as poll workers this election season.
“There is a specific 10 or 12 elements that has to be met for them to be qualified, but by doing that what we’re hopeful that if at the end of the day there is a gap the chairs can reach out and fill that through interested students,” Williams said.
Bowman said he would love to incorporate high schools students “when and where we can work them,” but that he would prefer to use workers with experience and who are of voting age.
“Showing up is 90% of it, at the training and on the morning of Election Day,” Bowman said of an ideal poll worker.
“Being competent and always past poll workers are best because they have done it before and they are committed to their job. We are willing to accept half day workers as well. We prefer to keep them there all day, but if they can tolerate a half day (we will accept them),” he said.
Bowman said he had about 25% of the total poll worker positions filled.
“A little bit slow, but not out of the norm. They usually wait to the very last second,” he said.
He added that the increase in pay will be a “tremendous help” in getting people to work 14 hour days on election days.
After Smith had sent out an email with proposed pay for the 2022 election workers, Bowman discovered the pay was less than what was offered in 2020, so he reached out to Williams, Fleming and county council President Gary Huett to re-evaluate the proposed pay.
“They did a great job. They exceeded my expectations. The numbers came in even higher than what I anticipated. I am very appreciative,” Bowman said of the approved increase.
“I think these people deserve it. They work hard. It is going to be a good bonus for us to attract good poll workers.”
Bowman said that the workers are the “backbone of the election.”
“They are the ones who get the jobs done,” he said.
”It is very important to have good inspectors in place and preferably ones that have inspector experience. It is a very, very important role. … It’s very key to have good people in place for inspectors. They should be paid accordingly.”
Heads up
Last fall, the election board approved a resolution that outlines the expectations for how the absentee voter board and the county clerk’s office will work together this election season.
Per that resolution, any voter who requests an absentee ballot must apply to the county election board then a member of the election or absentee voter board will mail the ballot. Before mailing the ballot, two members of the absentee voter board will initial the back of the ballot.
One of the identified issues from the 2020 general election was that duplicate absentee ballot applications were received from the county clerk’s office at the absentee voting satellite office. This resulted in duplicate ballots being sent to at least two voters.
The resolution further states that, per Indiana Code, the clerk is to receive the absentee ballot applications and account for them in the statewide voter registration list. It states that the absentee voter board would then determine the validity of the applications and “act accordingly” by initialing and delivering the ballots.
During an investigation into a duplicate ballot complaint, election board members also eventually found 123 ballots that had initials on them which were not in election board members’ handwriting. Those ballots were taken into the custody of law enforcement. That matter remains under investigation.
Absentee voter board members are Deb Noe and Julie Cauble who have served on the absentee voter board for years with Cauble serving more than 10 years. They have been working since Feb. 22.
“We seated the absentee voter board early to assure their presence to deal with applications for absentee ballots and then be in a position to generate those absentee ballots from day one,” Williams told the county council earlier this month.
So far it is just Noe and Cauble processing the absentee ballot requests. When early voting begins on April 5 more absentee board members may need to be sworn in to help depending on the volume of ballots being cast, which could be another additional expense to the county’s general fund on top of the money needed to pay workers more on election days this year.
“If the early voting is relatively modest then I expect this absentee board to be able to perform their duties in sending out absentee ballots as well as dealing with individuals who come in for early voting. If the voting is much greater then we may have to enlist two additional absentee board members to engage in that early voting process,” Williams said.
He continued that it is possible two other absentee voter board members may be needed to help with early voting. They are paid $115 a day.
“I don’t think we’ll have anything like what we had in 2020 when we had as many as eight members of the absentee board in at one time just trying to deal with the volume, but I think on the top end that four members, two Republicans and two Democrats, can handle both,’ Williams said.
The exact additional appropriation amount needed to cover costs for the general election was not shared as Williams’ estimated totals for paying election workers more was based on a 10% increase and it is still unclear if any additional early voting workers will be needed.
Recommendations from the committee also highlighted the need for a “segregation of duties” between the clerk and absentee board, which is why there is a safe with ballots for this election season inside in the absentee voter board’s satellite office. Fleming and Williams will be given a code to the safe with an employee in the clerk’s office receiving the code right before Election Day.
