Letter to the editor:
Our county and municipal clerks, and the poll workers they recruit and train, are defenders of democracy!
Election workers are civic-minded registered voters who work at election day polling places and early voting sites, and are trained in voting procedures, equipment operation and customer service. They are your neighbors and friends. They are Republicans, Democrats and Independents.
It takes more than a million people working the polls to make American elections run smoothly. Between retirements and concerns about COVID, tens of thousands of poll workers have left the job over the past several election cycles. The majority of them are over 60 years old. And with over 5,000 local election jurisdictions across the U.S., recruiting new workers can be a challenge.
To address this concern, “Power the Polls” was laughed in 2020 according to its website, by a “coalition of businesses and nonprofits seeking to recruit a new wave of poll workers ahead of the 2020 election.”
Jane Slusser, program manager of Power the Polls, has said that one of the biggest challenges around poll worker recruitment is that people don’t know they’re needed.
Want to be a poll worker or just learn more about how elections work? The Wisconsin Election Commission has launched “Elections 101,” a video series to help you do just that.
Check it out at elections.wi.gov/101.
Jill Kessenich
Fort Atkinson
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