When testifying last week before the House Government Affairs committee that was tasked with investigating problems that arose during the June 9 Primary, Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger spoke on the need for more poll workers across the state.
In fact, prior to the June election, the Secretary of State’s office had kicked off a campaign to recruit more poll workers, especially in large metro counties. Monday, Raffensperger announced that his office will be continuing the poll-worker recruitment campaign to help grow the number of poll workers for the upcoming Aug. 11 runoff and Nov. 3 general election.
According to officials, the Secretary of State’s office sent the names of more than 1,000 people to several metro elections offices who had come forward to get trained by poll workers. This included 222 names that were sent to Fulton County elections officials, 139 to DeKalb, 70 to Cobb and 67 to Henry County.
“Counties have had to replace poll workers who backed out because of the global pandemic and then train those replacements on everything involved with setup and operation of a polling place. I’m glad we have been able to find so many Georgians willing to pitch in,” Raffensperger said. “The counties need more good people, and I urge individuals and groups to step up.”
County election officials are responsible for recruiting, training and assigning the paid workers at more than 2,600 local polling places. Recruitment has become increasingly difficult in recent years, and the COVID-19 infection raised the challenge to a critical level because the average poll worker is in the high-risk age group.
A statement issued by the SOS office said “Raffensperger took multiple steps to help counties cope with their recruitment challenge, including delaying the primary twice, distributing personal protective equipment and providing supplies for sanitizing polling places.” A sign-up form on the Secretary of State website, sos.ga.gov and on SecureVoteGA.com brought contact information for the thousand-plus willing poll workers. That information was distributed to each person’s home county election office which could arrange interviews and training. People interested in being a paid poll worker can sign up on those websites or contact their local elections office.
Raffensperger said the Secretary of State’s Office will also support counties in their training of these newly recruited poll workers.
During the committee hearing last week, Raffensperger voiced his support for legislation that would have allowed counties to hire poll workers who reside outside of their county, but the General Assembly never brought the bill to a vote. Raffensperger said that bill would have helped some counties address acute worker shortages.
The bill also would have prohibited elections officials from mailing out applications for absentee ballots. Prior to the June Primary, Raffensperger sent absentee ballot applications to 6.9 million Georgia voters and more than 1.1 million cast their ballots by absentee vote. Many election officials have said they felt this caused “problems and failures” in the Primary, and said they were overwhelmed by the number of absentee ballots that had to be counted.
