5.2 Preparing for an Election
Elections have been described as “the most complex logistical event to be organised during peacetime” (James, 2020). They involve a mass mobilization of people and resources, usually within a tight timeframe. In Canada, a typical election requires the recruitment of 230,000 election workers for over 15,000 polling locations (Thomas & Gibson, 2015). Staffing the election team is an important first step.
Hiring Election Workers
While some EMB maintain a permanent staff, the bulk of the labour force is temporary. In New Zealand, for example, their national elections office is staffed by approximately 30 people on a permanent basis, but that number will grow to 20,000 poll workers who will be deployed on election day (Thomas & Gibson, 2015). Similarly, some American states might employ a handful of permanent election officials, but on election day, over 700,000 poll workers will be spread around the country (Leppert, 2024), most of whom will be older and poorly trained workers (Pastor, n.d.).
Election Jobs
Election workers can be grouped according to several functions:
Election Officials
The roles, often permanent, might be responsible for procurement, ongoing maintenance of voter rolls, and the hiring and training of new election workers (Leppert, 2024).
Poll Workers
The most numerous type of election staff is the poll worker. These will be short-term, temporary roles, and they are the public-facing staff at the polling station. They carry out:
- Greeting people and wayfinding
- Identify verification
- Checking in voters and distributing ballots
- Providing assistance to voters who need it. Additionally, poll workers might include returning officers who supervise the inventory of materials, counting of votes, and reporting of vote totals (Elections Canada, n.d.-b)
Poll Watchers
Election observers, sometimes called poll watchers or scrutineers, are not employees of the electoral management bodies (Leppert, 2024). Typically, poll watchers will be volunteers representing a political party. They will observe the vote-counting process and advocate for their party to ensure all legal votes are counted.
How much does it pay?
How well does election work pay? It depends. In Canada, most election workers will make $20 per hour (Elections Canada, n.d.-b). In some American states, most election roles pay minimum wage, while some states like Delaware pay $300 for the day (Leppert, 2024).
Retention Challenges
It’s getting harder to find people willing to work in elections. In the United States, many state and local elections offices are having trouble retaining workers from one election to the next. One report found the turnover rate among election officials had increased steadily since the 2000 election. (Ferrer et al., 2024). This may not be surprising. Election work has become more dangerous, with election workers being subject to threats and harassment (Gordon-Rogers, 2024)
Compiling Voter Lists
Once the team is in place, election workers can begin validating the list of eligible voters called the voter roll. Some countries, such as Canada, Australia, and Germany, use systems of automatic voter registration in which eligible voters are identified and added to the list by election authorities, whereas in many American states, the burden of registration falls to the individual (Sellers, 2024). In the United States, there are partisan battles over voting registration, with some states making the process easier and others adopting more burdensome registration practices (The Economist, 2025).
Maintaining Accurate Lists
Accurate voter lists are essential to ensure that voters only cast one vote during an election. Maintaining an accurate voter roll can be challenging, especially in large electorates such as India, with approximately 800 million voters. The task is made even more difficult by India’s lack of universal identification, which, critics contend, leads to an inaccurate list (Thomas & Gibson, 2015). To improve accuracy, some American states use regular voter purges to remove inactive voters from their lists. These can be prone to error (Levine, 2023) and are sometimes used to intentionally disenfranchise voters (Waldman, 2024).
Who is ERIC?
In 2021, the Electronic Registration Information Center (ERIC) was formed to help American States keep their voter lists updated. It is a voluntary consortium of election administrators from several states. The ERIC systems can identify voters who have moved, voters who appear on two voters lists, and voters who have deceased (ERIC, n.d.). After identifying these entries, the election administrators can remove any voter registrations that are incorrect. Despite the initiative’s success, some states have withdrawn from the intuitive over partisan attacks and misinformation campaigns (Fifield, 2023).
