They’ve been called the “most important people in running an election” by Secretary of the Commonwealth Al Schmidt, yet even as interest in election security has skyrocketed after Donald Trump’s persistent false claims of voter fraud, their jobs seem to be hidden in plain sight.
Unlike the grifters and sycophants who help feed the president’s Big Lie and earn millions of social media followers, make frequent TV appearances, and are showered with adulation by the White House, the roughly 45,000 volunteers across Pennsylvania who are essential to ensuring elections happen fairly, smoothly, and efficiently are rarely recognized for the work they do.
No wonder poll workers are in short supply — in the commonwealth and across the nation. A Brookings Institution report said that about half of all election officials found it either very or somewhat difficult to find enough workers.
As someone who worked in elections before becoming a journalist, I’m hardly surprised. Running the polling booths is neither glamorous nor convenient. Voting starts promptly at 7 a.m. on Election Day and continues until 8 p.m. With prep and closing work, a shift can take up to 16 hours for some. In Philadelphia, doing your part to help preserve democracy can earn you up to $295. Elsewhere, compensation tends to be much less.
In Pennsylvania, the job comes with an additional wrinkle. Our poll workers are elected. Across roughly 1,700 divisions in the city of Philadelphia alone, neighbors are asked to choose a judge of elections and inspectors. The judge then appoints a clerk, and either the city commissioners or the election board finds a voting machine operator. If the judge fails to show, the first voters may be asked to hold a curbside election to pick a successor.
It is all somewhat delightfully antiquated even as it can contribute to Election Day delays.
Recently, Philadelphia’s election officials sought to stem the shortage of poll workers. City Commissioners Omar Sabir, Seth Bluestein, and Lisa Deeley joined Schmidt to honor some of the city’s poll workers — and ideally recruit others at a rally in the City Hall courtyard, complete with pizza, pretzels, and water ice.
Student poll worker India Nakai, 17, a Girard College senior, told the audience she was motivated to serve her community and see what happens behind the scenes, even though she isn’t old enough to vote herself yet. At the other end of the spectrum was another kind of senior, honoree Gwendolyn Clay, 74, who has been working the polls for 51 years.
Their dedication to public service and commitment to helping their neighbors reminded me of the people who signed up to help count ballots during 2020.
I was there at the Pennsylvania Convention Center, where — despite the pandemic and the threats of armed agitators who believed Trump’s false claims of fraud — scores of Philadelphians showed up every day to help tally the unprecedented flood of mail-in ballots.
Vote counters zealously followed the law, erring on the side of strict interpretation and removing ballots for even minor and inconsequential errors like a missing date or an absent secrecy envelope.
Elections, and democracy itself, depend on this kind of selfless dedication.
Unfortunately, people like Clay and Nakai, who are willing to do essential but usually thankless work, are becoming rarer. And it’s not just staffing the polls that has seen recruitment challenges.
Service organizations like the Elks, Kiwanis, and Rotarians once built and maintained parks and memorials, but are now in the midst of rapid decline. Veterans from the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan are less likely to join VFW or American Legion clubs, and more and more Americans are spending their days alone.
Traditional, neighborhood-based churches have been supplanted by regional megachurches, with paid full-time staff replacing the volunteers and part-timers who once taught Sunday school and led worship.
Across society, genuine connection is being eroded. It has been replaced by communities of outrage.
The election-denying hordes are just one facet of this phenomenon. Instead of toiling away for hours in service of their fellow citizens, members of an outrage community must simply “like,” “reply,” or “repost” sentiments that align with their own half-baked suspicions. The actual factual record rarely matters, replaced by the wisdom of the algorithmic mob.
Communities of outrage now exist for nearly every major facet of life, and every national news story. They allow participants to live in a world reconstructed to fit their belief system, with all the inconvenient facts smoothed away.
School shootings like Sandy Hook are dismissed as false flags. Disappointing election results are attributed to fraud. People across the ideological spectrum increasingly believe antisemitic conspiracy theories, which blame every complex societal problem on Jewish people. Climate change is either denied or blamed solely on corporations, with no acknowledgment of who is buying all the gas, using artificial intelligence, or purchasing legions of plastic junk to fill our homes.
Collective action to fix societal woes becomes impossible when individuals can no longer agree on what’s happening in the first place. As the internet has become a haven for everyone’s petty grievances, a society built on online outrage is a miserable one. At the turn of the century, roughly 70% of Americans reported being satisfied with the direction of the country. Today, that number sits at 25%.
It is up to us as individuals to choose differently.
Outrage artists will continue to peddle lies as long as we are willing to click on them. Outrage communities will keep growing as long as real communities continue to shrink. Filling a vacant seat on an election board won’t fix this problem overnight, but it is a step in the right direction.
The more we strive to follow the example of service-minded people like Nakai and Clay, the closer we’ll be to creating a society we can be proud of.
