Several California counties are finding their best election-day resources right under their noses. They are hiring county employees to work as election officials, paying the employees their regular wages for the day, plus a volunteer stipend.
“We’re biased, but our county employees are good,” said Steve Rodermund, chief deputy registrar of Orange County, Calif. “We have a higher confidence level in them than someone we have no idea about. It’s using your resources where you get the best bang for your buck.”
Orange County’s program was unveiled for the March 5 primary election, and proved to be a popular benefit in its inaugural run. More than 300 county employees signed on. Rodermund said he hopes 800 county employees will work the upcoming November election.
“We want to develop consistency from election to election. We built this up as a contingency or reserve force. You have the ability to backfill and respond to crisis. We had nothing but compliments [about the election] in the newspapers and at the polling places, which was not quite the case in some other counties,” Rodermund said, adding that fire, transit, and city authorities throughout Orange County are considering similar employee programs.
Back in January, legislation signed by California Governor Gray Davis (D) went into effect, permitting state employees to work the polls without affecting employer leave packages.
“We never expected [the state proposal] to go anywhere. But surprise, surprise, it got signed,” said Orange County Registrar Rosalyn Lever.
Gray’s push may have given more publicity to the idea, but Los Angeles County had a similar program in place for the Nov. 1998 election, when 360 county employees worked the polls. That number has steadily increased every election, and 2,120 worked the last one, in March 2000.
“We literally wouldn’t have had an election without them,” said Conny McCormack, registrar-recorder/county clerk of L.A. County. She cited confusion in the last election causing numerous non-county workers to quit election inspector and clerk duties.
Because there is no state standard on poll-worker compensation, California counties can set their pay ranges. The 13- or 14-hour day worked at the polls is much longer than the regular day spent in a county office, but McCormack feels the “volunteer stipend” is a nice compliment to the regular day’s pay.
L.A. County employees receive $75 to be an election inspector, $55 to be a clerk, and $25 to get trained. McCormack was able to utilize the “alternative work assignment” in her county through the U.S. Fair Labor Standards Act, which allows for payment of “occasional and sporadic work.”
McCormack said the goal is to get a county employee at each of the county’s 5,000 polling locations. Some of the reasons for such a goal include: long-time poll workers are retiring, older workers may find the punch-card supply boxes too heavy to lift, and county employees are highly computer literate (touch-screen voting machines may be introduced to the county as early as 2005).
“I think [sending our county employees to work the polls] is great and I think other counties ought to put [the program] in,” McCormack added.
“It was quite nice of the county to give people time off to do it,” said Marlyn Lovell, a secretary in the Health Care agency of Orange County, who worked at a voting location in March. “There had been quite a shortage of [poll] workers.”
“I had no clue how the system worked, how involved it is, and how important the accuracy is,” said Kim Candelaria, an eligibility technician with the Social Services agency of Orange. “As little as it was, it was my contribution. I also liked the fact that I got paid and got a nice little pen.”
Candelaria also noted that voters were extremely nice. She said voters and co-workers brought her gifts on Election Day ranging from cat food to Girl Scout cookies.
In Los Angeles County, McCormack gave county employees certificates, encouraging them to get the certificates framed and hung in their offices to use as a recruiting tool of fellow employees for upcoming elections.
Although several other California counties such as Alameda and Sacramento have programs similar to L.A. and Orange counties, the idea has not caught on throughout the rest of the country. In Multnomah County, Ore., for example, county employees may take the day off to work the polls, but such an absence is charged as a vacation day. In the state of Washington, it is illegal to have county employees work at the polls.
