We have a number of teens volunteering as poll workers in North Carolina -- where many high schools have urged them to help. The state dropped the minimum age to be 17 for poll workers in North Carolina; some counties appear to be allowing 16.. They have to go through mandatory training sessions which started recently before the November election. I will give credit to these teenagers across the U.S. stepping up to help in the election during a time with a public health crisis. Not old enough to vote, but old enough to help: How teens are helping to avert an election crisis https://www.usatoday.com/story/news...p-up-poll-workers-during-pandemic/3480630001/ Like thousands of other teenagers, Abhinand Keshamouni's introduction to working the polls came from watching "The Daily Show." Host Trevor Noah ends each episode with a pitch for Power the Polls, a national recruitment network working to ensure there are enough poll workers on Election Day. The message resonated with Keshamouni, a 17-year-old senior from Canton, Michigan, a suburb of Detroit. He signed up first for the Michigan state primary in August. And he will be back at a polling site Nov. 3, when he will take off a day from his high school that's conducting classes online. Keshamouni will be among more 1 million poll workers braving a pandemic to ensure people can vote – and he got four of his buddies to do the same. "I thought it was a really good way to help our democracy, especially because I can't vote right now," Keshamouni said, adding that he also got a little pressure from his parents, Indian immigrants who will be voting in their first presidential election. "My entire family can vote except for me, so they were like, 'Go work the polls!' " Facing a drastic shortage of poll workers in November because of the coronavirus pandemic, an army of voting rights groups and other organizations this summer waged the most robust poll-worker recruitment campaign in modern election history. It has included high-profile allies, from Noah to NBA star LeBron James, whose recently formed More Than a Vote organization has worked to increase poll workers in predominantly Black districts. Companies like Starbucks, Warby Parker and Target are paying their employees who take a day off to work the polls. Senior citizens historically make up the bulk of the workforce at polling sites but hundreds opted out this year because they're the most vulnerable to coronavirus. For months, voting rights advocates feared cities might not have the manpower to keep all in-person polling sites open – particularly in battleground states like Pennsylvania, Wisconsin and Michigan that could decide the presidential election. But now election officials in cities such as Milwaukee, Detroit, Philadelphia, Atlanta and Houston aren't just confident they will be able to keep an expanded number of polling sites open. Fueled in part by a willingness of people in their 20s and 30s to step up, some cities said they have thousands more applications than they need. "We have way more than we can even use right now," said Richard Barron, Fulton County director of registration and elections in Atlanta, which has added 91 new polling locations since the state's June primary. Fulton County has nearly 7,000 applications for 2,900 poll-worker positions. "We're in very good shape. A lot of people saw what happened in June and they decided they needed to get involved." Barron said that includes many poll workers in their late teens and early 20s, pointing to one early voting site during the state's August's primary runoff that was staffed by six people under 25 years old. "We've never had that before," he said. Lessons from recent state primaries In some states, poll workers can be as young as 16 years old. Election officials hope the young recruits return for future elections, making it their new civic tradition and creating a “new generation of poll workers.” Prompting much of the activism: the scenes of hours-long lines of voters during state primaries early on in the pandemic. Among the longest lines were in Milwaukee, where only five of 180 polling locations opened for Wisconsin’s April primary, and Atlanta, where voters – some who did not receive absentee ballots in the mail – packed the limited number of polling sites open during its June primary. "We were really the poster-child across the country for what it looks like not to have enough poll workers," said Claire Woodall-Vogg, executive director of the Milwaukee Election Commission. "The only good thing to come out of that is that our voters really had a visual of what a poll-worker shortage looks like. Ever since April 7, we've had hundreds and hundreds of people applying to be an election worker." Although an unprecedented number of Americans are expected to vote by mail in November, voting rights advocates have pushed for all in-person voting sites to remain open to avoid voter suppression, particularly in communities of color that are often the most likely to see polling locations closed and consolidated. To recruit younger poll workers, Milwaukee partnered with the local Service Employees International Union, which represents restaurant workers and others in the service industry who tend to be young. The Metro Atlanta Chamber launched an initiative to recruit "young, tech-savvy Georgians" in the region while the state of Georgia teamed with the ACLU. Drawing more attention, Atlanta's State Farm Arena, home to the NBA's Atlanta Hawks and the WNBA's Atlanta Dream, is one of several arenas and NFL stadiums nationally that will be used as voting sites. In Houston, the Harris County Clerk's Office has a young clerks program in which more than 4,500 high school students in the Houston area will work polls in November. Texas law allows two excused absences a year for election work. The students are among the 25,000 poll-worker applications received this year in Houston – far more than is needed to fill a record 11,000 positions. The city anticipates having 808 voting sites this year, around 60 more than 2016. "There's still more work to do, but we are in really good shape," Harris County Clerk Chris Hollins said. "We're going to have more election workers than ever before – as many as 11,000 – but so far there's been an outpouring of enthusiasm of folks wanting to be election workers. Certainly, there are many more young people and middle-aged folks who have applied than ever before." Some cities bump up pay during pandemic Hollins said fewer senior poll workers backed out in Houston than expected, which combined with the thousands of more applicants, led to the large surplus. Election officials are optimistic in Detroit, where widespread problems from the state's August primary led Michigan Secretary of State Joceyln Benson, a Democrat, to help oversee the November election. Her office recruited 20,000 poll workers for the state, and with efforts ongoing, they believe there will be plenty to cover Detroit's 6,000 election workers – one-third of whom are needed to count absentee ballots. “It’s looking very, very promising," Detroit City Clerk Janice Winfrey said. In Philadelphia, another city that will closely watched in the race between President Donald Trump and Democrat Joe Biden, election officials said they've filled 5,660 of the city's 8,515 poll worker positions – far ahead of the typical pace after receiving "thousands" of applications. The response has been so great they've been unable to contact everyone who has inquired. (Much more at above url)
Information about teens volunteering as poll workers in our local counties in central North Carolina. These young people deserve credit for stepping forward. Wake County Board of Elections sees surge in young poll workers, other counties still need help https://abc11.com/politics/triangle...oll-workers-but-some-sites-need-more/6654880/ Many places in the Triangle seem to be doing well this year with recruiting poll workers. In Wake County, young people and teenagers are stepping up. The Wake County Board of Elections said they typically have five teenagers but this year, it has 300. "We can't even believe it to be honest," said Spence Berg, a recruiter for Wake County BOE. "It's to the point where we have to say, 'Ok guys, we have enough people, there's a waitlist at this point.'" The 29-year-old said typically his office has 7,000 active poll workers across the county's 206 precincts but applications have doubled since January. "This is a busy election, it's all in the news everyone knows what's going on. But then you couple that fact with COVID and people understand that our elderly members are most at-risk for complications. I think people really just want an outlet to give back," Berg said. Durham County said it has enough workers for Election Day. They are getting close to meeting their goal for one-stop early voting. Orange County has a waitlist of 800 people. Cumberland County said it's very close to meeting its recruiting goal but they need more Republicans to participate in order to balance some of their precincts. Hoke, Lee and Caswell counties report needing them as well. Sampson County said it needs more young people. Election leaders said the average age of a poll worker in North Carolina is age 72. Wake County said the influx of young people has brought their average age down to 46.