New generation of poll workers stepped up to serve
Young women have led charge, researchers say
Working with first-time voters stands out among Hildie Brooks’ favorite memories as a poll worker.
As people left her Arizona polling place with an “I voted” sticker, Brooks and her co-workers would throw mini celebrations, letting out a “woo!” or sometimes applauding.
“To me, that’s what it’s about,” the 67-year-old said. “It’s the unity of everybody participating in the democratic process of voting.”
Brooks has been a poll worker for more than a decade. But the retired teacher is worried about the potential health effects that COVID-19 has on people her age. Because of the pandemic, she wasn’t a poll worker this year.
“It’s very disappointing,” she said. “I look forward to it so much. Just the thrill and the honor of working at a polling location.”
Across the country, women like Brooks — who experts estimate have made up the bulk of poll workers — took a step back from the seasonal work that has long been critical to running America’s decentralized election system.
Age data reported for 53% of poll workers in 2016 showed that 32% were between the ages of 61 and 70 and 24% were 71 or older. There is no comprehensive data on the gender of poll workers, but researchers believe that women have led the charge.
“There isn’t much systematic research that definitively shows that poll workers have been largely female, but I think the reason for that is because it sort of goes without saying,” said Mitchell Brown, a political science professor at Auburn University who has researched election administration.
Sarah Courtney, a spokesperson for the League of Women Voters, agreed that the underreporting of who is serving as poll workers highlights a reality about women in elections: “We’re just really taken for granted.”
Since Brooks is sitting this year out, she asked her 38-year-old daughter Erica to sign up. There’s a familial connection to the job for Brooks: When she was a young girl growing up in California, her mother was a poll worker. She hopes Erica will carry on the tradition.
“I’ve always really admired her dedication to working the polls,” Erica Brooks said of her mother. “... And I’ve always thought, ‘Yeah, someday when I’ve retired and I have extra time on my hands, that would be a fun thing to do.’ So when she brought it up I thought, ‘Oh, I guess maybe now is the time.’ ”
Women’s ties to election systems
It’s difficult to know exactly when and how women became so linked to the elections system that Americans know today. There appears to be limited historic data readily available, but women have been at the forefront of civic engagement.
The 1920 ratification of the 19th Amendment, which effectively granted white women the right to vote, led women to run expansive education efforts to increase the number of women registering to vote. The League of Women Voters, the rights group founded six months before ratification, held “schools of citizenship” to train women in civic duties. The lessons, according to a newspaper clipping, would specialize in “practical politics, the American system of government and the machinery of elections.”
Brown, the Auburn professor, noted that for decades, working the polls on Election Day may have been viewed as a clerical-style job that could fall to women.
As states added election policies, the need grew for officials to help administer them. Over time, it resulted in a codified election system with different rules depending on the state, with women predominantly running them.
An army of poll workers
More than 900,000 poll workers helped operate more than 116,000 polling places during the 2016 presidential election, according to the U.S. Election Assistance Commission.
Poll workers continued to play a critical role in this year’s general election. Although the pandemic led to a record number of people voting by mail, experts still expected high turnout for inperson voting.
In 2016, more than two-thirds of poll workers were 61 or older, according to limited data compiled by the U.S. Election Assistance Commission.
Organizers for Power the Polls estimate more than 60% of people who signed up to be a poll worker through the site were under the age of 50, and nearly 40% are under the age of 35.
“It is a whole new generation of poll workers, which to me is the thing that we ultimately want,” said Robert Brandon, president of Fair Elections Center, the nonprofit that helped launch Power the Polls. “Not that we don’t like the people that were working before, they’re great. But we need more diversity. We need more tech-savvy people. We need more bilingual options. And the one positive of this pandemic-driven surge of interest in poll working is we’re going to see that.”
This story was published in partnership with The 19th, a nonprofit, nonpartisan newsroom reporting on gender, politics and policy.