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Student Poll Worker Program

BEST PRACTICES FOR RECRUITING COLLEGE STUDENTS AS POLL WORKERS

The University of Virginia Center for Politics (CFP) received a grant through the United States Election Assistance Commission as part of the Help America Vote Act (HAVA) in August 2006. The Center for Politics’ objective was to recruit and train approximately 90 college students from the nearby Piedmont Virginia Community College (PVCC) and the University of Virginia (U.Va.) to serve as poll workers on Election Day 2006. Through funding from the Election Assistance Commission, CFP staff had proposed to:

• Continue to work with the City of Charlottesville on the Student Poll Worker Program that was initiated in Spring 2006.
• Expand the program to Albemarle County and to identify the specific needs of the locality and its respective voters on Election Day.
• Host a series of outreach events to students at the University of Virginia to recruit college students to complete training and serve as poll workers on Election Day. 
• Expand this outreach effort to Piedmont Virginia Community College to include community college students in the program.
• Work with the Registrars of the City of Charlottesville and Albemarle County to provide “best practices” information on engaging college students as poll workers.
• Evaluate and share the results of our experience in 2006 for use in our area, and in other localities, in future years.

Through completing this program, we:

• Effectively met the needs of local registrars by assisting with the administration of local elections.
• Imparted important knowledge about the election process through our civic education to participating students.
• Enhanced an already strong relationship between the University of Virginia and its students, and the registrars of Charlottesville and Albemarle.
• Established a good relationship with Piedmont Virginia Community College and its students.

To assist other localities, we provide the following suggestions based on our experiences. We hope this will assist you in setting up your own successful college poll-worker program. For more information, or to speak with someone directly about our best practices, please call Megan Davis, interim Director of Programs at the Center for Politics, mcd9x@virginia.edu or 434-243-3539.

• A strong media advertising campaign is vital! We found that posters, t-shirt advertising from students already participating in the program, advertising through the student newspaper, and especially, advertising on on-line sources like facebook.com helped us to recruit the necessary number of students.
• Other advertising is important, too. From our post-election survey, we found that 28.6% of the active poll workers learned of the program through an email from the Center for Politics. Among those who did not work the polls, 40% found out about the program from an information table at the college, and another 40% found out about the program when their professor made an announcement during class.
• We conducted a highly successful swearing-in ceremony where participating students accepted their responsibility as poll workers in a solemn but celebratory atmosphere with the local registrars and members of the Election Assistance Commission, University faculty, members of the press, and the local mayor. We feel this honored the responsibility of the position and further committed the students to participation.
• We used an on-line survey company (surveymonkey.com) that allowed us to collect anonymous data from all of the students who signed up to participate. This gave us information on what we did well, what can be improved, and why some students dropped out of the program. In fact, much of our best practices come from the results of the survey. The survey program is reasonably priced and user-friendly.
• It is important to recruit more workers than your local registrar actually needs. We found that a large percentage of students signed up but never followed through on participation; largely because of educational conflicts on Election Day or on the required training dates. We recommend that your recruitment goal be double of what you hope to have on Election Day. For example, if you want 100 students at the polls, you should recruit 200.
• Keep in touch with the student poll workers. Be sure you have collected multiple ways to contact them: email, phone, cell phone and addresses. We found that students sometimes changed their email address and we wished we had more ways to contact them.
• Having a strong, open dialogue with the registrars that you are assisting is crucial. A good relationship will make for a more successful program. We recommend staying in touch throughout the year, not just during election time, so that you can be aware of their staffing needs.
• T-shirts were purchased to advertise the program, they read, “Hug Me I’m a Poll Worker” and were highly successful.
• We found that training sessions will probably be conducted by your local registrar, but that you can be helpful in organizing materials, making copies, and continuing to serve as a resource for students who have questions.

Have fun! When the students see how much you value the election process, they are likely to value it as well. 100% of the U.Va. participants reported that they were likely to work as a poll worker in the future.

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