Inside Elections

Poll worker preparation for Election Day is essential, which means October is filled with mandatory classes and plenty of additional chances to brush up.

About 2,500 poll workers are attending class on election laws and procedures for Nov. 6. To accomodate that number, more than 60 classes are being offered, which is keeping our instructors plenty busy! More than 30 poll workers showed up for class this morning at the San Carlos Library.

Classes are offered by skill level and area of expertise. There are classes for rookies, graduates of this summer’s Poll Worker Academy (see previous post), and non-graduates who play a leading role at the polls as inspectors and judges. There are also classes for San Mateo County employees who help out on Election Day through our Peninsula Democracy Corps.

As we previously blogged, this is the first time that Elections Office is requiring its poll workers to sign up for their mandatory class in advance, and to aim to do so online.

And for those poll workers who want some quality hands-on time with the eSlates a faux poll place is regularly up and running in San Mateo. (It’s a tough one, with Harriet Tubman, Walt Whitman, and Frederick Douglass in the running for a seat in the U.S. Senate.)

The eSlate lab, its known, is up and running six days a week between now and Nov. 6, with drop-in hours that focus on troubleshooting, assisting voters with special needs, assembling and disassembling the eSlates, or opening and closing the polls. A collection of eSlates are at the ready to simulate Election Day polls.

Greta McElroy-White, who’s in charge of poll worker recruiting and training, said there is tremendous value in practice and repetition.

“It makes the entire difference between being comfortable with what you’re doing on Election Day and being worried about the night before,” McElroy-White said. “The more you do it, the easier it is.”