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June 19, 2008

Rokita wants to see more, younger Hoosiers involved in elections

By Howard Greninger

TERRE HAUTE — Democracy requires people and Indiana, like other states, needs volunteers specifically to work as poll workers on election days in May and November, said Indiana Secretary of State Todd Rokita.

Indiana requires 30,000 poll workers throughout the state’s 5,500 precincts. Recruiting people to work at those sites is one of the biggest challenges of running an election, Rokita said.

“The average age of our poll worker in this state and across the nation is 72,” Rokita said Thursday to the Terre Haute South Rotary Club at the Holiday Inn.

“The greatest generation is running our polls … but there is becoming less and less of that generation every day and who will take on that leadership? We need more poll workers,” Rokita said.

Party chairmen in each county appoint poll workers, yet usually that work is delegated in the parties.

Shirley Padgett, a Republican deputy registrar in the Vigo County Voter Registration Office, is in charge of finding poll workers this year for her party, a task she said is not easy.

“It is extremely hard. I put a lot of hours in just trying to find people,” Padgett said. “I went through other ways, like I have different friends in churches and got some of those people to get active in politics and be poll workers. I also did searches in our [party] poll book and I would just do random calls.”

Padgett said she was lucky to get one in 10 people to be a poll worker because polls are open for 12 hours.

“We have a lot of people who have done it 30 to 40 years and a lot of them have died. I have been trying to recruit younger people,” Padgett said.

State law allows 16- and 17-year-old students with a grade-point average of 3.0 or higher to serve as poll workers. Padgett said she recruited about 40 poll workers this year under 18. Many of those workers used the money they earned from working at the polls as a fundraiser, to pay for camps, such as cheerleading camps, she said.

“I think they will come back,” she said.

Padgett said recruiting also was difficult as people seeking election as a state delegate or precinct committeeman, along with their immediate family members, are ineligible to serve as poll workers. That also applies to people seeking main government offices.

“I would really like to see more civic-minded people volunteer,” she said.

The pay for poll workers varies county by county, but ranges statewide from $60 to $200 per day, said Jim Gavin, communications director for the Indiana Secretary of State’s office. Vigo County last year increased its pay to poll workers by $40.

Inspectors in Vigo County now are paid $140 per day; Republican judges, who must accompany inspectors — who are all Democrat in Vigo County as the county had more Democrat votes for Secretary of State than Republicans — are paid $110 per day; and all other poll workers are paid $100 per day. Meals are provided.

In the May primary election, Vigo County paid $60,840 to 567 poll workers, plus $12,411 to provide meals on Election Day, according to the county Auditor’s Office.

Polls usually operate with at least five workers, yet some counties can use as many as seven or more, Gavin said. Vigo County usually has seven poll workers, with one inspector, two judges (one from each major party); two clerks (one from each major party); and two sheriffs (also, one from each major party), positions not required by state law, Gavin said.

Rokita said Indiana now has more training than ever for poll workers, such as providing videos to each county to standardize training. “If they are trained well, you will have a good election. If they are not trained well or they don’t listen to the training, that is where you get into the problems,” he said.

Rokita said his office soon will provide a state certification for completion of poll worker training.

“It is a measure of appreciation and I think that goes a long way. It also is a reminder to them that they have to keep learning,” Rokita said. “You basically have to be a street lawyer to be a poll worker, from provisional ballots to checking the photo ID law, to all the other duties they must do. It is much more complex than it was in the 1960s and 1970s, yet that is when most of our poll workers started being poll workers. A lot of them think that, ‘Wow, I have been doing this so long I know exactly what the laws are,’ and there is a refusal to learn.”

Vigo County Clerk Pat Mansard said poll workers are vital, referring to the May 2007 election in Marion County when 150 poll workers did not show up on Election Day, wrong ballots were delivered and wrong keys prevented workers from opening voting machines. Some precincts did not open to voters.

“We have never experienced that in Vigo County, but that is really a problem everywhere,” she said.

Mansard said Indiana in 2007 and 2008 had Lafayette, Wayne and Cass counties used as pilot counties for “vote centers,” where voters can cast a ballot without being in a precinct. The Indiana General Assembly would have to approve such a measure, which was defeated this year in the Legislature.

“It would take a lot more of a high-technology situation than we have now,” she said. Vigo County was the first county to offer satellite voting, she said, which allows voters to cast an absentee ballot before Election Day. Yet those ballots must be returned to precincts on Election Day, unlike voting centers.

“We don’t know what will happen with elections in the future and we may even have a special election next year, when we don’t traditionally have elections,” to resolve property tax questions, Mansard said.



Howard Greninger can be reached at (812) 231-4204 or howard.greninger@tribstar.com.

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