The 2020s haven’t been the easiest time to work in Georgia elections. Many local poll workers quit or retired after the fraught presidential election of 2020. But despite some concerns about a shortage of poll workers for the 2024 election cycle, Atlanta metro area elections offices say they won’t have a problem staffing precincts for the upcoming presidential primary.
Local election officials say that they either have a full roster or expect to have one by the March 12 election day. Some workers are already employed during the early voting period, which began Feb. 19.
“We’re really lucky in that Cobb County has a wealth of poll workers,” said Tate Fall, Cobb County’s elections director. According to Fall, her county needs about 2,000 poll workers for the presidential primary and has about 7,000 potential workers in its database. Because of the surplus, Cobb is sending a dozen workers to assist in northern Fulton County.
Fulton County officials also say they’re ready for the primary, after implementing several new measures to attract poll workers, including increased social media posting and recruitment fairs.
“Our staff has made significant efforts to ensure a sufficient number of poll workers have been recruited to manage our elections,” Fulton County Department of Registration & Elections staff wrote in an email to Atlanta Civic Circle.
Gwinnett County says its election worker staffing is holding steady at the same level as for the 2022 elections. “We don’t anticipate difficulties,” said Gwinnett County spokesperson Deborah Tuff.
Clayton and DeKalb County elections offices did not respond to requests for comment.
The ‘Great Resignation’
Serving as a poll worker is not an easy job. On election day, they work a 14-hour day or longer, arriving at their assigned precinct well before polls open at 7 a.m. and leaving after they close at 7 p.m.
Pay varies by county. In Clayton, for instance, election day pay starts at $150 for a clerk and goes to $300 for a precinct manager. That includes a four-hour training period before election day. Counties also hire workers for the five-week preparation and early voting period before election day.
Many longtime local poll workers didn’t return for the 2022 election cycle after the contentious 2020 presidential election. They were confronted with increased health risks due to the COVID-19 pandemic and an increase in harassment and threats afterTrump’s campaign disputed the Georgia election results.
In one high-profile case, former Trump lawyer Rudy Giuliani tweeted a video of Ruby Freeman and her daughter, Shaye Moss, who worked as temporary election workers in Fulton County. During a December defamation trial against Giuliani, who’d falsely claimed the video showed election fraud, Freeman, who is Black, testified that she began receiving racist messages and voicemails after the video went viral online in December 2020 and fled her home after people arrived outside with bullhorns and the FBI told her she wasn’t safe.
“I was scared. I didn’t know if they were coming to kill me,” Freeman testified. Following the week-long trial, she and her daughter won a $148 million defamation judgment from a federal jury.
In response to threats nationally against election officials in 2020, the Department of Justice formed an Election Threats Task Force in June 2021 that reviewed more than 2,000 harassing or threatening communications. Prosecutors filed federal criminal charges in more than a dozen of those cases.
According to an April 2023 survey of 852 election officials by the nonprofit Brennan Center for Justice, more than half feared that threats, harassment, and intimidation would affect their ability to recruit or retain staffers and volunteers for this year’s elections.
Some Georgia legislators are trying to fight back with House Bill 1118, which would sharply increase criminal penalties to up to 20 years in prison for those convicted of using or threatening violence against election workers.
“Our election workers are democracy heroes. They are on the front lines to making sure our politics and our government works—so we have to ensure their safety,” the bill’s sponsor, state Rep. Saira Draper (D-Atlanta), told 11Alive News. However, the bill has not yet been voted on in the House, making its chances of crossing over to the Senate unlikely by the Feb. 29 deadline.
Meanwhile, a younger cohort of election workers have stepped up to fill the gap. The Brennan Center study found that 12% of election officials nationally began service after the 2020 election cycle.
“[Since 2020], there’s been a trend of first-time poll workers to help bolster the system, and hopefully, they become longtime folks,” said Ryan Pierannunzi, the national special projects manager for Fair Elections Center, a nonprofit working to improve elections administration. “Predominantly, poll workers across the country were older and whiter than the nation at large. And so what we’re seeing is a step towards diversifying that to better reflect the voting public.”
For how long?
The real test for Georgia election workers will be in elections later in the calendar year, including the May 5 general primary for offices other than the president and then the Nov. 5 general election.
Traditionally, primaries and off-year elections only need about half the number of election workers as a presidential election, due to lower turnout. Thus far in the 2024 presidential election cycle, early voting in Georgia has been relatively quiet. Only 16,000 voters cast ballots on the first day of early voting, Feb. 19, since this year’s Democratic and Republican presidential primaries, where President Joe Biden and Trump are the respective frontrunners, are far less competitive than previous elections.
“I think the need for workers is going to be high,” said Pierannunzi. “Turnout has been rising in presidential elections, and that will drive election plans.”
Atlanta election officials say they will continue to hold virtual and in-person recruitment events for poll workers for the general primary and election, but aren’t ready to predict a shortage in November.
Are you interested in becoming a poll worker?
- Check with your county’s election office for an application. Poll workers must be at least age 16, a U.S. citizen, speak English and have transportation to the precinct they’re assigned.
- The Georgia Secretary of State’s office has recently relaunched a statewide application page.
- The Georgia ACLU has a comprehensive guide to becoming a poll worker.