Another voting problem: poll workers

Rural Blog -Local election officials all over the country are having a hard time finding poll workers for the Nov. 6 election, Matt Vasilogambros reports for Stateline. That could lead to longer lines, fewer people voting because they are discouraged by long lines, more confusion, and miscounted ballots.

"In its 2016 biennial survey, the U.S. Election Assistance Commission found that two-thirds of jurisdictions had a hard time recruiting enough poll workers on Election Day, compared to fewer than half of officials in 2008 and 2012," Stateline reports. According to a 2013 review, the lack of reliable, well-trained poll workers was one of the "signal weaknesses" of the locally driven election system.

Recruitment and retention is the source of the problem, according to Aerion Abney, the Pennsylvania state director of All Voting Is Local, a project of the Leadership Conference Education Fund, a Washington, D.C.-based nonprofit. Poll workers are underpaid, and most are middle-aged or senior citizens; 56 percent in a 2016 poll were 61 or older, according to the commission's survey.