The Duval County Supervisor of Elections office. l Ray Hollister, WJCT News 89.9
Published on August 22, 2023 at 11:53 am
The next election in Florida is set for March next year, and the Duval County Supervisor of Elections Office is teaming up with three of Jacksonville’s sports franchises to make a push for poll workers.
The push is part of a national effort Wednesday to recruit more poll workers. The push locally use the Jacksonville Jumbo Shrimp, the Icemen and the Sharks social media accounts to draw people’s attention.
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Greg Clark is the director of education, outreach and poll worker recruitment for the supervisor’s office. He says this push will help to reach 300,000 people, well more than the 4,000 people reached with just the Duval supervisor’s social media accounts alone.
“We could easily see 100 people fill out our poll worker application after that release. I mean, that would be an exciting number for us.” Clark said.
Typically, the elections office sees from five to 10 people on the poll worker web page per week, and of those people, maybe one to two people would fill out an application.
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Wednesday is National Poll Worker Recruitment Day across the country to help get more poll workers for elections. More than half of the jurisdictions in the United States — 54.1% — say it’s difficult or very difficult to recruit poll workers for elections, according to the 2022 Election Administration and Voting Survey report.
In Duval County, Clark said we don’t necessarily see the same issues as other jurisdictions do when it comes to poll worker recruitment.
With the elections scheduled for next year, the elections office has heard back from more than 1,000 previous poll workers who committed to coming back to work next year, and most of them have committed to working all three elections.
“These are folks that dedicate their time; they dedicate it in a nonpartisan way, just to help people get their vote counted, get it cast, have fair, accurate, equitable elections with integrity,” Clark said.
If you are interested in becoming a poll worker, you can go to duvalelections.com. Being a poll worker is not a volunteer position; you are paid for each election.
The pay rates are::
- Precinct manager, $310.
- Assistant manager, $250.
- Inspector technician, $225.
- Deputy, $215.
The three elections next year are the presidential primary March 19, the primary election Aug. 20 and the general election Nov. 5.
