(The Center Square) — As Pennsylvania has lost experienced election workers, state leaders are calling on the public to serve in April and November.
On Tuesday, Secretary of the Commonwealth Al Schmidt visited the East Shore Library in Harrisburg to encourage more civic engagement.
“On election day, the most important people are not the secretary of state, it is not your county commission, it’s not even your county election director,” Schmidt said. “It’s the men and women who volunteer for essentially a 14-hour day to make sure you can cast your vote and have your vote counted.”
The state has a small cadre of election workers; in December, Schmidt estimated that fewer than two dozen people work on elections full-time in the Department of State. The workforce, instead, is on the local level.
“Poll workers are really the frontlines of our representative democracy,” he said.
The election workforce encompasses 45,000 poll workers across 9,000 places in Pennsylvania. Workers must be registered, eligible voters and get paid for training and for election day work. Seventeen-year-olds can also volunteer.