Poll workers play a vital role in administering elections, performing a wide range of essential duties from setting up polling stations and checking in voters to counting ballots and publishing results. Recruiting sufficient numbers of poll workers has become more difficult since 2020 because of concerns over Covid-19 and violence or harassment from election deniers.
At the same time, proponents of the false claim that the 2020 election was “stolen” have attempted to recruit fellow Big Lie supporters to be poll workers. While state and local election officials cannot exclude poll workers based on their political beliefs, they can and should take reasonable steps to ensure that poll workers set aside any personal or partisan beliefs, follow the law, and faithfully carry out their duties.
Fortunately, states already have many guardrails in place to prevent those who seek to undermine elections from qualifying as poll workers.
Created by the Brennan Center and All Voting is Local, the state-by-state guides below list existing rules and constraints, along with further actions election officials can take to block this threat to election integrity.