COLUMBUS – With five days until the election, 56,789 Ohioans are trained and ready to serve as a poll worker on November 3rd, exceeding the aggregated statewide goal of 55,165. That goal represents 150% of the minimum number of poll workers needed on Election Day. The number of trained poll workers includes 23,649 Democrats, 20,733 Republicans and 12,407 unaffiliated or minor party poll workers. While this is the largest aggregated statewide number of poll workers ever trained for an election in Ohio, a handful of individual counties still lag behind the goal for their county. 

The county-level details can be seen on Ohio’s first-ever Poll Worker Tracker, an innovative recruiting and accountability tool which has received national attention. The tracker continues to give Ohioans, counties, and partner organizations unprecedented visibility into poll worker recruitment for the November election. The targeted goal for each county is 150% of the minimum number required for each county as determined by their county board of election. In light of the pandemic, counties were directed to train enough workers to compensate for any potential shortages.

Five counties have not yet met their minimum number of poll workers: Ashtabula, Greene, Jackson, Pike, and Vinton. Since the primary, the Secretary’s recruiting efforts, in conjunction with civic organizations Poll Hero and Power the Polls, have transmitted more than 148,000 poll worker referrals to county boards of elections for their consideration and training.

“Ohioans are stepping up to serve as poll workers this election season at a pace never seen before, showing the world the civic engagement and can-do sense of public service our state has always exemplified,” said LaRose. “We will continue supporting our counties however we can, while holding the bipartisan board of elections accountable, so that voters who haven’t already cast their ballot will have a safe and positive experience at their polling locations next Tuesday.”

Notable data are the following:

• Goal for Committed and Trained Poll Workers: 55,165
• Minimum Number of Poll Workers Required to Staff All Locations: 36,775
• Current Number of Committed Poll Workers: 56,789
• Number of Poll Workers Needed in Counties That Haven’t Met Goal: 4,138

Poll worker recruitment efforts include:

Give a Day for Democracy

• Partnering with businesses to offer employees the day off to be poll workers. Secretary LaRose announced this initiative with an event in Cincinnati -- Western & Southern Financial is allowing employees to work the polls with a paid day off and so are many other companies statewide. Click here to watch the video. Many business, non-profits and and public-sector entities around Ohio have joined this effort, including The Ohio State University.

Professionals Getting Education Credit to Serve

• Lawyers for Liberty -- Attorneys will receive required continuing legal education credits for being a poll worker this year. Click here to read more.
• The Accountancy Board of Ohio (ABO) will now allow Ohio Certified Public Accountants (CPAs) to obtain required Continuing Public Education (CPE) general credits for CPAs serving as poll workers in 2020. Click here to read about our partnership.
• The Ohio Real Estate Commission announced it will award three (3) hours of core law continuing education credit to active and inactive Ohio Real Estate Licensees who serve as a poll worker during the Nov. 3, 2020 election.

Styling for Democracy. NOW VOTE!

• A partnership with over 100 barbershops and salons, and the schools that feed into them to recruit more poll workers.

Second Call to Duty

• This initiative is asking veterans who took an oath to defend their country to defend democracy on November 3rd.

Work the Day, Share Your Pay

• Poll workers can donate their earnings to a nonprofit or charity of their choice.

Youth at the Booth

• In Ohio 17-year-old high school seniors can serve as poll workers! This is a great way to engage high school students in the voting process.

The Ohio State University Employees

• OSU President Johnson announced that all university employees may receive a paid day off without using vacation time to be a poll worker this fall. 

Recruitment materials and the form to sign up to serve as a poll worker can be found at VoteOhio.gov/DefendDemocracy.

At PollWorkerTracker.OhioSoS.gov,  you will find a detailed breakdown of the following poll worker data:

• The minimum number of poll workers required to run an election in the respective county, by total and by Party.

• The goal number of poll worker commitments counties should target in order to compensate for any cancellations.

• Remaining number of poll workers needed for each county to reach their goal.

In accordance with state law, the board of elections, by a majority vote, appoints four electors for each precinct who are residents of the county in which the precinct is located to serve as poll workers. Not more than one-half of the total number of poll workers assigned to a precinct may be members of the same political Party. Ohioans who are neither a Republican nor Democrat may also serve as poll workers. Those individuals appear in the poll worker tracker in the “other” category.

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