Are student poll workers a key piece of the 100% student voter participation puzzle?
Recent surveys suggest a connection between student poll workers and student turnout at the polls, but more research is needed!
This week Power the Polls lead the charge in celebrating Poll Worker Recruitment Day, where over a dozen youth-focused and youth-led organizations including ALL IN Campus Democracy Challenge, Alliance for Youth Action, Campus Vote Project, and the Students Learn Students Vote Coalition joined hundreds of other organizations mobilizing to recruit poll workers. In 2020, one of the major success stories of poll worker recruitment drives was the number of young people and students who stepped up to volunteer. The 2020 Election Administration and Voting Survey Comprehensive found a statistically significant increase in poll workers ages 18-25 from 2016, and Power the Polls reported that nearly 40% of people who signed up through their site were under 35.
Paid University of Wisconsin Madison student poll worker staffs voter table, 2020.
This increase in youth poll workers was influenced by grassroots student leaders, such as students from Georgia State University, who, in collaboration with the Andrew Goodman Foundation, created the Georgia Youth Poll Worker Project. This initiative successfully recruited over 1,000 young people in the Metro Atlanta area to staff the polls in the 2020 election. These students also created a resource for other students looking to replicate their program with their Hitchhiker’s Guide to Building a Youth Poll Worker Project. Meanwhile, 100 students acted as (paid) WorkElections Fellows for Campus Vote Project, through which students recruited their peers to serve as poll workers. This initiative produced impressive results; over 11,000 college students signed up to serve as poll workers through the work of these student leaders alone.
So why are these increases in student poll workers so significant? Well, research from the Center for Information and Research on Civic Learning & Engagement (CIRCLE) at Tufts University, in collaboration with the Minneapolis Elections and Voter Services Office, the YMCA of the Twin Cities, Auburn University and young students suggests that students serving as poll workers may lead to higher youth turnout at the polls. A survey of young people who served as poll workers in Minneapolis during the 2020 election found a significant correlation between high numbers of youth poll workers and higher voter turnout among 18-24-year-olds. This correlation is supported by Georgia State University’s NSLVE report, which shows a 14% increase in student voter turnout from 2016 (69.6%, in comparison to the overall 66% voting rate across higher ed institutions in 2020) to accompany the significant number of students recruited to serve as poll workers through the Georgia Youth Poll Worker Project. More research is needed to explore the relationship between student poll workers and student voter turnout numbers, but responses from the CIRCLE survey indicate that seeing young, diverse poll workers may increase students’ sense of belonging at the polls, and their comfort in communicating and asking questions of election administrators.
The ALL IN Campus Democracy Challenge and Students Learn Students Vote 2021 survey on the relationship between local election offices and college campuses reveals other potential routes by which student poll workers may affect student turnout numbers – for example, student poll workers can advocate for polling locations on college campuses, and are also knowledgeable sources to recommend the best campus sites for polling locations. Considering that the report produced from this survey notes that there is strong interest from both campuses and local election offices in providing and employing student poll workers, this may be a particularly effective strategy for increasing student voter turnout.
But – we need more research to understand more fully the connection between student poll workers and student voter turnout, as well as the best practices for recruiting student poll workers and institutionalizing poll worker programs on campus. Even with the increase in young poll workers during the last election, youth ages 18-25 still only made up 6.2% of poll workers in 2020! If student poll workers do play an important role in reaching 100% student voter participation (as early research suggests), there is rich opportunity to build new knowledge to support grassroots leadership on college campuses create long-term student poll worker programs!