With demand halved, oversupply of election judges seems unsurprising

Why did Ramsey County decide to require election judges to work a full shift? Pulling a fifteen or sixteen hour work shift is demanding on anyone, no less so for older workers. And if the turnout is anything like what is predicted, those workers are going to be exhausted by early evening when the after-work crowd descends on the polls.

Dakota County (where I live) still allows one to sign up for a half shift. I’ll be working a full shift tomorrow in Inver Grove Heights but I know there are some working a half shift. If I weren’t unemployed at the moment, I would have to take part of Wednesday off to recuperate after working a full shift. I think this is going backwards. Ramsey County should reinstate the option to work a half shift and allow more people to participate. They would have more alert and rested workers at the polls that way. Plus they may even have more people volunteer in the future.

Chris,

I’m afraid I’ve got to object to your math here, as it is not realistic. As a St. Paul election judge serving in his 7th election cycle, eliminating half-day poll workers only cuts the supply of jobs in half in the most technical of senses. The reality is that in any given polling place, the number of half-day poll-workers ends up being a fairly limited number, certainly less than 20% of the judges. As an example, if a polling place has 7 judge positions during the day, it has 14 time slots (each judge position breaking down into 2 slots). Of the 14 slots, usually 12 (or often all 14) are filled by full day judges, with a two part-time judges filling the last 2 slots. Even as an outlier, at most there would be 4 part-time judges filling 4 slots and 5 full time judges filling the remaining slots. So attributing the excess in election judges to this change is, at a minimum, an overstatement of the impact of the policy change.

As for the decision to make this change, I’m just an election judge and not a county employee, so I was not privy to the discussion they had, but I believe that the following factors were part of the decision equation:
1) On a day when we will be swamped with voters, the half-day poll-workers transition at mid-afternoon is an unneeded distraction for the Head Judge. Even at the midday lull, the Head Judge is juggling a lot, including making sure all the election judges get lunch breaks while still making sure all voters can vote in a timely fashion.
2) The polling place loses someone who has built up experience during the day and replaces that person with someone who will, at a minimum, have to take a little time to get up to speed (and who also might not have any past experience, making for extra stress on this very human process; getting newbies up to speed is hardly an automatic).
3) It eliminates problems with midday no-shows or late-arrivers (no-shows and late arrivals are always a scare midday in a big election when you’ve let the first judge go and are waiting for the replacement; granted that the same issues occur at the start of the day, but at least then there’s only one potential round of those possibilities)
4) Cuts down on training needs for the County (I’ll just editorialize here that Ramsey County does a GREAT job of training its judges, IMO. When I started back in 2002, the training was not nearly as well organized, but they really do take an iterative approach and the trainings get better year after year.)

I’d also say that the vast majority of judges (of all ages) manage to work the full, long day shift, so it seems like the half-day option may not really be necessary.

Will the day be exhausting? Yes, but also no. From my perspective and from talking to my fellow election judges in various elections, while it will be a long day, it’s also going to be exhilarating — we’re much happier to have a busy day than a slow one. I think most judges find the presidential elections go the quickest, with the highest energy levels and excitement. To me, tomorrow will be like my Christmas. I love these big days! (But I’m a big elections geek, as my friends will attest.)

WobegonGal is correct in that it is a day that takes it out of you if you work the full day — I will not be working on Wednesday. But I’m not too worried about people being alert tomorrow. The adrenaline rush of so many voters tends to take care of that problem.

And finally, I’d wager that this policy will only be in effect for this election. We’re likely to be less busy next year, and likely to have fewer volunteers, and so I’d bet Ramsey Cty will allow the part-timers again for the off-year, as it does widen the possible pool of judges, which can be important in the non-major election years.

Thanks for the comments, and for your service as election judges. I suspected there was more to the story than what basic math suggested.