Poll worker shortages are threatening the 2020 election; young people can be the solution

Herald Courier, Maya Patel:

Luckily, this is a problem with a relatively simple solution: Young people should step up and be poll workers. It’s what I did for the Texas primary in March. It was relatively easy, I was paid for my work, and it was wildly rewarding to help hundreds of people vote, many of them college students voting for the first time.

In the days leading up to the March election, I heard rumblings about a severe shortage of poll workers in Travis County due to fears of COVID-19. One of the few polling locations that serve the University of Texas at Austin’s student community was struggling to find a full contingent of poll workers to staff it. As a former student, I knew that polling locations near the university already face hourslong lines of voters. If we couldn’t staff this polling location for the primaries, it might shut down by November, making it even harder for students to vote. So I volunteered to pitch in as a poll worker, struggling out of bed at 5 a.m. on Election Day to help my community cast ballots until 10 p.m. that night.

Read the full article here.