A voter presents his driver’s license to a poll worker at Holy Name Parish in North Omaha, on Tuesday, Nov. 5, 2024. Nebraska began requiring voters to show a valid ID to vote in 2024. (Jamie Reiff/Nebraska News Service)
BY: JUAN SALINAS II
Nebraska Examiner Press Release
LINCOLN — Nebraska Secretary of State Bob Evnen wants more Nebraskans to be election workers.
His office has estimated that counties need more than 9,000 people to fully staff the state’s polling sites and county election offices for each election. The agency said retired Nebraskans have historically made up the largest portion of the state’s poll workers, but Evnen is urging young Nebraskans to join them.
“We could not conduct our elections smoothly and independently without the work of thousands of Nebraskans who step up and serve their communities as poll workers,” Evnen said.
Nationally, 772,000 Americans served as poll workers in the 2024 presidential election, according to the 2024 Election Administration and Voting Survey Report. That’s down from what’s typically been 1 million.
The effort is recognition of National Poll Worker Recruitment Day, when the U.S. Election Assistance Commission, a federal agency that works with state and local election officials to improve the voting process, kicks off a national effort to encourage more people to volunteer at their local county clerk’s office and sign up to be election workers ahead of the November general election.
The effort was established in 2020, during a pandemic that left many retirees at home.
Poll workers are paid both for their training and service on Election Day. Poll workers must be at least 16 years of age and, if 18 or older, registered to vote in their county.
Nebraska has a unique backup plan for addressing the shortage of election workers — a draft. Douglas County primarily uses the process, and it works a lot like jury duty.
The next statewide elections in Nebraska are in 2026, where the state will likely be in the national spotlight. Evnen said the state is “continually recognized as a leader in election procedures and security, and that is due in large part to our county election officials and their poll workers.”
Evnen is running for re-election in 2026 and is trying to balance defending the state’s elections, his office administers, and echoing the concerns of some Republicans and President Donald Trump over election integrity since the 2020 presidential election, which former President Joe Biden won.
