2021 - Winner for Poll Workers

With the dramatic increase of mistrust in election officials and harassment directed at staff and poll workers, our office identified a need to provide additional resources to address this issue. Staff developed a one-page "conflict resolution traffic light" to provide key information to our poll workers and short-term staff on how to differentiate legitimate voter inquiries from harassment, and how to respond to each situation. While full-time staff have more detailed training on this subject, most voter interactions are not with our most experienced staff members, but instead are with poll workers, who we have only a limited time to train. So, we sought to develop a document that would provide key information in a compact and easily digestible format. The traffic light approach seeks to balance providing outstanding voter services while empowering our staff to disengage from harassment or disruption. We have found it to be a valuable resource in training our staff in this increasingly challenging environment.