Recruiting, Training and Retaining Election Workers
For “Learn the Vote,” a new online training program for election workers reduced instruction time, decreased election worker errors and allowed the Clerk’s Office to redirect staff time towards completing post-election procedures more efficiently.
Bernalillo County is the most populous in New Mexico with 420,262 registered voters, and the Clerk’s Office trains hundreds of citizens during election years to work as poll officials. Ahead of the 2018 Midterm Election, the county overhauled its poll official training program to maximize learning and reduce poll worker errors. The centerpiece of the new training program was an online video series called “Learn the Vote” – the first online poll worker training program in New Mexico. Online training reduced class time by one-and-a-half to two hours, allowed poll officials to review materials as often as needed and reduced poll official errors in the 2018 General Election. This allowed the Clerk’s Office to redirect staff time previously spent fixing errors made by poll officials into successfully completing the election canvass within the statutory 13 days and completing the General Election audit in less than two days.
