Making great vote center and polling place materials

Designing job aids and other materials that help poll workers run a good election.

Vote centers and polling places run on procedures for checking in voters and making sure they have a chance to vote.  Vote centers add both new opportunities to serve voters, and more complexities as voters can use any vote center in the county.

As California counties adopted the vote center model of the Voter’s Choice Act, we wanted to help improve the election worker experience. We used what we have learned from earlier work visiting polling places and talking to poll workers, interviewed election officials who have run vote centers, and gathered input from counties running vote centers for the first time.

In our project on poll workers for the National Science Foundation in 2012-2014, we learned how important the job aids that poll workers use for running an election are. Too complicated, and they are not used. Too simplistic and they are not an effective checklist.

We used all of these inputs to develop general principles, guidelines, and templates for vote center materials that meet vote center workers where they are – in the roles they work in and the tasks they’re doing.

Designing materials for vote centers and polling places
A workbook with templates and samples for three tools for election workers

Vote centers and polling places are different…and the same

We learned about differences between precinct-based polling places and vote centers. Some of those differences are:

  • Vote center staff is likely to be long-term temporary workers, hired full time for the duration of early voting, rather than one-day paid volunteers
  • In a vote center one worker might help each voter through all of the steps of voting, rather than staffing a particular station related to a step in the process.
  • Running a vote center may be more automated than a polling place, with less need for manual checks and hand-written reconciliations that low-tech polling places.
  • Workers in a vote center may help more voters with accessibility or language access requirements, or who need to update their voter registration or even register to vote.

At core, however, workers in both vote centers and polling places need easy access to information and procedures. In this project we aimed to develop tools that will work well in both.

Guidelines for designing materials for election workers

All of the materials we created are based on some core gudelines:

  • Supplement the manual. Don’t expect workers to refer to it. Remove the key items from the loose-leaf binder and put them where workers need them, when they need them.
  • Support tasks rather than systems.
  • Content and design should support reading to do (rather than reading to learn or reading to learn to do).  Vote center worker material should
    • be specific to a role / job
    • be task-based
    • have an easily skimmed visual presentation rather than long prose
  • Chunk information into small, modular, role-based, task-based pieces based on when they’ll be needed (setup, versus polling, versus shutdown and closing).
  • For checklists, chronological order works best. Split the chronological list by time of day or phase and task. Make each item a clear action to take that can be checked off. For supervisors and leads, include tasks for delegating and giving assignments to the rest of the team.
  • Troubleshooting information should be specific to a given station (such as scanners versus check-in) or task (such as supporting unusual voter needs).
  • For information about troubleshooting, develop scenarios. Scenarios are situations that vote center workers may face that may be challenging, rare, or nerve wracking. Practice the scenarios in training, and support them in the polling place. Put one scenario on each page or card by itself.
  • Help workers use their space in the most efficient way. Use visuals to inventory supplies and equipment.