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Wagon Train to Bullet Train: Street-Level Implementation of E-Voting
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temporary workers that are hired a few weeks prior to the election and trained by either other temporary workers or permanent staff in the elections office. These trainers are not available for interviews prior to the election, because they are busy, or after the election, because they are gone. In some counties there is very little continuity or institutional knowledge in the training of poll workers because of this and general staff turn over. In the Primary of 06, the 58 California counties used 11 different technologies. Different technology requires different training (in theory), at least on the voting machine component. In theory, other procedures could be taught uniformly throughout the State. Trainers have varying expertise and most have no formal pedagogical education. In our research we have encountered unemployed comedians, corporate trainers, clerical workers, retired school teachers, students and everything in between. Training varies by county, and within the county at times as well, in terms of length and content. Quality of training is almost impossible to measure due to the factors above and also because the knowledge and abilities of the students are rarely known prior to the training, and many trainers do not ask. Some counties divide experienced from inexperienced poll workers for trainings, others don’t. Some counties train every poll worker, others don’t. The sizes of training classes can vary between 10 students and 100 or more. Some trainings have hands-on components; others are broken up into two sessions on separate days. Some poll workers are paid for attending training, others are not. Sometimes training is mandatory, sometimes encouraged, for others it is discouraged, and for some it is non-existent. In short, what we know from this paper is that there are wide variations in the comfort levels of poll workers with the different technologies. What we seek to discover in the future is whether some technologies are inherently more difficult to work with, if the training is inadequate or whether when we control for the back grounds of the poll workers, we may find that they are not well suited for this job educationally or otherwise. Now that we have identified the dependent variable, we will explore how much is driven by background, training, technology and various other county effects.
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| | Authors: Mac Donald, Karin. and Glaser, Bonnie. |
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temporary workers that are hired a few weeks prior to the election and trained by either
other temporary workers or permanent staff in the elections office. These trainers are not
available for interviews prior to the election, because they are busy, or after the election,
because they are gone. In some counties there is very little continuity or institutional
knowledge in the training of poll workers because of this and general staff turn over. In
the Primary of 06, the 58 California counties used 11 different technologies. Different
technology requires different training (in theory), at least on the voting machine
component. In theory, other procedures could be taught uniformly throughout the State.
Trainers have varying expertise and most have no formal pedagogical education. In our
research we have encountered unemployed comedians, corporate trainers, clerical
workers, retired school teachers, students and everything in between. Training varies by
county, and within the county at times as well, in terms of length and content. Quality of
training is almost impossible to measure due to the factors above and also because the
knowledge and abilities of the students are rarely known prior to the training, and many
trainers do not ask. Some counties divide experienced from inexperienced poll workers
for trainings, others don’t. Some counties train every poll worker, others don’t. The
sizes of training classes can vary between 10 students and 100 or more. Some trainings
have hands-on components; others are broken up into two sessions on separate days.
Some poll workers are paid for attending training, others are not. Sometimes training is
mandatory, sometimes encouraged, for others it is discouraged, and for some it is non-
existent.
In short, what we know from this paper is that there are wide variations in the comfort
levels of poll workers with the different technologies. What we seek to discover in the
future is whether some technologies are inherently more difficult to work with, if the
training is inadequate or whether when we control for the back grounds of the poll
workers, we may find that they are not well suited for this job educationally or otherwise.
Now that we have identified the dependent variable, we will explore how much is driven
by background, training, technology and various other county effects.
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