TAMPA, Fla. — Every year, Hillsborough County’s Supervisor of Elections, Craig Latimer, has to make sure he has enough people trained and ready to go to run the polls.
“It takes a community to put on election,” said Latimer, who is hard at work making final preparations ahead of the November General election.
But this year, with COVID-19, having extra volunteers has never been more important. Latimer says, back in March for the presidential primary, the average age of his poll workers was 66. That’s within the age group at greater risk for getting seriously ill from COVID-19.
“We had on election day we had 346 pole workers that didn’t show up,” said Latimer.
Since then, supervisors across the state have started working to recruit younger poll workers. Many are coming from local corporations, encouraging, or even paying their employees to volunteer at the polls.
“These groups have just been absolutely fantastic,” said Latimer, adding Hillsborough has lowered its average poll worker age to 59.
The Tampa Bay Rays are among the organizations offering their employees a paid day off to work the polls.
“We just sent an all user email out to all staff saying you have the day of November 3 off we encourage you to volunteer at the polls if you feel comfortable doing that,” said Rays President Brian Auld.
He and the Bay area’s other major sports teams including the Bucs, Lightning, Rowdies and USF Bulls are encouraging their employees to participate at the polls with a paid day off.
“It’s not an easy day,” said Auld of the time commitment. “You’re working I believe from 8 a.m. to 6 p.m. and you have to go through a training session, but it’s really important; and I think anything we can do to preserve the integrity of our elections right now is absolutely vital.”
Auld is hopeful other big companies will follow the Rays’ lead.
With the extra help, Hillsborough County says it will be in good shape. The county currently has 1,600 poll workers ready to go, but leaders are still taking volunteers.
“Here’s one thing we don’t know: where this virus is going to be in November,” said Latimer. “I’m not going to sit back and say ‘oh we’re good right now’ and then October 25 comes and we’re in a bad way with this pandemic and people start dropping out left and right. I want to have backups. I want to have people on standby.”
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