Richland poll workers say they were overpaid for recent elections

As the Richland County elections office wrestles with county leaders over a request for more money, some poll workers say they have been overpaid by the elections office.

Jim Reid received a $360 check for working as a poll clerk for the two presidential primaries in February. That’s $60 for attending one pre-election training session, $120 for each day worked and another $60 for – he’s not sure. He got an identical check for working the city of Columbia’s November election and runoff.

“You can call it a bonus, you can call it anything you want, but it’s $60 I didn’t earn,” Reid said at a March meeting of the county elections commission.

Richland County elections director Samuel Selph said the county always has paid poll workers $60 for training for each election day even if they do not attend training sessions before each election.

“We have to do that to keep our poll workers coming to work for us,” Selph told The State. “It may sound a little flimsy, but that’s the way we do it. It was done that way before I got here. ... One of the hardest things we have to do now is find dependable poll workers.”

Selph, though, insists poll workers have not received so-called “bonus” pay.

“We don’t pay them enough as it is,” he said in an interview with The State.

Poll managers are paid $60 for working an election day plus $60 for pre-election training, for a total of $120 for most elections, based on guidelines from the State Election Commission. Poll clerks such as Reid, who oversee multiple managers at voting locations, receive an additional $60 for a total of $180 for most election days. “Some counties supplement this amount,” the state commission says on its website.

Richland County poll workers who worked back-to-back elections in November or February were offered only one pre-election training session before each pair of elections. Yet they were paid for the equivalent of attending two training sessions before each set of voting days.

The elections office has come under scrutiny recently by county leaders after asking for an additional $1 million to carry it through the remainder of the financial year that ends June 30. Some County Council members have questioned the office’s spending and have demanded an audit of the office.

The elections office paid more than $85,500 to poll clerks and managers for the pair of Columbia elections in November, when more than 300 poll workers worked each day.

It’s not known how many people worked both days. But if each of those workers was paid an unnecessary $60, that would amount to $18,000.

For the Republican and Democratic presidential primaries in February, the office paid more than $236,000 total for the nearly 800 poll workers, in addition to machine technicians, staff and others, who worked each day.

If each of those workers was paid an unnecessary $60, that would amount to $48,000.

Those three elections could have cost as much as $66,000 the commission didn’t have to spend.

The number of poll workers at each voting location is determined by a formula based on the number of registered voters, Selph said.

Nancy Barksdale, who worked as a poll manager for Columbia’s November election and runoff and February’s Republican and Democratic primaries, joined Reid in questioning why she was paid what she believes to be an excess amount for working those elections.

In response to a December email from Barksdale questioning her $240 check for working the Columbia elections, an elections office employee responded, “The $240.00 amount is correct. The county decided to pay you guys the additional $60.00 for working the runoff. I guess you could think of it as a little bonus!”

Another employee, responding to the same email from Barksdale, wrote, in part, “It is a long day to work for $60 and so many workers would work the first election and not the Run Off. The City has agreed to pay you that extra amount so we have enough workers to cover the precincts.”

Barksdale challenged how the extra $60 can be considered an incentive to get people to work since she was not aware of the extra pay until she received her check, after she had done the work.

“If you need an inducement to get people to work at the polls ... I don’t have a problem with that,” Barksdale said. “But don’t do it without figuring out where you’re going to make up for it (in the budget).”

She points to poll workers’ overpayment as a reason for County Council not to grant the elections office’s request for additional funding.

“It makes no sense,” Barksdale said. “I have yet to hear the elections director tell where he might trim his budget. It’s just, ‘Give me more money.’ ”

Selph and the majority of the five-member, Legislature-appointed county elections commission have defended their request for more money from the county, saying the office is perennially underfunded and must have additional funds to avoid running a deficit and to properly manage elections in this busy election cycle.

“The allocation that this office got at $1.2 million was less than 50 percent of the request” it made when the year’s county budget was being assembled, Marjorie Johnson, chairwoman of the county elections commission, said at a March meeting. “When you submit those numbers and say we need ‘x’ dollars to do ‘y’ job, it’s plain arithmetic.”

At least one member of the elections commission, though, has stood with Reid and Barksdale in questioning the office’s spending.

“Since we know in advance what elections are coming ... we know how many people, how many machines, we know all of that well in advance,” commissioner Jane Emerson said at the board’s March meeting. “So where did the money go?”

This story was originally published April 3, 2016 at 7:18 PM with the headline "Richland poll workers say they were overpaid for recent elections."