For a New Year’s Eve election in Richland County, many more poll workers are needed

How many poll workers does it take to elect a new school board member on New Year’s Eve?

Richland School District 1 is moving toward a special election in two weeks that is stretching the ability of county election staff to ensure as many polling places are properly manned as possible.

Richland County’s election office is holding a string of training sessions for poll managers this week to get enough workers ready for a Dec. 31 election for an open school board seat. Interim Elections Director Terry Graham said nearly 600 poll workers will be needed to staff polling precincts on the last day of the year. As of Monday, only around 400 were available and trained to do the job.

“We’re reaching out to the poll workers we used for the city elections and other poll workers who are already trained,” Graham said.

A fluke of timing and S.C. election law has created the New Year’s Eve election and, therefore, a shortage of poll workers. Election officials had planned to consolidate polling places in order cut back on the number of poll workers needed to log in voters and operate voting machines.

But one candidate for the at-large seat, attorney Jonathan Milling, objected to the plan as potentially discouraging voter turnout at a time of year when it will already be challenging to get voters to the polls. Milling also pointed out that fewer polling places don’t necessarily mean the county will need fewer people to work them.

“You have to have three poll workers for the first 500 (registered) voters at each precinct and one additional for each 500 after,” Milling told The State, citing state election law. “Combining precincts doesn’t change the number of poll workers required.”

Now the county will operate as many regular voting precincts as possible, but some venues will be unavailable the day of the election, Graham said. Those venues will be merged into neighboring precincts.

“I would encourage every voter who can to vote absentee,” Graham said.

Voters can cast their ballot at the county’s election office at 2020 Hampton St. ahead of New Year’s Eve, if they can cite a reason they can’t make it to their precinct on election day itself, such as travel or work.

But voters will have a shorter period to vote absentee next week, as county offices will be closed Dec. 24 through Dec. 26.

Poll workers are paid between $135 to $195 for their time working the polling stations on election day.

The vote this month was necessitated by board member Darrell Black’s decision to resign and take a job in Nebraska last September. State law requires an election be held 13 weeks after an office becomes vacant. Originally, that would have meant holding the election a week earlier, on Christmas Eve, but the vote was pushed back because Dec. 24 is a state holiday. New Year’s Eve is not a state holiday.

Besides Milling, four other candidates are running in the special school board election: former Allen University president Lady June Cole, professional counselor Michelle Drayton, former teacher and Baptist pastor Johnny Ray Noble, and former teacher and current Winthrop University trustee Ashlye Wilkerson.

At a minimum, three poll workers are required to operate a polling station, said S.C. Election Commission spokesman Chris Whitmire — two available to conduct curbside voting and one to remain inside the polling place at all times.

A change to state law earlier this year also allows any registered voter to act as a poll worker in any county, expanding the potential pool of workers Richland County can draw from. But with 400 poll workers available for 93 precincts, the county should mathematically be able to cover the election, Whitmire said, even if that’s short of what’s required under state law.

“I’ve never seen a situation where you just didn’t have enough poll workers to have an election,” Whitmire said.

But he added one other situation he had never heard of before is an election scheduled for New Year’s Eve.

Anyone interested in working a polling place should call the Richland County Voter Registration and Elections Office at (803) 576-2240.

Bristow Marchant

The State

803-771-8405

Bristow Marchant covers local government, schools and community in Lexington County for The State. He graduated from the College of Charleston in 2007. He has almost 20 years of experience covering South Carolina at the Clinton Chronicle, Sumter Item and Rock Hill Herald. He joined The State in 2016. Bristow has won numerous awards, most recently the S.C. Press Association’s 2024 education reporting award.  Support my work with a digital subscription