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29 Oct: NPR: Poll Worker Numbers Have Many Election Officials Breathing Sigh Of Relief
by Barbara Sprunt
The workers, who are responsible for managing polling places and assisting voters, are typically over 60 years old, an age group that faces higher risks for complications with the coronavirus. Election officials feared the ongoing pandemic would prevent tried-and-true staffers from showing up to work.

Heavy recruitment efforts unfolded, with nonprofits and celebrities such as NBA star LeBron James organizing young people to get trained on how to staff the polls. One such effort, called Power the Polls, set a goal of recruiting 250,000 new poll workers; it says ***more than 700,000 people signed up...

Arizona’s Maricopa County, the country’s fourth-most populous county, is another place that feared a lack of poll workers on Election Day.
The elections department looked to hire 1,800 poll workers. Ultimately, it got more than 20,000 requests.
“We’ve absolutely had to turn folks away, because we don’t need 20,000 volunteers for this election,” says Megan Gilbertson, communications director for the Maricopa County Elections Department...

Working alongside Carnegie Mellon University, the nonprofit Voter Protection Corps looked at eight key states this election cycle and developed a risk matrix based on public data to identify counties where there’s a heightened risk of shortages.
“We looked at 745 counties, and we identified about 485 where, as of two weeks ago, we thought there was a lot more work to be done,” says Quentin Palfrey, chair of the Voter Protection Corps.
Palfrey was the voter protection director for Barack Obama’s 2008 campaign in Ohio and ran on the Democratic ticket for lieutenant governor of Massachusetts in 2018...

It’s a strategy Michigan Secretary of State Jocelyn Benson embraced early, boosting recruitment efforts in the spring because of the pandemic...
As of now, Michigan has recruited more than 32,000 poll workers, a number Benson says far exceeds the needs of the state, which has 5,000 precincts...
“Particularly in areas where we’ve seen high levels of no-shows in the past like Detroit, we’ve created an ongoing communication system so we’re not just recruiting someone, training them and telling them where to show up on Election Day,” she says. “We’re consistently staying in contact with them, offering them additional trainings, webinars, making them feel like they’re part of something bigger, which of course, they are.”...
https://www.npr.org/2020/10/29/928225412/on-poll-workers-many-election-officials-breathe-sigh-of-relief