From Poll Workers to Defenders: Student Poll Workers as Catalysts for Change?

Assaults impinging the American electoral system’s integrity have grown significantly since the 2020 presidential election. While largely unfounded, these impacts have caused significant declines in Americans’ faith in their elections, election workers and administrators, and trust in electoral outcomes. Armed with this context, this paper details the author’s efforts to engage college students into the electoral process. This effort started during the 2020 presidential election and resulted in over 50 students being trained and ultimately serving as poll workers, culminating in the creation of a university-wide poll worker recruitment program. Additionally, the paper details an unexpected, but extremely welcomed, side effect of the poll worker recruitment program: students who serve as election inspectors strongly reject allegations of voter fraud and election integrity issues compared to students who did not volunteer at the polls.