U.S. Election Assistance Commission

WASHINGTON- The U.S. Election Assistance Commission (EAC) will award $750,000 in grants to 11 colleges and universities and two nonprofit organizations to recruit college students to serve as poll workers during the 2009 and 2010 elections. Competition for the 2009 Help America Vote College Program grant was stiff, with 71 organizations requesting over five times more funding than was available.

Following are the grant recipients and their funding amounts. Additional information about the programs is available on the EAC Web site.

• Catskill Center for Independence, New York: $74,000
• Hampton University, Virginia: $74,055
• LaGuardia Community College, New York: $74,041
• Missouri Western State University: $74,807
• Palmetto Project, South Carolina: $74,929
• Regis University, Colorado: $74,611
• Salish Kootenai College, Montana: $66,008
• University of Missouri: $20,000
• University of Baltimore, Maryland: $20,000
• University of Central Florida: $75,000
• University of Texas Austin: $53,078
• University of Southern Mississippi: $48,471
• Vassar College, New York: $20,000

The recipients come from across the United States, and their programs employ a variety of methods to recruit poll workers, including those with specialized language and technical skills and experience working with people with disabilities.

Salish Kootenai College, for example, will recruit poll workers who speak the Salish and Kootenai languages to aid Native American voters in the Lake and Flathead counties of Montana. The Palmetto Project, in addition to recruiting 300 students in South Carolina, will apply their research and experience to develop a guide to recruiting students and disadvantaged youth as poll workers. The University of Central Florida will partner with the Orange County Supervisor of Elections to deploy an online training program that simulates the duties of a poll worker. Hampton University, a historically black university in southeastern Virginia, will provide a curriculum on democracy and elections and hold mock election trainings for student recruits.

The purpose of the College Program is to recruit the next generation of poll workers. Poll workers are critical to running smooth elections—they set up and take down polling place materials and equipment, check voters’ registration, and demonstrate how to use voting systems.  The program also seeks to ease poll worker shortages such as those seen in the 2004 election, where 5.8 percent of polling places and 4 percent of precincts reported having too few poll workers, according to the 2004 EAC Election Day Survey.

In addition to administering the College Program, the EAC also provides information about poll worker requirements in each state, and issues guidebooks and information to local election officials on poll worker recruitment and training. Also available at www.eac.gov are training videos and other election management materials.

Background
The College Program grants are authorized by the Help America Vote Act of 2002. Since 2004, EAC has awarded 74 grants, totaling $2.4 million, to colleges and nonprofits to recruit, train and support college students serving as poll workers on Election Day.

EAC is an independent commission created by the Help America Vote Act of 2002. EAC serves as a national clearinghouse and resource of information regarding election administration. It is charged with administering payments to states and developing guidance to meet HAVA requirements, adopting voluntary voting system guidelines, and accrediting voting system test laboratories and certifying voting equipment.  It is also charged with developing and maintaining a national mail voter registration form. The three EAC commissioners are Gineen Bresso Beach, chair; Gracia Hillman, vice chair; and Donetta Davidson. There is one vacancy on the commission.