2024 - Honorable Mention for Exemplary Contingency Planning and Emergency Response Efforts

Effective emergency response requires quick, decisive action, but unfortunately, humans first instinct is generally to freeze instead. This may be especially true for poll workers who work only one or two days a year and have limited opportunities to prepare. Although Fairfax County poll workers are trained in emergency procedures before election day, the Office of Elections recognized that they have limited capacity to retain complex guidance for unlikely situations. To address this, they created evacuation guides for every poll worker on election day. These one-page handouts provided clear instructions for each poll worker to follow in the event of a precinct evacuation. Notably, the guides were tailored to each station in the polling place (greeter, check-in, ballot table, and so on), allowing the Fairfax County Office of Elections to distill the instructions to only the pertinent steps for each role that involved only the materials directly in front of them. The guides were printed on the back side of the station-specific handouts that poll workers were already using throughout the day.