Sedgwick County is looking to hire about 250 people to work the Nov. 8 general election.
With less than six weeks to go before Election Day, it’s crunch time for the Sedgwick County Election Office to get poll workers to sign up.
Election Commissioner Tabitha Lehman says they’ve had more cancellations than applications lately.
She says she’s concerned because several polling locations have five openings.
"We are madly trying to find more people," Lehman said at a meeting of the Sedgwick County Commission Wednesday. "We have reached out to both political parties and requested their help and reminded them of their statutory responsibility to assign poll workers for us. We’re hoping that will get us some names."
Election workers are generally assigned to staff their voting precinct, and earn about $120 for the day.
"We pay $7.50 an hour, and it’s about a 16-hour day for a presidential election, so it comes out to about $120 a day," Lehman said. "So it’s not a lot, but we would like to appeal to people’s civic pride and civic duty because it is something [hiring more poll workers] that we really need to have happen."
Lehman says they are going to need at least 1,000 poll workers this year because she expects a high voter turnout.
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