HR of Democracy: Understanding the Election Workforce

Where research and practice meet on staffing, training, and the pipeline problem

Election offices run on people. Permanent teams, seasonal hires, temporary workers, and the surge of poll workers and support staff who carry the office through each election period. Managing that workforce is one of the hardest and least discussed parts of the job.

Join us Wednesday, May 20 at 2 p.m. ET for a practical discussion about the people side of election administration and the questions every office is wrestling with right now.

This Books and Ballots conversation brings together academics and practitioners from the University of Maryland’s Election Resilience Lab, where researchers and election officials are working side by side to better understand the HR of democracy. We’ll talk about recruitment, retention, training, and succession planning in election offices, and what makes each of these uniquely difficult in this field. How do you build a workforce pipeline when the work is cyclical, the pay is often modest, and the scrutiny has never been higher? What workforce development practices translate from other fields, and which don’t? And how can research and practice inform each other in ways that make both stronger?

Books & Ballots is a webinar series – and now found on Substack and as a podcast on Spotify – hosted in partnership with Ready for Tuesday, the Center for Election Innovation & Research (CEIR), and MIT Election Data + Science Lab (MEDSL).