With Arizona’s presidential primary election just months away, Maricopa County Elections is looking for thousands of short-term workers to do everything from transporting ballots to answering hotline phones.
“For the primary election, because it's a little bit earlier than normal, we are really focused on ensuring that we have the numbers of employees that we need to support election administration in the 2024 cycle,” said Jennifer Liewer, the county’s deputy elections director. “We will have more than 220 vote centers.”
They take on short-term workers when elections come up, but according to Liewer, “Maricopa County Elections has only about 50 or 60 full-time employees that work year round.”
Liewer said the centers will be open for a few weeks ahead of Election Day, and will need an estimated 1,500 workers to staff. In one of the largest voting jurisdictions in the entire country, she said, elections truly are a community effort.
“And on top of that, we have very narrow races,” said Liewer. “We have a third of people registered Republican, a third registered as Democrat and a third registered as independent.”
With the primary set slightly earlier than usual in a battleground state where trust in elections has been strained, Liewer said it’s more important than ever for the polls to be staffed.
“If somebody can firsthand come and see what the process is, how it looks, all the safeguards that we have in place,” she said, “and then share that with those in their lives who do trust them, it can only benefit the entire system.”
The county Board of Supervisors has approved a $1,250 incentive bonus for some election workers, and a hiring event is scheduled for Friday, May 3, in Phoenix.
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