Election-Campaign Law

Who Comes Up With These Numbers?

By Thad Hall

Having Janell and Ines blog for us has been great, since Mike and I are in New Mexico.  I wanted to take a moment to debunk the myth that the GA Secretary of State and the media generally (see below) is perpetrating that the average age of poll workers is 72.  In articles and papers I have done with Quin Monson and Kelly Patterson at BYU, and with Lonna Atkeson at the University of New Mexico, I can state with certainty that we have never found a jurisdiction with an average age of 72.  There is a range of ages–all of them lower than 70 (in Utah it is in the mid-50s and in most places in the low to mid-60s)–and some jurisdictions are much better than others at recruiting poll workers who are younger.  See, for example, this paper and this report.

Full post as published by Election Updates on November 01, 2008 (boomark / email).