Some states are just more amateurish than others. The mess in Florida, the scattered cries of foul in the closest presidential vote in modern-day Wisconsin elections,and the possibility of recounts here and elsewhere all are shining light on the obscure art of election administration. The debate is especially interesting in Wisconsin, which allows greater freedom to vote than most states and relies more on municipalities to stage elections rather than counties or the state. Polling place supervision Because elections are infrequent and local governments are cash-strapped, very little permanent election bureaucracy exists. That leaves polling places in the hands of citizen volunteers with minimal training, a low comfort level with technology and little experience in crowd control.
Many municipal clerks say they struggle to find enough people for the jobs.
While clerks welcome and applaud retired citizens' help, they would like to groom younger workers to share some of the load. Recruitment is difficult. In this election, that reality left poll workers who were already exhausted by a surge of on-site registrants to count absentee ballots into the wee hours of Wednesday morning in some municipalities. If it weren't for those poll workers, we wouldn't have elections in this state. Henry, who has increased training for poll workers, hired 1,800 people for election night and said things went smoothly overall.