Ahead of the 2016 election, Maya Patel, then a student at the University of Texas at Austin, registered 250 students to vote. But after seeing first-hand the hours-long lines voters were forced to navigate before casting their ballots, she knew there was more work to do. Two years later, she worked to install an additional polling location on the campus just in time for the midterm elections.

Now Patel is getting ready to be a poll worker in November. Why? Well, because it’s fun, and more importantly, she said, there’s a dire poll worker shortage around the country that could threaten the presidential election.

Elderly and retired people normally comprise a large portion of poll workers, but this year many of them have dropped out over fears of contracting Covid-19. In the 2016 presidential election, about 917,694 poll workers were responsible for managing more than 100,000 polling sites. This year, even as half of the American electorate is expected to vote by […]