By Ben Battafarano OMAHA, Neb. — Election day is less than three weeks away, and the Douglas County Election Commission has been preparing Omaha for months. They’ve been hiring poll workers, sending out early voting ballots, approving polling sites, and generally making sure the public has access to smooth, safe, and accurate elections.
While the election commission has 14 full-time staff, this summer, they had to hire around 50 additional workers to process ballot petitions. Douglas County Election Commissioner Brian Kruse said the process is a sprint.
“We worked not only days, but we had a night-time shift and then we also worked weekends too,” Kruse said. “Because we have a certain timeframe, 40 days from the time we get those from the secretary of state’s office, we have to have those done.”
Kruse estimates that for election night, the Commission will hire an additional 150 full and part-time temp staff to count ballots.
Kruse says that the most tedious aspect of election prep is checking that all the ballot information is correct. This includes proofing offices up for election, checking name spelling, and confirming ballot rotations.
The Douglas County election board coordinator, Brandon Olson, is responsible for sourcing, training, and managing the county’s three thousand poll workers.
“Voter ID changes – because that was a procedure change, that was something we had to update for our training,” said Olson. “We did a new poll worker training video shoot.”
While the new Voter ID law adds some time to check-in and ballot processing, Olson says that poll workers have trained hard to streamline the process.
On election day, Douglas County residents will cast their ballots at over 200 polling sites. Check for your polling site on the Douglas County Election Commissioner’s website before you go.
