About 12 percent of people who worked the polls in Franklin County on Election Day last fall never cast their own ballot. Does that matter? It does in Hamilton County, where The Cincinnati Enquirer reported this week that about 100 poll workers were fired for not voting in 2013 or 2014. That made us ask what happens here, and this is what we found: The percentage of local poll workers who didn’t vote in the last four elections has declined since the primary election in 2013. That year, 577 of the 2,219 eligible poll workers (26 percent) did not cast ballots. It has gotten better since, with about 17 percent of poll workers not casting ballots in the general election that year, and 18 percent of poll workers not casting ballots in last year’s primary election. In November, 367 of 3,001 poll workers did not vote. So will they the get fired for it? No.
“There have been times when we haven’t rehired poll workers because of their performance, but not because of any failure to vote,” said Ben Piscitelli, spokesman for the Franklin County Board of Elections.
He said that during training, the board encourages poll workers to vote absentee because they probably won’t have time on Election Day and are often stationed at polling locations outside the precinct where they live.
Piscitelli said that all poll workers must be registered to vote, which means they would have voted sometime in at least the past eight years to remain on the county’s rolls.
Full Article: Local Government Insider: Not voting won’t cost local poll workers | The Columbus Dispatch.