The city’s embattled Board of Elections is lobbying City Hall for $7.4 million to boost the salaries of its 36,000 temporary pollworkers — many of them party insiders — by $100. The request, made to the City Council for the budget year that begins July 1, would raise the pay for the average pollworker to $300, and hike the pay for supervisors to $400. Pollworkers and supervisors receive an additional $100 for six hours of training. The board has been excoriated for running sometimes-chaotic elections that have left voters frazzled, frustrated, and, at times, disenfranchised. Board officials say raising the pay will help to attract more capable workers to staff elections.
Good-government groups say spending millions more on poll workers doesn’t get to the heart of the beleaguered board’s flaws – and a Daily News canvass of other major cities shows New York is already paying top dollar for Election Day staff:
* Los Angeles, the nation’s second-largest city, pays pollworkers just $80 a day, while inspectors get $100;
* A “judge of election” in Chicago, third in population, makes $125;
* In fourth-ranked Houston, temps are paid by the hour, with a day’s service coming out to about $120 for regular workers and $145 for supervisors.
Full Article: NYC Board of Elections wants to raise poll worker pay, already among nation’s highest – NY Daily News.