"I tell them when they come for training: their main role is to greet the voter, check their ID, [and] make sure they’re issued the correct ballot," said Greene County Clerk Shane Schoeller. "We then have supervisory judges. They really help see the setup of the polling location, as well as [at] the end of the night, as we close the polling location, making sure that everything’s done correctly, that all the paperwork is filled out correctly. And so, they are at the solutions table, so if there’s an issue, they help resolve those issues on behalf of the voter. Then we have our ExpressVote operators, and that particular election judge is someone who’s there to help someone with our accessible voting equipment, which is called ExpressVote."
Election judges don’t have to be a resident of the county they serve in. They do have to be a registered voter in the state, not be related to anyone on the ballot, not hold an elected public office, read and write the English language and be, in the words of the statute, “of good repute and character.” Effective 2025, anyone in the military on active duty in the state and their spouse will be able to serve as an election judge even if they’re not registered to vote here.
"Actually," explained Schoeller, "on the 10th of December this year, both the Democratic Central Committee chair and the Republican Central Committee chair, they’re supposed to give to their local election official – whether it’s the county clerk or election board – a list of twice the number of election judges that are needed for the next November general election. Now, that historically does not happen, in terms of getting twice the number of individuals needed. But we do try to work with our parties, because we want to make sure we’re getting true Democrats [and] true Republicans. Now, you can be of another party, but our two supervisory judges do have to be one Republican, one Democrat."
He continued: "If we end up not having the number of election judges required as we get closer to the election, I will go to outlets like [KSMU]. We’ll go to television, journalism, radio, and get the word out there that we need more people to apply."
Schoeller said that, since 2020, he hasn’t had problems getting judges for bigger elections. It’s also worth noting that, according to a state statute, election judges are protected from discrimination from their employers as long as they provide a week’s notice that they’ll be absent from work.
Next: training. What’s that process look like?
"The training, since I’ve been county clerk, we’ve broken that out. We used to do almost a three-to-four-hour training, it became too lengthy, and so what we do for our training is we do hands-on training," he said. "So, we have our tabulation equipment, we have our check-in equipment. We will do a training specifically just for that equipment so they really get a chance to be able to know how to check in voters, make sure at the beginning of the day they can turn on the tabulation equipment, shut it down properly at the end of the night. And then we do a separate training that I conduct, which we basically go over 'here’s all of the laws that are in the State of Missouri that you need to follow as you’re conducting the election that day.'"
KSMU then asked how many hours the training took.
"It probably, during the bigger elections, because there’s additional statues that have to be followed during federal elections, it can go up to three, sometimes three-and-a-half, depends upon the question," said Schoeller. "But on average, about three hours for the bigger elections, and then probably about an hour for the hands-on training."
And what about pay?
"We pay $205 for regular election judges. And then, if you’re a supervisory judge, we just increased that – they earn $290 for the election. And then our ExpressVote operators, because there’s additional testing and training they have to do, they earn $300,"
said Schoeller.
Finally, Schoeller said that while being an election judge isn’t for everyone, those who do enjoy it tend to get a lot out of it.
"Overall, what we find is that our election judge teams kind of become like a bit of a mini family on the day of the election. And they end up enjoying that relationship that they have — not only with their fellow election judges, but also with the people who come to vote at their polling location. As a matter of fact, sometimes when we have to move an election judge from one polling location to another, there can be some real heartburn there, because of the relationships they’ve developed during that period of time. Especially with the voters. And the voters enjoy seeing the election judges they know as they come in to vote."