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Los Angeles suspends city poll worker program
Workers at the Los Angeles County Registrar-Recorder County Elections Operations Center pack materials to be delivered to polling places into ballot boxes on October 23, 2008 in the Los Angeles-area community of Santa Fe Springs, California.
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Los Angeles suspends city poll worker program
Los Angeles suspends city poll worker program
The City of Los Angeles will save money on next month’s elections by suspending its city poll worker program.
For 12 years the L.A. city clerk's supplemented its pool of election day poll workers by allowing city employees to work polling booths while on the clock for their respective departments. Between 500 and 800 employees have turned out in previous elections.
The city clerk doesn't cover employee overtime any more, so it's canceling the program to avoid burdening city departments.
"Just by cutting out for this one election in May, we’re able to bring down that budget, which was originally budgeted at about $700,000," said Maria de la Luz Garcia. "We’re cutting that down by half."
The city clerk's set to handle two runoff elections on May 17: an L.A. Unified school board race between Bennett Kayser and Luis Sanchez and an L.A. Community College District board of trustees race between Lydia Gutierrez and Scott Svonkin.
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