WEST OLIVE, Mich. — Thousands of poll workers are gearing up for the statewide primary Tuesday and while it's crunch time between now and until the hours after the polls close, the preparation has been months and in some cases years in the making.
Fox 17 recently sat in on a poll inspector training in Ottawa County.
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Ottawa County Clerk, Justin Roebuck, is about to administer his 53rd election in Ottawa County.
Part of that responsibility is making sure his team is ready. He does that with 10 to 20 training sessions for every election cycle, for each of the more than 1,200 election workers in Ottawa County alone.
The certification received for the three-hour lesson we sat in on lasts for two years. The training is mandatory for anyone working in the county but the city or township that hires them may require more.
This is John Martin's second election cycle and he chose to re-certify in person rather than online.
"I learned better in a group setting rather than individual," explained Martin, a Grand Haven resident. "It's nice because questions will pop up and it's like, oh, I didn't think about that. But that's an interesting question."
The class covers the election cycle from setting up secure machines, transfer of the ballots from the precincts to the clerks office, to certification of the election.
It also covers everything in between like minor issues faced on election night. Those issues often include voters having already received an absentee ballot, questions around needing an ID, and campaign materials present at the polling location.
"This is a process that our neighbors are doing, essentially as volunteers. There's payment for this, but it's really a volunteer role," Roebuck said. "And there's a lot that goes into the election process to make sure that it's secure and accessible."
Poll inspectors are paid varying wages depending on where they were hired and they have to declare a political party to ensure bipartisan oversight.
There are multiple layers of checks and balances on election night that reassures workers like Martin, that trying to subvert the system would be really hard to do.
He said, "Because there are so many backups, and there are so many steps that have to be taken that it seems like it would be an awful lot of work to do."
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