Although this year’s presidential election has come to a close, there are still plenty more elections on the horizon to prepare for: With local elections coming up all across the country and midterm elections in 2026, poll workers are sure to remain busy.
As election offices throughout the nation plan for upcoming election cycles, it’s important to hire bilingual poll workers. Bilingual poll workers are a critical part of making sure that things run smoothly at the polls on election day, as they enable voters with limited English proficiency (LEP) to participate in the process seamlessly.
Poll workers ensure that voters feel welcome when they arrive at the polls; they’re also there to answer any questions voters may have about the process. But if voters have trouble communicating with the poll workers effectively, it can cause a bit of friction in the process, making voters with LEP feel alienated and uncertain on election day. This is why it’s crucial to hire a multilingual team of poll workers who are able to communicate with voters in a wide range of different languages.
“Voting is one of the most important acts to exert citizenship, and many people get nervous (including poll workers), especially if their English is limited and they are new to the American election system,” says Claudia Burdisso, a government business development manager and former bilingual poll worker.
Bilingual poll workers aren’t just a nice asset to have on election day — election offices are also required by law to provide voters with aid in certain minority languages. Section 203 of the Voting Rights Act mandates that written and oral communications must be available in certain minority languages so that voters with LEP are able to fulfill their civic duty with ease.
In this blog post, we’ll go over the basics of hiring bilingual poll workers to aid LEP voters, showing you how these workers can play a critical role in boosting voter turnout and ensuring things run like clockwork on your jurisdiction’s next election day.
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Best Practices for Working with Bilingual Poll Workers
It’s not enough to just hire a couple of bilingual poll workers and haphazardly assign them to different locations throughout your jurisdiction. Election offices must be purposeful in the way that they recruit and place multilingual team members, to ensure that their bilingual poll workers are able to adequately serve LEP voters.
“Reinforcing best practices for bilingual poll workers is crucial for LEPs to have a good experience and feel integrated in the democracy of our country,” Claudia says. Here are three key considerations to make when employing and working with bilingual poll workers.
Recruit speakers of the right languages
The first step to effectively employing bilingual poll workers is knowing which languages are most needed in your jurisdiction. A good starting point is to consult census data or your local voter rolls to determine which language groups are particularly prevalent in your community.
Prioritize recruiting poll workers who are fluent in these languages, keeping in mind basic dialectal differences. For example, don’t just set out to hire “Chinese-speaking” poll workers — look into the dialects and languages of China that are spoken most widely in your region. You may find that most Chinese Americans with LEP in your jurisdiction speak a minority language like Hmong, rather than more widely known languages like Mandarin or Cantonese.
Once you’ve identified your target languages, consider partnering with a community-based organization (CBO) to help with recruitment, or search for candidates at churches, schools, and other institutions that are likely to be frequented by speakers of the languages you’ve identified. You’ll also want to have some sort of language assessment plan to ensure that the individuals you’re planning on hiring have adequate language skills.
It’s also important to be strategic about where you assign bilingual poll workers. Different neighborhoods may have higher or lower concentrations of particular language speakers, so place your staff accordingly to maximize their impact.
Train your poll workers thoroughly
Recruiting is just the first step — once you’ve found poll workers in the right languages, proper training is essential to ensure they can assist voters effectively. Training should go beyond the basics of poll operations by placing an emphasis on language assistance. Start by clearly outlining the tasks they will perform and helping them sharpen their communication skills.
Both bilingual and monolingual poll workers should understand the role of language assistance at the polls; workers who aren’t able to provide bilingual language assistance should know which workers they can direct LEP voters to. Additionally, if you’ve hired a bilingual poll worker to provide language-concordant assistance, monolingual workers should not be pulling them away from their job to act as ad hoc interpreters.
It’s also important to equip poll workers with effective communication techniques tailored to the needs of LEP voters. You may want to consider providing them with a terminology glossary of key election-related terms in both English and their target language, which can be created in-house or sourced from state election agencies like the Secretary of State (SOS) office or the Election Assistance Commission (EAC).
Consider offering ongoing training opportunities that allow bilingual poll workers to refine their language and customer service skills over time. This will not only boost their confidence but also improve their ability to handle election-day stress while maintaining clear communication with LEP voters. Clear instruction, strategic preparation, and ongoing support will set them up for success on election day.
Evaluate your language access measures
Evaluations and assessments are another important way to improve your office’s language assistance services — after all, it’s hard to improve something when you don’t know exactly what’s lacking.
Not only can bilingual poll workers provide language assistance on the day of the election, but they can also help you evaluate written translations of voting materials. While you should always hire a professional translator or language service provider to translate your voting materials, your bilingual employees can help evaluate the final product and flag any potential errors with the vendor.
You may also consider working with CBOs to investigate areas of your language access plan that could use some improvement. They may be able to help you identify weak spots in your placement of bilingual poll workers so that you can be more effective in future cycles. Likewise, they may be able to help you evaluate the effectiveness of your bilingual poll workers and get a sense of the community’s perception of your language assistance services.
This community feedback can be particularly helpful, and is something that CBOs are especially well-equipped to provide you with — search for local language advisory groups that specialize in this kind of work.
Summary
If you’re looking to hire bilingual poll workers and improve your language assistance services in your jurisdiction’s next election cycle, be sure to make the following considerations:
- Recruit bilingual poll workers who speak languages that are particularly common in your jurisdiction and be sure to place them in locations where they’ll be needed the most.
- Train your poll workers to understand the importance of language assistance at the polls.
- Evaluate your language access measures by leveraging your bilingual poll workers and CBO partnerships.
At Avantpage, we’re proud to specialize in language access for elections offices, ensuring that LEP voters are able to participate fully in American democracy. Let us help you develop a language access plan that boosts voter turnout and trust. Contact us today at [email protected] or (530) 750-2040.
