This year’s Super Bowl is more than the gridiron contest that pits the Kansas City Chiefs against the San Francisco 49ers. It’s also about the general election that will take place in November and the nation’s need for poll workers.
In the runup to Sunday’s Super Bowl LVIII, We the Veterans and Military Families has been in Las Vegas all week, launching its Vet the Vote 2024 campaign to recruit poll workers for this year’s general election.
“It’s critical,” Joe Plenzler, a retired U.S. Marine lieutenant colonel and spokesman for We the Veterans and Military Families, said of the recruitment effort.
The non-profit has reached out to country officials and secretaries of state across the nation to determine where poll workers are needed.
“We will then look to see if we have veterans and family members there who are willing to volunteer,” he said.
The shortage of election poll workers across the country isn’t a new issue. Plenzler said for every election the nation needs about 1.2 million volunteers to set up polling places, check IDs, issue ballots, tally votes and report results.
In 2022, COVID-19 and threats of political violence against poll workers caused many election volunteers, some of whom were 65 years old and older, to refrain from helping. That led to a shortage of nearly 120,000 election workers.
When We the Veterans and Military Families heard about that shortage, Plenzler said the organization stepped up, initially securing commitments to help recruit poll workers from six of the post-9/11 Veteran Service Organizations. Plenzler then had a talk with retired U.S. Army Chief of Staff George Casey, who knew former NFL Commissioner Paul Tagliabue.
Tagliabue in turn introduced the group to current NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell, who directed his staff to help in the effort. Plenzler said the team grew from the group of six to 30 veteran and civic groups that recruited more than 63,500 veterans and family members to be poll workers in 2022.
This year, We the Veterans and Military Families has set the goal of recruiting 100,000 poll workers.
Plenzler and We the Veterans and Military Families Executive Chairman Ben Keiser said veterans and their family members have what it takes to be poll workers and called working at the polls an example of service after service.
“It’s one of the few places where you’ll see Republicans, Democrats and Independents all coming together to do something for the country,” he said.
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Reach Julia LeDoux at Julia@connectingvets.com.