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John Daley ReportingNancy Bailey, Election Worker: "The training is very intense, it's on-hands training. It's not difficult at all."
Despite that view, there's still a shortage of trained election workers and they're dealing with brand new electronic voting machines. With Election Day now three weeks off, will there be enough?
The state's largest county, with more voters than anywhere else in Utah, is looking for a few more election workers, more than 100 to be exact.
Thanks to in-office voting at the county government center, people are already starting to vote, even though election day isn't until November 7th. The big concern right now is having enough workers who are trained to deal with the new voting machines.
Carl Bailey, Voter, Sandy: "I have no problem with it at all. Very easy, all you to do is read the instructions and touch the screen."
That voter's wife is a poll worker who says she's been through the three-hour training.
Nancy Bailey, Poll Worker: "It's wonderful and the touch screen is well worth all the time and effort that's gone into it."
Still, the county is looking for 130 volunteers and 50 alternates, in part because they've added more workers total, in part because they've lost hundreds.
Sherrie Swensen, Salt Lake Co. Clerk: "They were concerned about their computer ability and being able to run it. And so we lost some because of that. But mostly it's because we've added poll workers with the new voting equipment also. So instead of having three poll workers at every polling location we now have five."
They've already held almost 300 training sessions and now the elections office is aiming to get new poll workers trained before October 28. Even if they don't, they're confident everything will go smoothly.
Gary Herbert, (R) Lt. Governor: "We could have a paper jam here or there. I mean there are some things that can happen, but I expect at the end of the day, we'll have a very efficient and accurate election and that the voters wishes will be in fact heard as they leave their print on Utah."
Julio Garcia, Salt Lake County, Elections Director: "I think we have built in enough resources at each of our locations that we're going to be fine. But again, we shoot for the best and in order to fill our positions, we're still trying to fill some of the vacancies."
If you'd like to help on Election Day, most positions available pay up to 120 dollars and you can sign up between now and October 28th. You don't need to have computer skills and a training class takes about three hours.
If you're interested, call the County Clerk at 468-3477 or follow the link to the County Clerk's website.
