How many election judges

Does Minnesota need to run an election?

30,000

People are signing up now to be election judges in November. The position is temporary. Paid employees of local election officials train to handle all aspects of voting at the polling place. Serving as an election judge is a chance to learn about elections and is a great service to the community. 

This work exhibits one indicator of civic engagement. Other jobs in the community which serve to measure it are hours volunteered, neighbors helped, meetings attended, and problems solved together rather than outsourced—the scout leader on Tuesday night, the food-shelf intake shift, the church-basement cook, the park trail crew, the youth-soccer coach who also lines the field, the neighbor who shovels the walk next door or holds a spare key or brings a meal after surgery, the person who sits through a planning-commission variance or a school-board comment line or a watershed hearing, the block that organizes a snow-emergency car shuffle instead of waiting for the tow, the parents who run a crossing rotation when the guard is cut, the street that plants the missing boulevard tree, the small landlord and tenants who fix the porch before it becomes a code case. Those are the countable hours and the uncounted favors; the meetings no one films; the work that stays local instead of being handed to an agency.