Challenge

During the 2020 pandemic, many retired poll workers (who make up a large portion of election staff) stepped back for health reasons. If enough replacements couldn’t be found, early-voting hours might have been curtailed—potentially limiting access for voters who already face barriers.

I wanted to help prevent that outcome, so I applied to work at voting sites.

Once inside the system, I realized something important:

Voting sites are full-service environments, each one a carefully orchestrated system with strict procedures, fixed layouts, high stakes, and an unusually diverse user base.

I noticed that:

• some procedures were elegant and intuitive
• others created moments of confusion or emotional stress
• workers were doing heroic work to bridge gaps in real time
• small changes in signage, layout, communication, or training could reduce errors and frustration

This wasn’t just operations—it was service design, in the most literal sense.

Solution

Immersing myself in all sides of the system

During early voting and Election Day, I intentionally worked every station I was allowed to, learning not just the “what” and “how,” but the crucial “why” behind each procedure.

Across five years of election cycles, I grew from:

• general poll worker →
• fill-in site manager →
• full site manager →
• Chief Judge (site manager for a precinct on Election Day)

Later, I also worked back-end operations, preparing and testing election hardware and software to understand the full service ecosystem.

Identifying service-design opportunities (within strict constraints)

With deep respect for the Board of Elections staff—who work expertly and under enormous pressure—I observed opportunities to reduce confusion and improve clarity without altering any procedures.

Some of the service-design insights I shared included:

• Wayfinding clarity: When signage didn’t quite guide users, workers became “human signposts.” Understanding this pattern helped refine messaging and placement.
• Floor stickers peeling up: Sometimes helpful arrows or footprints created tripping hazards.
• Queue stanchions: Kids mistook them for playground equipment, disrupting flow.
• Ballot placement: At some stations, blank ballots were only reachable by one of two workers, or only for left-handed retrieval.
• Site manager visibility: Desk placement sometimes made it impossible to monitor required areas (e.g., verifying shared booth use).
• Emotion-aware processes: If a voter mis-marked a ballot, the replacement script didn’t begin with reassurance. I rewrote the script to start with empathy—something field workers knew from experience but training didn’t yet reflect.
• Accessible ballot-marking devices: Workers were not allowed to offer these machines. Enough feedback from many workers—myself included—helped shift that policy.
• UX advantage for accessible machines: These devices prevented inadvertent overvoting, error-checking before tabulation.
• Timesheet confusion solved by a dot: For years, workers misunderstood the required “decimal hours” format. After continuous, polite feedback from multiple workers (including me), HR changed both the instructions and the timesheet format—from __:__ to __.__—dramatically reducing errors.
• Emergency kit accessibility: During a power outage, the “only open in emergencies” bag created avoidable difficulty. This eventually influenced the label to allow familiarization.
• Covid-era plexiglass + masks: These barriers blocked lip-reading and muffled voices during check-in. The only fix was empathy: slowing down, repeating carefully, staying patient with frustrated voters and anxious workers.

Helping improve training

Serving in both front-line and back-end roles gave me a rare holistic view.
Eventually, I collaborated with the training team to help rewrite training modules and scripts—clarifying steps, easing emotional friction points, and bringing field insights into official materials.

Throughout, I used generative AI as a writing and copyediting partner to help the team improve clarity and consistency across modules.

Accessibility highlight

“Showing voters with disabilities how to use the ADA ballot-marking machine was one of the most meaningful moments I’ve had in any design-adjacent role.”

The ADA-compliant machine offered:

• a touchscreen
• audio ballot readouts through headphones
• a large, tactile keypad with distinct buttons–with bright color cues, in meaningful shapes, with Braille, in an intuitive layout
• error-checking to prevent overvoting and other errors

When I introduced the device to voters with disabilities—visually, verbally, or through touch—they often shifted from anxious to empowered.

Role

• Managed early-voting and Election Day operations
• Led daily teams of 8–12 workers
• Assessed staff strengths for optimal placement
• Ensured compliance with state election law
• Managed chain-of-custody for ballots
• Served as liaison between voters, workers, and leadership
• Tested and prepared election hardware/software
• Authored updated training content based on field experience
• Provided recurring service-design insights each election cycle

Outcome

I achieved all my original goals:

• supported uninterrupted early voting during a critical year
• learned the voting process end-to-end (front-line + back-end)
• contributed insights that helped refine training, clarify procedures, and reduce confusion
• strengthened my understanding of service design in a complex, tightly regulated environment
• developed an ongoing working relationship with the Board of Elections

And most importantly:

Early voting remained fully available in 2020 because enough people stepped forward to work. I’m proud to have been one of them.