Power the Polls is a poll worker recruitment project of Work Elections, which is in-turn a project of the Fair Elections Center, a left-of-center litigation and election policy advocacy nonprofit based in Washington, D.C.

Background

Power the Polls was launched in June 2020, by a group of businesses and election-oriented left-of-center nonprofit organizations: Comedy Central, MTV, the Alliance for Youth Organizing, Patagonia, Time to Vote, Pizza to the Polls, the National Disability Rights Network, United Way, We Can Vote, Levi Strauss, and Co., ViacomCBS, the CAA Foundation, Students Learn Students Vote, and the Civic Alliance. ¹ Power the Polls operates as a project of Work Elections, which is in turn a project of the left-of-center Fair Elections Center. ²

According to the project’s website, Power the Polls was founded in response to poll worker shortages related to the COVID-19 pandemic. To that end, in its first hundred days of activity, the project claims to have recruited “700,000 prospective poll workers,” mitigating those shortages. ³

Parent Organizations

Power the Polls describes itself as “powered” by Work Elections, a project of the Fair Elections Center launched in 2016 initially funded by the Knight Foundation’s Knight Prototype Fund, which provides educational resources about poll worker recruitment and aims to broaden and diversify the available number of poll workers nationwide. To that end, the project is particularly concerned with recruiting bilingual poll workers to assist voters with limited English proficiency. ^{4 5}

Work Elections’ parent organization, the Fair Elections Center, is a left-of-center litigation and election policy advocacy nonprofit created in 2006 based in Washington, D.C. Work Elections originated as a project of the center-left funding and fiscal sponsorship group New Venture Fund and has since been registered as a nonprofit in its own right since April 2017. Notably, the center, which has disparaged Republican efforts to reform election policy as “voter suppression legislation,” engages in litigation to change election administration policy, overturn election integrity polices, and extend voting rights to felons. For instance, the center was a co-litigant in Howell v. McAuliffe, a 2016 lawsuit to restore felons’ voting rights in Virginia. ^{6 7 8 9 10}

Partners

Past and present partner organizations of Power the Polls include the CAA Foundation, National Disability Rights Network, AARP, United Way, Encore Renewable Energy, the Global Black Caucus, the Campus Vote Project, International Brotherhood of Teamsters, the Master Clinician Network, the Andrew Goodman Foundation, Pond Lehocky, Salesforce, the National Coalition on Black Civic Participation, Civic Georgia, Discovery Inc., Starbucks, Imperfect Foods, American Promise, the Premier Lacrosse League, Major League Baseball, Major League Soccer, the League of Women Voters, Morningstar, PagerDuty, Lululemon, AFL-CIO, AFSCME, UFCW, Alliance of Students at the Polls, the Democracy Labs, SEIU, NextDoor, International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers, the National Urban Indian Family Coalition, CleanChoice Energy, Old Navy, the Civil Review Board, Eventbrite, Lyft, the Leadership Conference, United Here, Miami Dade College, Mormon Women for Ethical Government, Paypal, Voter Project, Student Veterans of America, Wayfair, Americorps Alumni: Election Integrity Project, the American Sustainable Business Network, Campus Compact, University of Virginia Alumni Association, Mondelez International, National Coalition for Accessible Voting, the Poll Workers Project, Reddit, the National Council of Jewish Women, the Boys and Girls Clubs of America, LinkedIn, Twitter, the American Constitution Society, Stand Up America, the National Congress of American Indians, the Black Advancement Coalition, and the NAACP. ¹¹

1. “About Us.” Power the Polls. Accessed February 20, 2023. https://www.powerthepolls.org/about
2. “About Us.” Power the Polls. Accessed February 20, 2023. https://www.powerthepolls.org/about
3. “About Us.” Power the Polls. Accessed February 20, 2023. https://www.powerthepolls.org/about
4. “About.” Work Elections. Accessed February 20, 2023. https://workelections.org/about/
5. “About Us.” Power the Polls. Accessed February 20, 2023. https://www.powerthepolls.org/about
6. Litigation.” Fair Elections Center.” Accessed February 20, 2023. https://www.fairelectionscenter.org/litigation
7. “Restoration of Ex-Felons’ Voting Rights (2016).” Fair Elections Center. Accessed February 20, 2023. https://www.fairelectionscenter.org/howell-v-mcauliffe
8.  “Fair Elections Center.” ProPublica. Accessed February 20, 2023. https://projects.propublica.org/nonprofits/organizations/815447067
9. “Philadelphia Attorney S. David Fineman Named Chair of Fair Elections Center; Group to Fight for Voting Rights for Long Underrepresented Constituencies.” Market Insider. May 16, 2018. Accessed February 20, 2023. https://markets.businessinsider.com/news/stocks/philadelphia-attorney-s-david-fineman-named-chair-of-fair-elections-center-group-to-fight-for-voting-rights-for-long-underrepresented-constituencies-1024700044#
10. ARCHIVED: “Donate to Fair Elections Legal Network.” DonationPay.org. February 20, 2016. Accessed February 20, 2023. https://web.archive.org/web/20160220001844/https://secure.donationpay.org/fairelectionsnetwork/
11.  “POWER THE POLLS PARTNERS.” Power the Polls. Accessed February 20, 2023. https://www.powerthepolls.org/partners