Orangeburg County official seeks higher pay for poll workers
ORANGEBURG, S.C. (WIS) - The Orangeburg County voter registration and elections office is pushing to raise the pay for county poll workers.
Aurora Smalls, the director of the county’s voter registration, said right now poll workers in the county are bringing in only $75 on Election Day. She’s hoping if they raise the pay they will help fill the gap in the county’s poll worker shortage ahead of the 2024 presidential election.
“We are expecting more people to come out and we need more people to come out,” Smalls said.
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Smalls requested extra funding from the county’s legislative delegation to increase poll worker pay on Election Day to at least $100
Aurora Smalls, Director, Voter Registration:
“It is a long day and we would just like to show our appreciation and thank them for their service,” Smalls said. “It is a community service to work the polls. We can’t pay them what their worth but we sure can pay them more.”
Poll workers on Election Day in Charleston County bring in $140 for working and in Lexington county $260. That doesn’t include the $60 for training that each county pays.
Even with the extra $60 Orangeburg County poll workers make anywhere from $65 to $200 less.
South Carolina Representative Gilda Cobb-Hunter sits on the legislative delegation that would ultimately decide whether state dollars would fund the increase in pay for poll workers.
“I would imagine that those other counties probably have a larger share of funding that they give to their election commissions than Orangeburg County,” Cobb-Hunter said.
While Cobb-Hunter said she’s all for paying poll workers more, she’s on the fence about allocating the full amount of funding which could range anywhere from $15,000 to $20,000.
“My concern rests in the fact that according to the LAC despite receiving several million dollars in HAVA funding the election commission has given no money to county election offices to improve any security vulnerabilities even though that money can be used for that purpose,” she said.
Cobb Hunter said she wants to ask election officials about where that money was spent before allocating any extra funding.
WIS News 10 submitted a Freedom of Information Act request to the county regarding an audit of their finances on the matter.
There’s no timeline yet on when a decision will be made.
In October 2022, Lexington County Council voted and unanimously approved this incentive to increase the pay for
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