COLUMBUS, Ohio (WCMH) — With 48 days until election day, nearly 40,000 Ohioans have signed up to serve as a poll worker on November 3.

Ohio’s first-ever Poll Worker Tracker continues to give Ohioans, counties, and partner organizations clear goals for poll worker recruitment for the November election.

Ohio Secretary of State Frank LaRose is providing Ohioans with weekly poll worker updates as reported by the 88 county boards of elections. Sharing the data also allows Ohio counties to be held accountable as the fall election approaches. This is the first time such information has been collected from the counties prior to an election.

Notable data are the following:

• Goal for Committed and Trained Poll Workers: 55,588
• Minimum Poll Workers Required: 37,057
• Current Number of Committed Poll Workers: 39,894
• Remaining Number of Poll Workers Needed to Meet Goal: 22,577

“Ohioans from all walks of life are stepping up, but there is more work to do,” said LaRose. “We’re recruiting on multiple fronts, and we won’t stop until we meet our goal.”

Poll worker recruitment efforts include:

• Give a Day for Democracy
• Partnering with businesses to offer employees the day off to be poll workers. Secretary LaRose announced this initiative with an event in Cincinnati — Western & Southern Financial is allowing employees to work the polls with a paid day off and so are many other companies statewide. Click here to watch the video.

• Professionals Getting Education Credit to Serve
• Lawyers for Liberty — Attorneys will receive required continuing legal education credits for being a poll worker this year. Click here to read more
• The Accountancy Board of Ohio (ABO) will now allow Ohio Certified Public Accountants (CPAs) to obtain required Continuing Public Education (CPE) general credits for CPAs serving as poll workers in 2020. Click here to read about our partnership

• Second Call to Duty
• This initiative is asking veterans who took an oath to defend their country to defend democracy on November 3

• Work the Day, Share Your Pay
• Poll workers can donate their earnings to a nonprofit or charity of their choice

• Youth at the Booth
• In Ohio 17-year-old high school seniors can serve as poll workers

Recruitment materials and the form to sign up to serve as a poll worker can be found at VoteOhio.gov/DefendDemocracy.

At PollWorkerTracker.OhioSoS.gov, you will find a breakdown of the following poll worker data:

• The minimum number of poll workers required to run an election in the respective county, by total and by Party.
• The goal number of poll worker commitments counties should target in order to compensate for any cancellations.
• Remaining number of poll workers needed for each county to reach their goal.

In accordance with state law, the board of elections, by a majority vote, appoints four electors for each precinct who are residents of the county in which the precinct is located to serve as poll workers. Not more than one-half of the total number of poll workers assigned to a precinct may be members of the same political party.

Ohioans who are neither a Republican or Democrat may also serve as poll workers. Those individuals appear in the poll worker tracker in the “other” category.