The Anchorage municipal clerk's office is looking for people willing to work a long day in April.

The office is recruiting poll workers for its city election April 3 and is aiming to hire 650 people, Deputy Clerk Jacqueline Duke said Thursday.

Anchorage, with annual elections and 119 polling places, faces a shortage of election workers for one-day duty, as do many communities in the nation, Duke said. City code requires four workers to be at each polling place.

The job pays $9.50 per hour, including a mandatory two-hour training session and hours put in on election day. Voting begins at 7 a.m. and ends at 8 p.m., but election workers generally work the entire Election Day shift from 6 a.m. to 10 p.m., Duke said.

"It's a long day," she said.

The clerk's office starts filling positions by contacting past workers. Many poll workers are retirement age, Duke said, and the clerks have been looking to recruit younger workers from the University of Alaska Anchorage.

City and state election offices exchange worker lists. The city also relies on polling place chairmen and chairwomen to recruit workers in their own neighborhoods.

"It's a lot of word of mouth," she said.

Municipal election workers must be registered Anchorage voters. They have to be able to accurately process paperwork and remain nonpartisan on the job.

West Coast states facing election workers shortages have largely switched to mail-in ballots, Duke said.

Julie Huseman, state Division of Elections supervisor in Region 2, said her office is not likely to approach the Alaska Legislature soon to make that change.

The division hires a recruiter for its biannual elections and so far has not had a problem filling poll worker positions, she said.

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