For the third time since 2005, the Bureau of Governmental Research has bestowed an Excellence in Government award upon an employee of the St. Tammany Parish Clerk of Court’s office. The 2009 Capital One Keller Award for Innovation, which recognizes governmental employees who have used creative solutions to solve pressing problems, was presented to Dee Laux, Elections Deputy Clerk for St. Tammany Parish.

Laux created and successfully implemented an extensive recruiting campaign to attract election poll workers to process voters on election day.

When St. Tammany Parish saw a significant drop in election poll workers following Hurricane Katrina, Laux was delegated the task of establishing a new recruiting strategy that would attract more poll workers in time for the 2007 gubernatorial election and the 2008 presidential election. Her major goal was to target all citizens, especially young people, to become election poll workers. A major part of this campaign included targeting 17-year-old high school seniors, something that had never been done in the parish’s history.

Shown are, from left, Bailey Crossan, Daniel Laux, Ed Laux, Dee Laux and Kevin Laux.

Laux began by developing an advertising campaign, utilizing a cartoon and a simple recruitment message. The advertising message blared the news that poll workers now earned $200 or more in one election and that St. Tammany had a desperate shortage of poll workers.

With this message and an almost nonexistent budget for this campaign, she copied thousands of recruitment flyers and invited leaders in St. Tammany organizations to become community partners in a double-step recruitment effort.

In the first step, leaders of St. Tammany organizations distributed flyers at their meetings or sent e-mail blasts to their members. In the second step, recipients of these flyers and e-mails became forwarding agents to their own circle of influence.

To reach high school seniors, Laux contacted high school administrators who were only too happy to encourage high school seniors to become election workers. St. Tammany school administrators agreed to include recruitment flyers in the orientation packets seniors received on the first day of school.

Through these school partnerships, Laux was able to invite more than 3,000 students to get involved in working elections.

In the past, St. Tammany Parish Clerk of Court’s office generally netted about 100 new poll workers each year. As a result of Laux’s advertising campaigns and the community partnerships that spread the message, 506 citizens became certified poll workers in 2007, including over 100 high school seniors. Because of Laux’s comprehensive and innovative poll worker drive, St. Tammany gathered enough certified poll workers to adequately staff all voting precincts for the 2008 Congressional and presidential elections.

Due to the success of Laux’s recruiting campaign, her strategies have been shared with all clerks of court at the Louisiana Clerks of Court Institute in Baton Rouge.