SLO County clerk-recorder, challenger clash over poll worker shortage
A candidate running to be San Luis Obispo County’s top elections official is calling on the district attorney and the secretary of state to investigate her opponent, incumbent clerk-recorder Elaina Cano, over allegations of incompetence and partisanship — which Cano adamantly denies.
In a Wednesday news release, Vanessa Rozo said Cano had erred by failing to find enough poll workers to staff the June 2 primary election.
According to the SLO County Clerk-Recorder’s Office, eight facilities were short-staffed Wednesday with some North County polling places at risk of being consolidated if positions remain unfilled, The Tribune previously reported.
Rozo said that if this consolidation occurs, it could deny some registered voters access to their standard voting precincts.
“Not only is (the) error likely to adversely affect voter turnout in those precincts and areas affected, but it was an entirely predictable problem,” Rozo said in the release. “Also, the deficiency should have been resolved well before next week’s election.”
Cano told The Tribune that her office had managed to fill the worker gaps by Thursday afternoon, but consolidations could always occur depending on any last-minute cancellations.
The Clerk-Recorder’s Office began recognizing a potential poll worker shortage several weeks ago after their typical recruitment efforts — direct outreach to past workers and community organizations as well as social media and website posts — were yielding low response rates, she said, adding that SLO County is in a similar situation to other counties across California who are struggling to get enough poll workers to sign up.
“Recruiting poll workers has become increasingly difficult over the past several election cycles,” Cano said in an email. “Many longtime poll workers — many of whom are retirees — have expressed hesitation about working elections due to the increasingly stressful and hostile environment surrounding election administration nationwide.”
She said fewer poll workers are willing to volunteer due to boredom as well, since most polling places only receive a handful of voters throughout the day as vote-by-mail became the predominant way voters cast a ballot. That number has reached 90% of voters in SLO County now, but California law still requires counties to have in-person voting opportunities, Cano said.
Clerk-recorder candidate clashes with incumbent over poll worker shortage
Rozo also said the shortage of poll workers became more acute because she and other local Republican women’s groups have been denied the opportunity to serve in precincts.
“These efforts have deterred at least one of our six political parties as serving as a source of election day volunteers, discriminating against them in participating in the conduct of our elections,” she said.
Rebecca Hallett, the former president of the Atascadero Republican Women Federated, said the group’s application to adopt a poll was rejected in 2024 even though the group had participated in the program for 10 years.
“We were never accused of any political bias,” Hallett told The Tribune. “We never told people we were Republican women. We were there to volunteer and help.”
The SLO County Clerk-Recorder’s Office does not allow any organizations affiliated with political parties to participate in the county’s Adopt-a-Poll program, which trains members of a particular community organizations to staff a polling place together on Election Day, according to Erin Clausen, the public information officer for the SLO County Clerk-Recorder’s Office.
However, individuals are never screened for political party when they sign up to be an election worker, she said, and the office recruits “broadly to ensure representation from across the spectrum.”
Cano said members of Republican women’s groups are still fully eligible to serve as individual poll workers. In 2024, some members of the Atascadero women’s group applied under the SLO Tea Party organization and were accepted because it was not an official political party organization.
“Ms. Rozo’s claims suggesting that Republican women were prohibited from serving as poll workers are therefore inaccurate and risk creating unnecessary confusion about how poll worker recruitment and election administration are conducted in San Luis Obispo County,” Cano told The Tribune.
Rozo also said she was “disenfranchised” because she was denied the opportunity to be a poll worker during the November 2025 special election.
“I am qualified to work an election because the fact is, even though I’m a candidate, my name was not on the ballot, so there’s no conflict of interest,” she said, adding that there’s no specific law against it.
However, the Clerk-Recorder’s Office told Rozo she was ineligible to be a poll worker because she had already declared her candidacy and was actively campaigning.
Cano said an internal office policy bars candidates from serving as poll workers in jurisdictions where they are running for office. In Rozo’s case, the jurisdiction of the Clerk-Recorder’s Office is the entire county.
Cano also said Rozo’s allegation that she’s a partisan is completely unfair.
“She does not know how I vote, whether I vote Democratically, whether I vote Republican, whether I vote Libertarian, she has no idea,” Cano said. “So for her to make that accusation about me personally is offensive. ... I represent everybody in this entire county regardless of political party.”
Rozo told The Tribune she would also be completely nonpartisan if elected to the role.
“I don’t represent the left wing or the right wing. I represent the whole bird,” she said.
