Like it or not, the 5th of November is just around the corner. That's when Montreal will head to the polls to elect new borough and city councils, as well as the mayor. Four months out, the city's politicians aren't the only ones getting ready. Elections Montreal is ramping up a hiring spree in advance of the vote, aiming to get around 14,000 workers to help them organize the vote.
While that number may seem like a lot, Pierre Laporte from the agency says it's actually around the same number of people the city hired last time around, in 2013. "It always relies on the number of people we have on the voters' list," he told CJAD 800. He said that Elections Montreal calculated that between 13,000 and 14,000 election workers would be needed in the fall of 2013, when there were just over 1.1 million people on the voter rolls. That number is around the same this year, he says, so the number of election workers will be the same, too.
Though a few hundred people will be hired to work in a full- or part-time capacity planning voter operations for the city over the next few months, the overwhelming majority of the workers Elections Montreal is seeking will be working on just one day -- polling day, or as Mr. Laporte calls it, "D-Day."
Those single-day workers will help count ballots and oversee the day's operations at polling stations. They will be paid between $250 and $400 for the day's work, at a rate set by the city's executive committee. The longer-term workers will be paid much more than that.
Job listings and an application form can be found at jevotepourmaville.ca.