My Experience as a New York City Poll Interpreter

by Christine M. Quiñones

This past Election Day, in November 2025, I served as a paid Spanish-English interpreter for the New York City Board of Elections (BOE). On the ballot were candidates for Mayor and other municipal offices, as well as several ballot proposals. I was assigned to a polling place near my home in Brooklyn.

New York City voters have the right by law to receive language assistance at the polls from an interpreter. The BOE provides interpreters at poll sites in all five boroughs of the city, depending on poll site needs. Spanish interpreters are provided in all five boroughs; Chinese interpreters in Brooklyn, Manhattan, Queens, and Staten Island; and Korean, Hindi, and Bengali interpreters in Queens only. (A separate city agency, the Civic Engagement Commission, furnishes interpreting services in other languages according to demand.)

To become a poll interpreter, I submitted an application affirming that I was over 18, a resident of New York City, and fluent in both Spanish and English. Being registered to vote is not required, nor is having any professional experience as a linguist. I then had to take a mandatory training class, which covered the interpreter’s duties and basic recordkeeping procedures. (In my experience, trainers solicit class participation in order to assess trainees’ English-speaking skills, as applicants can be overconfident about their ability to communicate in English.) Then, according to demand, the Board of Elections assigns one or more interpreters to a polling place in their borough of residence. (This can be nearby, but poll workers are expected to be willing to travel anywhere in their borough – which can mean an hour or more of travel in some cases.) Interpreters are paid $250 for their work on Election Day, and if they receive an assignment, they get paid $25 for the training class as well.

The day is long; I had to report to the site coordinator at my polling place by 5 AM, and stay until dismissed by the site coordinator after the polls close at 9 PM. Two hours of breaks are provided during the day, and I took my two hours as a long lunch.

Depending on demand at the polls, interpreters can be busy or not. In my case, while voter turnout was relatively high, my services were needed only for a handful of voters. Poll interpreters cannot be reassigned to another role on site, as they need to be on call at all times during the day in case a voter needs language assistance, but they can volunteer to lend a hand elsewhere. I was seated next to the information clerk responsible for directing voters to the appropriate tables to get their ballots by street address, and I helped her look up addresses when I wasn’t interpreting. Helping other poll workers put up and take down signage and distribute supplies also kept me occupied, and the site coordinators appreciated my efforts.

Each polling place has a Ballot Marking Device (BMD) to assist disabled and low English proficiency (LEP) voters to mark their scannable paper ballots. Interpreters can direct a voter to the BMD for guidance in reading and interpreting the ballot, or they can read the ballot aloud to the voter themselves. For any other questions, the interpreter acts as an intermediary between the voter and other poll workers performing their assigned roles. This is an area where I feel I didn’t always handle the job properly, because other poll workers deferred to me and expected me to answer questions about the voting process that I didn’t know the answers to myself. In the future, I will make clear to my fellow poll workers that they are the experts and I’m only a go-between, and I will suggest to the BOE trainers that this be made clearer in training sessions.

New York has early voting in the two weeks prior to Election Day, and interpreters serve during the early-voting period as well. However, there are fewer polling places for early voting, and poll worker assignments are subject to party patronage – a vestige of the old New York City political machines such as Tammany Hall. Anyone interested in an early-voting interpreter role needs to contact a district leader for one of the parties in their state assembly district, and to undergo additional training. To attract district leaders’ attention for early voting assignments, it’s best to have a solid track record as an Election Day worker, so that’s the starting point I recommend.

If you’re a linguist in New York City who meets the requirements to serve as a poll interpreter and you want to help your community, I say give it a try. And for someone like me who doesn’t usually interpret, it’s a convenient way to learn more about the practice of interpreting and consider if it’s a path worth exploring further. Come join me at the polls!

You can find out more and apply at https://www.vote.nyc/page/interpreter.