Abstract
Street-level bureaucrats operate under fairly limited oversight, and are also the actors that de facto set the terms for policy implementation. This leaves room for discrepancies between the theoretical intent of a law and how it is actually applied by its most direct arbiters. In American elections, poll workers serve in this street-level bureaucrat position, bridging the gap between legal voting requirements required by state governments and citizen experiences at the polls. Using an examination of voter eligibility requirements and in-depth interviews conducted with poll workers in the city of Chicago—a jurisdiction where poll workers are asked to verify voter identity by signature—this paper examines what constitutes poll worker decisions about voter eligibility. Respondents offered detailed—and varied—information about what they look for when comparing signatures. Reflecting ambiguity in state election code, they also had different ideas about how to navigate mismatching signatures—ranging from relatively lenient responses to strict enforcement. Notably, they suggested that working in the same precinct and with the same people from election to election made the processing of voters easier.