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I was a first-time Democratic poll judge in Indiana, recruited by Pollworkers for Democracy. www.pollworkersfordemocracy.org
What a terrific experience!
My experience was much like yours. I was the only newbie on our team of five. I was impressed with the integrity and good humor that everyone brought to the job that day.
Several things stood out to me, all of which happened at the end of the day.
Of course, we were exhausted. Our day started at 5am, polls were open from 6am-6pm, and we had the votes tallied and machines packed by 7pm. Being so tired it would have been very easy to make a mistake, but the system was filled with so many cross-checks that we caught our errors and corrected them.
Our first line of defense – honest, careful pollworkers - worked in our precinct. What went on inside the machines is another story entirely. As pollworkers, we were united in our belief that hackable voting machines are a grave threat to our democracy and assuring election integrity should not be a partisan issue.
I accompanied the Republican Inspector (who ran our precinct) to the courthouse to turn in the tallies and return the machines.
It was an amazing sight to see hundreds and hundreds of pollworkers from all over the county converging on the courthouse to return voting machines and envelopes filled with votes. Burly men directing traffic and off-loading voting machines. Lines of pollworkers snaking through the bowels of the courthouse to deliver ballots and tallies. Tables and boxes and piles of tabulations. Candidates waiting for results. The election board meeting in a glass walled room to address an absentee ballot snafu.
I visualized this going on in thousands of counties all over the country and was a bit overwhelmed to be a small part of such a huge civic undertaking.
However, I heard one horror story that curled my hair. While waiting in one of the snakey lines, I met a 19 year-old man who had been recruited the weekend before to be a Republican Inspector. With little training and 4 novice pollworkers to assist him, he was assigned a newly created precinct. They had problems getting their machines set-up and running. They had nearly 100 voters show up to vote in the wrong precinct and had to help them find the correct precinct. He said he called the courthouse dozens of time asking for help, got the run-around, was transferred, disconnected and hung-up on. Then they had problems closing the polls and tallying the votes. But somehow this 19 year-old managed to hold the polls open for 400+ people to vote on Tuesday.
Please sign up to be a pollworker for the next election. America needs you.
