Until last week I had never really volunteered for anything. Maybe it was the headlines about voter suppression, or when my local Repugnicon controlled board of elections sent out screwed up absentee ballots and then said they wouldn’t count, or maybe it was guilt from looking at all the GOTV on KOS. I filled out the online volunteer form for my Dem Party in my totally bleeding red Repugnicon County. I never really heard back so I contacted the large metropolitan Dem party in the next county. I heard right back with an invitation to Poll Watch and a few days later I was on a training webinar. I was fascinated when I was assigned 4 precincts at a rural middle school that just happened to be adjacent to a somewhat isolated but sizeable University college town. They wanted me, to make sure the students were treated fairly.
On the Friday before, when I picked up some materials at the Metro County headquarters, I don’t know what I should have expected (note my background up to now has been with team Red). I was a little surprised at its shoestring nature for such a large city, but moved by the intensity of the volunteers and the bustle of activity. I stood around, largely ignored, for almost 10 minutes before I was directed to an elderly lady who showed me the box that had been at my feet with what I needed. On the way out, all of a sudden, a couple people piped up “Good Luck”, joined by whoever else was walking through the front room. I swear, for about 5 minutes, I felt like Luke Skywalkers’ wingman heading out to defend the evacuation of Hoth.
Up at 4:30am, a 45-minute dash in the dark across poorly lit rolling country roads. Per instructions I arrived at the polls with donuts, cookies and a personal plan to play as dumb as the neophyte that I was, to try and learn something and get along with the poll workers as an Observer. Everybody was hometown friendly but at times a little opaque about exact processes and procedures.
Please understand, there are supposed to be an equal number of Democrats and Repugnicons working the polls, but in these rural counties it is hard to find people who even ADMIT they vote Democratic. So Joe Bob and Mary Lou DO provide a valuable service by playing the part when needed, and even if they DO lean Democratic they are pretty damn sheepish standing up to the local Repugnicon stalwarts. After all, at the end of the day they ARE their pew mates and neighbors in a small town. They had never had an Observer at their poll before.
It took me a while to figure out that, while the training focused on provisional ballots, the action did not usually take place at the Provisional Ballot Table, but rather at the Intake Table where they check the rolls. Of course, strategically there were no extra seats so you had to hover around appraisingly looking over peoples’ shoulders, much like one of those political apparatchik officers so detested in military history and fiction.
It appeared that early in the day there was an appreciable amount of misdirection of students between mine and another polling station (both conveniently outside of town) and the Student Center. Around 9am I took an affidavit from a very frustrated student who had been run around to 3 different locations before permitted a provisional ballot where she had originally reported. Remarkably, after that affidavit and after I let it slip that I was a licensed attorney, there were no further indications of any problems.
OK, so the Ohio elections are not as bad as North Dakota or Georgia. But hey, let’s keep it that way.
I was most gratified to see the number of students and even some townies that came in clutching their bright slips with Democratic candidate choices. Wow! Effective. As the day wore on, so did the veneer of friendliness on the poll workers. My ears would burn at their startled surprise when I would return from breaks where they had hoped they had been rid of me. By the end of the night I realized how little and misleading the information they had shared with me had been as I tried to follow up on some reporting instructions from Dem headquarters. Their anger was palpable as they broke down the machines, exhausted at the end of the 13 hour day. Although a couple of the poll workers would give me a sly wink or a nod when no one was looking.
There is an arcane process where the individual candidate total printouts from the machines are actually taped to the glass doors outside of the school polling place at the end of the night. With the number of machines at this location, it was impractical to tally everything up, but it was really satisfying knowing that those students had come out BIG for Rich Courdray and provisional ballots would have REALLY counted in a close one. I sat there as the last disgruntled poll worker pulled out of the dark empty parking lot, me thinking the Blue Wave had taken the Governorship.
At the end of my brisk autumn day in a beautiful college town...nice.
Being a part of the Blue Wave (even if Ohio fell somewhat short). AWESOME!
Pissing the shit out of those self righteous biddies? Can’t buy THAT with money.