Poll Workers

In Book 5 of The Fina Mendoza Mysteries, Let Kids Vote, Abuelita will be serving as a poll worker.

Who are poll workers and what do they do?

Make it stand out

Poll workers are the face of elections. They set up the polling station, greet voters, verify registrations and hand out blank ballots. They teach voters how to use the voting equipment and remind them to collect their "I voted" sticker.

Why I Volunteered

I was sitting in the front row of the January 6th hearings the day that poll workers Shaye Moss and her mother Ruby Freeman tearfully testified about the harassment they faced after a conservative PAC and former New York City Mayor Rudy Guiliani accused them of election fraud, claiming they had packed ballots into suitcases - suitcases that were actually storage containers designated to hold absentee ballots. 

I wrote about that day for the New York Daily News, but kept thinking about it. I had served as a poll worker a decade earlier. I knew that I had to volunteer again for this election. Certainly working the polls in Southern California posed no risk, but I felt it was important to be there in solidarity with poll workers around the country.

Four Days of Voting

DAY ONE:

I joined a group of strangers who wandered into an elementary school auditorium. We wore name tags and clutched our water bottles. We'd all received six hours of training. (I confess: I couldn't remember much.) We put out signs and flags and powered up the voting machines and registration tablets and welcomed our first voters.

Dodgers, Dogs, and Democracy

The Dodgers had just won the World Series and there was a lot of Dodger gear - hats, tee shirts, even Dodger earrings on one voter. Other voters wore campaign-related items, but covered up or removed them when we reminded them that electioneering was forbidden within 100 feet of the polling place. The woman with the red, white, and blue headscarf was allowed to keep her head covering.

There were voters who cast their ballots in Spanish, voters who'd immigrated from Iran and India. Many voters brought their children - babies in strollers, toddlers with soccer balls, and tweens who stood beside their mom as she touched the computer screen and cast her ballot. 

One voter asked Chat GPT to help him decide on ballot measures. But sometimes AI makes things up. He told me that he couldn't find Proposition 7...a measure that did not exist on this year's ballot.

More than half a dozen voters brought their dogs. Everyone - including the dogs - went home with an "I VOTED" sticker.

DAY TWO:

I got a phone call. It was from my dad's house. My 95-year-old father had been failing for months, but now he was dying. I was told the phone would be held up to his ear and I should say my goodbyes. I stood among the roses bushes outside the auditorium, telling him stories and all the things I was grateful that he had passed on to me, and told him I loved him and said goodbye. I locked myself in the bathroom for a few minutes, wiped away my tears, and after a few hugs from my co-workers, returned to my post at the check-in table.

DAY THREE:

There was a death threat. A pair of young men in black jumped the schoolyard fence and told an afterschool supervisor that they were going to kill everyone in the auditorium. Police scoured the grounds, an LAPD helicopter hovered overhead, the back door was locked, but the men had escaped. 

The voting continued. 

DAY FOUR - ELECTION DAY

Election Day -began at 6 AM for our merry band of poll workers. More than a thousand people cast ballots at our polling place on Tuesday - a record number. There was a line out the door from 4 PM until the polls closed at 8 PM. And many, many of those voters had cast their very first vote.

We were exhausted, fueled by pizza and coffee and a sense that we were doing something important. One man was still working his way through California's ten ballot measures half an hour after the polls closed. When he finally cast his ballot, we sent him home with leftover Halloween candy, closed the door, and began dismantling the electronics and securing the ballots and checking our phones for election results. It got very quiet.

Finally, at 10 PM, we were dismissed. We said goodbye and started to head home, but someone shouted, "Hey, let's take a selfie!"

And so we did. It was a moment of joy and fellowship and democracy in action.

Join me! 

Consider volunteering as a poll worker for the next election. It's exhausting and rewarding, no matter the outcome.

You can find information about requirements and duties in your state here.