Back when I lived in Wisconsin, I was an election official. I was always passionate about voting, and voting rights, and League of Women’s Voters (I was a member for many, many years.) Somewhere along the way, I decided to be a poll worker, around 1998, and after a few years, became an Election official, responsible for 4 Wards in the Milwaukee suburb city where I lived. It was a perfect fit for my talents, and my interest in making voting so easy and fun, as well as a civic duty. Kids came with their parents, I went to schools and brought sample ballots, taught in the middle and high school about civics and voting history. Kids came with their parents to vote. On their 18th birthdays, they took pictures of their first experience. It was a rite of passage. It was also serious work. I was pretty strict about following the rules, and the spirit of the law. The old guard of poll workers, who came to work to visit and gossip and didn’t really care to help voters (and frankly, were old and cranky and partisan), leftand we found younger (like in their 50’s) who could actually hear and move around, came to work.
It was a wonderful place to be. We always had (for every election) about a 95% turnout. Our ballots matched the voting tallies about 99% + of the time. 1 or 2 discrepancies meant we we have to recount the ballots manually, sometimes until midnight, so we all knew if we wanted to go home, we had to pay attention during the previous 15 hours. We had a great team.
Then came 2010. The mood had changed. Redistricting changed the maps, Partisan politics got ugly. We always had a few asshole agitators who tried to bend the rules. But it was clearly getting to be less fun. Poll inspectors/watchers moved in, and there were sometimes more watchers than there were workers. We had to start putting tape on the floor to keep them from grabbing the poll books and turning them to see the name of the voters who were present, and compare them with their list of registered party members. Then, up and running out to make phone calls, and strategies to “play” the vote… It got worse the next year, when Voting IDs were required. More and more people were getting testy and combative. I was now more of a referee/umpire. My mentor, the County Clerk, was fed up and planned to leave. I completed my last election in November of 2011, and left the state within a 7 month period, before the next election in April.
I miss those years, the good ones. I hope we get back to them someday. But that was living in a big, urban area. I live in a rural area now, in a state were voting by mail has been the norm for many, many years. It is better. It is easier for everyone, although it is spiritless.
ETA: Our State Secretary of State, who is expert at voting efficiently, and election practices and technologies in particular, has been recruited to Biden’s Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA). Washington Secretary of State Kim Wyman will join the Biden Administration as CISA’s Senior Election Security Lead:
