Voting in 2021

When I volunteered to work at the polls on Election Day in 2019, I was a first-timer, a rookie. Everything felt new to me—from arriving at the municipal building bleary-eyed to begin work at 5:15 for the start of a 15-hour day, to constructing and deconstructing the voting booths following the lead of more veteran poll workers, to assuming my specific role, accepting voting authority slips and pushing the buttons to activate the machines that enabled voters to record their choices.

Lured by the high pay and long hours,
I signed up again in 2021.

Like any rookie, I was both nervous and excited. I made a few rookie mistakes, such as inadvertently allowing a voter from District 8, across the room, to vote in my District 3 machine. (That required adding a note to the front of the poll book to explain why District 3 had one too many votes in its machines, and District 8 had one too few. Every number counts, after all!)

I took a year off in 2020, feeling reluctant to chance the Pandemic. But I was back for Primary Day last week, a slightly seasoned veteran. And the year off had made a difference, not so much in me as in the voters themselves. Primary Day is necessarily partisan. In New Jersey, voters have to declare their party identity and vote only for candidates of that party in the Primary. My job this time even included pushing a button to switch the machine between party ballots before the voter entered it.

This year's primaries seemed more than partisan.

Somehow, partisan politics seemed more upfront this time around. And distrust was in the air.  At least four different voters, all declared Republicans, asked if we were using Dominion voting machines. They seemed only partly mollified when we told them no. Had they ever questioned the machine manufacturer in previous years? I doubt it.

Then there was the couple who, after signing their names in the poll book next to their previous year’s signature, and clearly matching those signatures, turned to me and said, “Who is verifying our signatures?” I assumed they were joking and replied with a wink, “She’s checking yours, and you’re checking hers.” “That’s why we’re in the mess we’re in,” the man said with a tone. Unable to just smile or nod, I said, “Not much of a mess.”  That set the man off, and his voice went up in volume, “Just look at our border. More than 40,000 illegals coming in each month. That’s what we get for electing Biden, and anybody who voted for him deserves the blame.”  I wisely decided not to point out that this was a primary to decide only local and state candidates.  

There were other new wrinkles this year. Several dozen voters needed assistance in typing in the names of write-in candidates who had not used the petition process to get on the ballot formally. For some older voters that was not such an easy task. But we were there to help, and, following rules outlined in our poll workers’ manual, made sure that there was one poll worker from each party in the booth to assist the voter. We tried hard to do it right.

I have been voting for many years and working the polls for only two. But this time seemed a little testier to me. I plan to be back “behind the lines” in November to help things run as smoothly and as accurately as possible. Trust me.

And I helped!