Be a poll worker! Save democracy! Make a tiny amount of money!

Being a poll worker was one of the best things I’ve ever done.

If you’ve ever thought about doing it, here’s my advice: Give it a shot!

Poll workers were under attack four years ago and they’ll be under attack this election too. It’s a hard, complicated, sometimes boring but wonderfullly rewarding experience.

Democracy doesn’t work without poll workers.

It’s how elections get done!

[The below Salon.com audio piece was published November 11, 2000 1:06AM (EST)]

(This post is from October 22, 2020):

Dear Reader,

This morning Norma said to me, “Did you ever think you would one day be waking up in Italy in the middle of a pandemic with Donald Trump as president?”

Indeed I had not.

The sun was coming up over the Val di Chio. Norma was studying her Greek.

“Also,” I said, “there’s an election coming up. Did you hear about it?”

I’ve been obsessed about the election but uncertain how to proceed writing-wise. It was more clear-cut when I worked for Salon. They would sort of protect me from politics. Or protect politics from me. Now, the situation is less clear. When writing for Salon, I would ask myself every day: What can I say in this particular column, today, that is unique? What about my own experience, and my own way of looking at things, is different from what others might say?

So …

In 1997, Norma and I were standing in the garage of the house we’d recently bought, out on 48^th Avenue and Ortega in San Francisco, a foggy, flat, sea-washed landscape of mid-20^th century row houses, bland, bleak, ordinary, but safe, inexpensive, and near the beach. (For those who may be thinking we were rich, at that time we paid $275,000 for it.)

So we’re standing there in our garage in 1997 and this guy walked in. He just walked in and started looking around like he was interested in the merchandise—of which of course there was none. He was in his late forties, hair thinning on top, paunchy, and he wore a tweed jacket with elbow patches, a white shirt and a woven tie (this I take from my journal entries). He looked around and said, “This would make a good polling place.” Then he introduced himself as an official in the San Francisco Department of Elections and gave us the pitch.

So we talked it over after he left and we agreed to host elections in our garage, and to be trained as poll workers. That is how we came to work the 2000 presidential election, the Election of the Hanging Chad, the Dimpled Chad, the endless Florida hand recount, and the Supreme Court decision that handed the race to George W. Bush.

We learned a lot by being poll workers. We got to know our neighbors. We learned how many things can go wrong, and how tricky each election can be, because of changing methods, changing ballots and eligibility requirements. But we gained faith in the basic security and fairness of the American voting process.

So I suggest that if poll workers are needed in your area, if you are capable, intelligent, energetic, and a problem solver, do your country a favor. Volunteer to be a poll worker.

Bonus Audio: “I’m a Poll Worker Baby!”

At the time of the Bush-Gore election, Salon.com had a great new office on Market and Fourth Street with an audio production studio, where I would run in and make audio pieces that ran on Salon Audio. So a few days after the election, I posted a spoken word piece called “I’m a Poll Worker, Baby!” Amazingly, the page that hosted it nearly [OVER!] 20 years ago still resides on the Salon.com site, but the audio has been removed. You can listen to the piece here. I hope you do! It’s kinda crazy and fun.

Various observations:

• I wasn’t kidding about San Francisco’s preference for using people’s garages as polling places. For the Nov. 3, 2020 election, 191 of SF’s 588 polling places will be in the garages of private residences. That number is followed by public schools (85), churches (58), businesses (52), and firehouses (37).
• For some reason, Delaware and Pennsylvania prohibit the use of private residences for polling places.
• America had “more than 230,000” polling places used in the 2018 general election.
• You will be pleased to note that “Ten states—Arizona, California, Florida, Georgia, Louisiana, Mississippi, Missouri, Ohio, South Carolina and Texas—the District of Columbia and Puerto Rico–explicitly prohibit guns and other weapons in polling places.”
• In 2000, we used the Optech II Eagle, as my notes indicate, made by Sequoia Voting Systems.
• From Wikipedia: “On August 3, 2007, California Secretary of State Debra Bowen withdrew approval and granted conditional reapproval to Sequoia Voting Systems optical scan and DRE voting machines after a ‘review of the voting machines certified for use in California in March 2007’  found ‘significant security weaknesses throughout the Sequoia system’ and ‘pervasive structural weaknesses’ which raise ‘serious questions as to whether the Sequoia software can be relied upon to protect the integrity of elections.’”
• You will also be pleased to know, courtesy of the National Conference of State Legislatures, that in California, “Polling places [are] prohibited at a candidate’s residence, a sex offender’s residence, and in establishments that sell or dispense alcohol.
• California, Colorado, Indiana, Louisiana, Maryland, Massachusetts, Minnesota, New York, and Pennsylvania all prohibit using as a polling place any location that serves alcohol. But pubs are often used that way in the UK.
• Louisiana has a long list of places not to be used for polling: “Places where alcoholic beverages are dispensed; jails, penitentiaries and other penal locations; mental hospitals and mental health centers; eleemosynary or charitable institutions; private property owned, leased, or occupied by a candidate or candidate’s spouse; and private property owned, leased, or occupied by a state employees are prohibited as polling places.” ibid.
• This story by marriage equality rights activist John Lewis about his difficulty voting in Chicago makes me glad about San Francisco’s consistent use of provisional ballots. Whenever uncertainty exists about a voter’s status, that person may vote provisionally. Provisional ballots are processed after election day, in view of the public.
• Also, courtesy of the same National Conference of State Legislatures site, we learn that “federal law clearly prohibits the deployment of troops and armed agents to polls. Ordering troops or armed forces to a polling place is a federal crime (18 U.S.C. § 592). And officers and members of the Armed Forces are generally prohibited from interfering in elections through intimidation of voters and other related conduct (18 U.S.C. § 593, §10102).”
• The Power the Polls website explains how to become a poll worker where you live. They say that all poll workers get PPE, training, and payment, though the payment of course varies from place to place. We got $82. If you want to be a poll worker and know the requirements, you can find out there. For instance, these are the requirements in San Francisco. (Man, they’re getting paid better than we did back in 2000!