So, the other day, I got a letter asking me to confirm my interest in being an Officer of Elections for the upcoming midterms, and yes, it had my name on it, not my daffy conspiracy theorist landlord’s. I don’t know where they got that impression, but I have no interest in getting my house burned down by MAGAts, so I called them and said, “No thanks.”
I suppose that makes me a coward. I don’t know.
It’s a sad state of affairs when someone is afraid to be involved in the democratic process of voting. I would have said yes myself.
These people are nuts, man. A lot of license plates showing the Gadsden flag; a lot of trucks with Punisher logos and pictures of AR-15s saying “Come and take it”.
Do it. Jump in and join us. The water’s warm!
Seriously, it’s the thing on my life I’m proudest for having been a part of. I mean it. (True, my other accomplishments are pretty slim…but still).
You’ll work on a great team of folks from your community. You’ll be a part of something huge, yet your experience will be very local.
I was afraid about idiot retaliations, but so far no issues. We did receive more “thank you for doing this” from voters than usual (in our primary a week ago), maybe from folks who has seen that wrenching testimony of the Georgian mother and daughter at the Jan 6 hearings.
Do it.
This seems low for them to stoop to, to get help. It’s junk mail, obviously.
I applied to be a poll worker during the 2020 election cycle and never heard anything from Miami-Dade County, so I kinda forgot about it. I got a message the other day that my application had been approved, and asking if I still wanted to be a poll worker.
It turns out that we will be away for most of this election season, so it’s easy for me to say, “no.” But, like the OP, I have to admit to concern about what I might encounter at a polling place, and I’m not even (as far as I know) in one of the crazier pieces of the county. I feel no small amount of shame over these sentiments, and I wish I was a braver person.
Maybe I’ll feel differently next election. I hope so. Going to do a little soul-searching in the meantime.
I worked the recent Maryland primary as a provisional election judge and wasn’t concerned even a little bit for my safety.
It probaby helps that my county (Carroll), though rural and red, isn’t a wild west shitshow.
C’mon, it’s easy money, boring 99% of the time. Do it!
Highly unlikely.
No elections office has the money to send out junk mail solicitations.
Such letters are sent only to people that have expressed interest (like it said in your letter). It’s possibly you did so accidentally – if you attended a precinct caucus or political convention, signed in for jury duty, registered to vote or changed voting address – all these forms in many jurisdictions have a box to check to indicate an interest in being an election judge. It’s quite possible to check that box not realizing what it is.
The other big source is from political parties. They want to have their supporters at polling places, so they submit lists to the elections office of people interested in being election judges. If you talked to a political activist and expressed an opinion or complaint about elections – like the lines were too long cause not enough workers; that there were too many from party X, or that you didn’t trust that them – the political activist might have put you down on the list of ‘interested people’. Probably should have made it clear to you that they were doing that, but they may think they did that, or think that they were doing you a favor by recommending you.
But somehow you got on their list of possibly interested people, and so they sent you that letter to see if you were really interested in starting the process. That’s hw it works.
P.S. I have been an election judge for years; never had any reason to be worried at all. No pickets, poll watchers, or anything like that. But every election, dozens of people thanking us for doing this work. The closest we get to unpleasant is when we have to ask someone to remove or cover up some political clothing they are wearing. Even then, they usually just apologize and comply.
You shouldn’t feel guilty about saying “no” if you aren’t comfortable with it. But damn, I would so definitely do it, if it were me.
They don’t publish lists of who’s helping with elections in the local paper, do they?
For someone to burn down your house, wouldn’t YOU have to tell some violent nut-job that you were doing it, AND tell them you were a secret Hillary Pizzagate commando who would be changing votes (from Pence to Franken)?
Now you’ve got me thinking I should sign up to help, but I wouldn’t brag about it in my local bar.
I just asked my city clerk this, and I’ll let you know.
All of us election staffers wore name tags during primary voting. Make of that what you will.
We wore name tags with our first names.
Anyway, here’s the email reply from our (Wisconsin) city clerk:
Yes, election official information is a public record and is disclosed upon request (just as any public employee would be). However, we only provide name and party affiliation, if any.
We do not provide address, telephone or email.
The only time I can remember getting an open record request for the election officials was in mid-2021 as parties were preparing to submit nominees to serve as election officials. I think they were trying to determine who was already an unaffiliated election worker and then asking if they wanted to work by affiliation.
And because election officials are confirmed by Council (required by state law), a list of all election officials is attached to legislation which is available on the City’s legislative information center. This confirmation occurs every two years at the start of each election term.
I was a poll worker 2 or 3 times when I was a baby grad student back in the late 80s. I think I applied for the job because it paid $50 (or maybe $100) for the 12 hour day of work, and that was a lot of money to me at the time. Granted that things were a little calmer back then, politically, and the main rivalry in Berkeley was between views that range between Socialist and Social Democratic (an exaggeration, but not by much). I was the captain of the precinct crew at least once, which meant I got to show up at 6:30AM at the private home to set up the voting stations in the garage, manage everyone else, count the ballots cast (not the results), and deliver them to the central drop-off after closing.
No computers. No cell phones. No social media. Barely any cable news. Just OG democracy.
It was kind of nice.
Here too, but I used a nickname, no one said a word