Serve our country - be a poll worker

I am going to be a poll worker this year.  I am so excited. This will be my first time, so the fact that it is this year makes it extra exciting and a little bit intimidating.

I have been voting since I was 21, which was a long time ago, and like most voters I never gave much thought to all the folks it takes to put on a free and fair election.  But the number is huge.  There are federal officials, state officials and county officials.  Most importantly, there are the volunteers—thousands of them, across the country.  These are the folks that ensure you are in the right place to vote, check you in and ensure that the ballot machines are working—and a million other things that makes voting in person possible. These volunteers are the frontline workers of our democracy.  And now I am proud to say that I am going to be one of them.

There is a desperate need for poll workers this year.  The coronavirus has added risk to doing anything that involves interacting with strangers.  According to the State Board of Elections, the average age of North Carolina’s poll workers is “around 70” years old. The older a person gets, the more vulnerable they are to serious illness or death due to COVID-19, the disease caused by the coronavirus.  

So, the pool of volunteers has gotten smaller just when the need is greatest.  Rural counties with smaller, older populations are having a harder time finding enough poll workers than our bigger, urban counties.

State election officials are estimating they will need nearly 25,000 poll workers this year.  Local boards of elections across the state need registered voters to work the polls for the 17 days of early voting in October and on Election Day, Nov. 3. 

One change this year will help county election officials deploy volunteers as they are needed.  Until the legislature changed the law this summer, volunteers could only work in their own precinct.  Now, volunteers can be used in any precinct within the county they are registered.  When I volunteered, Wake County asked me how far I was willing to travel on election day. As it happens,  I will actually serve in my own precinct at Lacy Elementary School.  
 
In Ohio, the State Board of elections is reaching out to retired military veterans asking them to become poll workers.  They are asking those who have served our country once, to come back into service to insure the most essential element of our democracy—The right to vote.
There is still time to volunteer in North Carolina.  Go to your county board of elections, and see if they could use your help.  I was never in the military, I am not a firefighter, police officer or paramedic.  I could never do what they do to serve our state and county—but I can do this.  I can serve our country buy helping people in my precinct vote on election day.