I’ve been volunteering on campaigns since 1980 when I did phone banking for Jimmy Carter. One memorable day, I called voters in Hallsville, Missouri. (I’m from Missouri.) 1980 was when the parties were shifting platforms. The Democratic Party, the party of the former Confederacy, was embracing civil rights, while the Party of Lincoln was moving toward right-wing extremism and winking at racists. I had conversations like this:
Me: What is your political affiliation?
Resident of Hallsville Missouri (a man): I’m a Democrat. My daddy was a Democrat and my granddaddy was a Democrat. You can’t get elected dog catcher in this town if you’re not a Democrat.
Me: Who will you be voting for, for president?
Him: Ronald Reagan.
Me: You do realize that Reagan is a Republican and Carter is a Democrat, right?
Him: [laughs] I’m not voting for your candidate.
Not long afterward, I sat in my college dormitory room on election night and cried when the map turned red. I’ve volunteered on campaigns regularly since.
How I Became a Voter Protection Volunteer Lawyer
In 2016, I received an email: The Clinton campaign was looking for lawyers willing to go to Nevada to monitor polling places during early voting and the general election. My job was to watch what was happening and report anything irregular to the lawyers who sat in what’s known as a “boiler room.” The boiler room lawyers solved whatever problems they could, and escalated issues requiring legal action to the litigation team.
In 2018, my husband Andy and I went to Nevada to monitor polling places for the midterms.
Our adventure
Each party was allowed to have one insider observer. Outside observers could only talk to voters more than 100 feet from the door.
Andy was stationed outside a polling place, watching, and I was inside. So there I was, wearing business casual (I looked like a lawyer but not too much like a lawyer) when the Republican observer sat down next to me, wearing a cowboy hat, cowboy boots, jeans, and a red plaid shirt. (No kidding).
He said, “What side are you on?”
Me (as innocently as I could manage): “Aren’t we all on the same side? The side of American democracy?”
He wasn’t amused. “I think you’re one of those California lawyers coming over here butting into our elections.”
I couldn’t lie even if I had wanted to. Our car had California license plates.
He left the polling place. Soon afterward, the sheriff arrived to follow up on a report that Andy was violating the law by talking to voters within 100 feet of the polling place. Andy did not (and would not) break the law. Andy talked to the sheriff, who talked to the polling place manager, who told the Sherrif that no, Andy was following rules.
I called the boiler room and told them what happened. They were planning to send us to a different polling location anyway. So we went to the next polling place (after a brief stop at Starbucks) and took our places, me inside, Andy outside.
Then guess who showed up. Yup, the cowboy. He’d evidently followed us. I called the boiler room and told them it was getting a little creepy. They moved us to a different polling place. He followed us there, too.
So the boiler room folks came up with a plan. They gave us driving directions. The idea was to fake him out. He’d think we were moving on to the nearest polling place, but at the last moment, we would switch lanes, get off the highway at a particular exit and swing around and get on a different highway. If we did it right, he wouldn’t be able to follow us. We would then go to a polling place in the next county.
It worked. We lost him. I think that qualifies as an actual car chase even though (of course) we never broke the speed limit. It was my first car chase, and I hope my last.
Georgia Democrats
In 2018, I met the director of voter protection in Georgia and told her I’d be happy to do volunteer work. She gave me the job of updating the Georgia Democrats’ Election Law Handbook. At the end of that task, I knew quite a bit about Georgia election law. She invited me into the boiler room during the primaries and the 2020 general election. I was also asked to join the Georgia voter protection committee.
Over the past year, I also put in dozens of hours of volunteer work for 866-Our-Vote.
This cycle, I was back in the Georgia Democrats Boiler Room doing shifts during early voting. I was in their boiler room all day on election day, and I’m back for a few shifts in the runoffs.
During the 2020 primaries, if you recall, just about everything went wrong in Georgia. The Democrats ended up filing several lawsuits and the newspapers carried the stories of Georgia’s election meltdown. This time around, things are much smoother, so at times the job is almost boring. This is why I always say that being an election worker is an important job. Good poll workers make it easier to vote. There will be fewer problems at the polls and the lawyers in the boiler rooms won’t have as much to do.
As a general rule, it’s good when you don’t need lawyers.
On the other hand, bad poll workers often create problems or contribute to problems, giving headaches to the lawyers in boiler rooms.
So if you can, be a poll worker. You’ll be a genuine American hero. It’s hard work with long hours and not much pay. If you need other ideas, see my list.
And now for a Ballots in the MIcrowave story.
While in law school, I attended a lecture from a visiting elections lawyer. Basically he was there to tell us what it’s like to be an election lawyer. He told us this story:
A volunteer worker in a local election found a box of ballots that hadn’t been counted. She took the box out to her car. It was raining. She forgot to close the lid, so the ballots got wet. She thought about what to do and got an idea.
She took the ballots back inside and put them in the microwave to dry them out. You guessed it. When she finished trying to dry them out, they were ruined and unreadable.
What happened next was that lawyers for the candidates got together to decide how to handle the situation. The point (according to the teller of the story) is that people often have the idea that elections work like clocks: Perfectly.
But they’re usually managed by volunteers and well, things go wrong.
Now, of course, there are rules in place so that no single person is in charge of the ballots. That was several decades ago.
One takeaway: Democracy (rule by the people) is messy and often disorganized. We do our best and roll with the mistakes.