Poll observing non-adventure: revenge of normal democracy

 

 

 

 I spent last weekend as an official Poll Observer for the Nevada State Democratic Party, monitoring two polling centers and a ballot dropoff location. Nevada is the one blue state that Trump has a slight chance of picking up, so it seemed worthwhile to spend time there, and a lot easier for me to get to than Arizona. Some thoughts:

• It was a normal voting process, and not the nightmare of voter intimidation we feared. I think that's the best and most important news, that the rot of Republican Party in its elected leadership and ideology hasn't yet corrupted to the day-to-day democratic process. Almost all the poll workers I saw were fine - all of them were friendly and polite to voters, and the one less-competent guy eventually got faster. 
  

• Almost all the voters were reasonable too - a few campaign buttons and hats but not many, and everyone obeyed the rules about wearing masks (mostly correctly). One jerk with a fever insisted on voting in person, so poll workers kept a big space clear around him, but one out of 500 that day isn't bad. 
  

• I think the voters got some reassurance from the Poll Observer presence, just that we were there to make sure voters were protected. Poll Observers and poll workers are different - workers are county employees running the centers, and while we observers weren't supposed to be involved indoors other than contacting the polling center manager and the Democratic Party, we were able to help voters indirectly. And outdoors, one polling center was comfortable using us as volunteers, redirecting disabled voters to the front of the line and escorting waiting voters to the restroom. Making the voting process better was definitely a feel-good aspect of the work.
  

• The fact that we needed so many poll observers is still a harm to democracy - in the absence of a Trump, we could have spent our efforts on normal political advocacy and canvassing. And there have been a few irregularities elsewhere, although not too bad so far. We also had long lines in some cases in Nevada, 2  to  3 hours long. That's ridiculous, but hopefully with a sane, Democratic presidency and increased use of mail-in ballots, we'll get a better functioning democracy soon.