As the dust settles after Election '22 I would like to share my experience with the election process. I have lived in the US for most of my life and have participated in elections ever since I became a citizen to the extent that I rarely ducked the responsibility to vote. This time around, I decided I would take a more active role. This may be because I am now retired and have more time at my disposal. I think it was more the perception that the things about the US that have made it a "shining city on the hill" were in jeopardy. Whatever the reasons, I spent the last year raising support for the candidates of my choice. This included talking to fellow citizens, organizing and motivating them and raising money for political campaigns. Readers might say this blog has also been a form political activism. And I volunteered to work at a polling station on Election Day. Let me tell you about that experience.
Volunteers were given 1-2 hours of training at the County Clerk's office. We were to report to our assigned location at 6 am, an hour before opening time on Election Day and set up the computers, voting booths etc. When the doors opened at 7 am we hit the ground running with voters already lined up outside. Except for lunch and bathroom breaks which we took without interrupting the process, we went non-stop to closing time which was when the last voter in line had voted, about 8 pm. We then packed up the computers, booths, tables and chairs. Each voter had been given a ballot and voter permit. These were fed into machines after voters had marked their ballots. The ballots and permits had to be counted to ensure their numbers matched. Note - this had nothing to do with which candidate had got the vote, just the number of ballots and permits. Over a thousand votes were cast at our location and the counting was done by hand. Hand counting is a tedious process and every sheet was counted twice by separate individuals to ensure accuracy. By the time we were done it was well past 10 pm. We were exhausted but exhilarated knowing that we had done our job.
When I signed up for this there had been reports in the media about people in masks and bearing automatic firearms "monitoring" drop boxes at some locations in Arizona with speculation about the possibility of violence on Election Day. As a result my wife was concerned for my safety and my friends asked, tongue in cheek, if I was getting a flak jacket. In reality, there was not even a hint of unpleasantness all day. Voters of all ages, genders, ethnic backgrounds and different political persuasions were, without exception, on their best behavior. Many thanked us for our "service".
I went home that night tired but with a good feeling about our democracy. Differences of opinion are par for the course but the process of expressing that opinion in an orderly way had held up. Judging by the lack of reports to the contrary, this was not limited to our neck of the woods but was a nation-wide phenomenon. Let us rejoice in that fact and relegate the election-deniers and other extremists to the fringe where they belong. Let us also not take this for granted in the future: because participation by the governed in the election process is the ultimate measure of the success of a democracy. As well as this election appears to have gone, the number of people voting is well short of its potential. Apathy is the opposite of participation and there is much work to be done on that front.