I have just spent four long, exhausting and exhilarating days working at a polling station in Oakland, California. Every two years, the Alameda county Registrar of Voters hires temporary workers to staff the many polling locations throughout the county, and I figured this would be a good way for me to get involved. As I am not (yet) a US citizen, this would be my first look at the mechanics of the polls, though at an unusual time due to the pandemic.
Oakland is one of the most diverse cities in the nation: about 28% white, 27% latino, 23% Black, 16% Asian, and a smattering of other ethnicities. It is a city of contrast, with poverty and wealth, homelessness and mansions coexisting, sometimes within a stone's throw of each other.
In a normal election, there are about 700 polling locations throughout the county. This year, because of the pandemic, there were only 100, with about 25 in Oakland. Nobody knew how it would go: would we be swamped? There was no way to tell, this was literally an unprecedented situation.
I was assigned as a Judge 2 (I still don't know what the 2 means) to a polling location in East Oakland, in a former shopping mall now used mostly to house various services: Social Security, behavioral health care, elder independence, and a few others. The mall felt somewhat empty, but it is reasonably well maintained.
I was part of a team of about twenty people, all volunteers except for the supervisor. The county actually pays you, so you're not strictly speaking a volunteer, but you get less than $10 an hour, so if money is what you're after, you should probably consider other options. I was surprised to see that there were only five men. I asked other team members who had done this before, and they told me that this is normal: it's always mostly women.
There was S., a Black grandmother with braids. She and I immediately took to each other. Her eyes are shining with intelligence, and she is quick to kid around. As a Black grandmother, she is endowed with a great power: she can call anyone sweetie or honey, and no one ever has the slightest objection. This superpower can sometimes come in handy, as we'll see later.
There was C., another Black grandmother who loves to cook, and sells her jams, jellies and crafts at fairs and markets, or rather, used to sell them before the pandemic. She's still going, though, and I pity anyone who tries to stop her. C. has opinions and is not afraid to let you know about them. I liked her immediately.
There was B., a white middle-aged lady who, when I mentioned that I was French, spoke to me fondly of her wife of German extraction. B. is gregarious and has a gift for making people feel at ease. We got along famously.
I came to think of them as "my ladies". They were wonderfully kind and cheerful, and I adored them all.
There were also two high school girls, D. and F., who were doing this for high school credit (and pocket money), and ended up being marvelous at their job. D. was our Spanish interpreter, and she fulfilled her role quietly, competently and with great kindness. F. was a tiny young woman wearing a hijab. My ladies were endlessly tickled by the fact that, under her floor-length dress, she was wearing mountaineering boots. She was wonderfully helpful.
Our supervisor was R., a young Black woman of noticeable energy and decisiveness. R. works for the county and had been training for this election (her first) for two months. Assembling twenty strangers to work together for long hours over four days can offer, as you might imagine, some challenges, but R. had a firm yet gentle hand that made the whole thing work smoothly. She's the kind of public servant that makes the world go round, and rarely gets enough appreciation.
The first two days (Saturday, October 31 and Sunday, November 1) were terribly quiet. We saw maybe one voter every thirty minutes. We got really bored. We were all wearing masks, gloves and face shields. We knew that democracy can be messy, we discovered that it can also be sweaty and dull. But these two days allowed us to work out the kinks in the system. By Monday, we got more traffic, and of course Tuesday was very busy, but by then we were ready. Nobody had to wait longer than a half hour or so. Still too long, of course, but far better than what I had feared.
My job was to be a backup for the check-in ladies -- these are the first people you see when you enter the polling station. One offers you a mask and gloves, which you can decline if you do not fear some serious side-eye from a Black grandmother. Only one voter was that brave. We then had three stations that would ask you for your name, look you up in the register with an iPad, and explain your options. We had quite a few people who were not registered, but we could always offer them a provisional ballot, so no one was turned away.
In Alameda county, you can vote using a paper ballot, or you can use a touch screen, which then prints a paper ballot. This is a good system: no one (including myself) really trusts computerized voting, so having a printed ballot that you can visually inspect before casting it is the right way to go. Obviously, most older voters selected paper, and no one complained about these options.
I made two mistakes with voters that I regret but could not fix at the time. One was with a young person who was voting for the first time, and was clearly nervous and shy. I asked one of my teammates to walk him to the next station, and then realized that I had erred: this was a young lady, of ambiguous appearance maybe, but I probably made her feel bad at a moment when she needed all the support she could get. Lesson learned, or so I thought.
Later, a father came in with his child of maybe five years of age. We had mountains of styluses for the touch screens, and everyone got to keep theirs, so I offered one to the young man, only to have the father correct me: it was in fact a girl, and I fear that I may have hurt her with my blind assumption. This was a real lesson for me: you read about gender and political correctness, but these things really matter, and there is no excuse for hurting a child. I really wish we had more gender-neutral ways of addressing people and referring to them. I always addressed voters as "sir" and "ma'am", because I wanted to show respect, but this can be fraught. If I could call people sweetie or honey, that would be quite helpful, but I am a man, so that's simply not an option.
On election day, we saw several hundred people coming through. It was a magnificent slice of humanity, with every color of the rainbow. Most people were excited to vote. We got very few outbursts and gripes, and when we did, my ladies were always able to defuse the situation with kindness and grace. I have learned a lot from watching them.
I was particularly touched by two voters: one was an old Black man with a walker, who moved with great difficulty, but would not be deterred. He was going to cast his ballot if it cost him his life. We're not supposed to physically help voters, as I suppose that opens up all kinds of liabilities, but in his case we made some reasonable exceptions. We are, after all, human.
The other was a Hispanic couple, I would guess from central America. The wife needed some help because she could not read or write. In these situations, the procedure is that two poll workers must assist the voter, to lower the likelihood of any funny business. Our high school girls took excellent care of her, and she was able to proudly cast her ballot.
Overall, even though this was an exhausting experience (15 hours straight on November 3!), it was also a joyous one. Voting is the closest thing we have to a civic ritual, and I found it to be a profound and moving scene. Every voter got a round of applause after they cast their ballot, doubly so for first-time voters, and I think that was appreciated.
I met wonderful people that I would otherwise be unlikely to have ever met, and we all worked together to help the people of Oakland make their voice heard. I will definitely do this again in two years.
