I was a poll worker yesterday. It reaffirmed my faith in America

The week before the 2020 election, I took to running up and down the streets of Cambridge, Massachusetts, at night instead of sleeping. I gave myself shin splints and ended up frightening the neighbors.

This year, as a round, pregnant ball, running in the dark wasn’t an option. Instead, I decided to channel my anxiety into something constructive and applied to be a poll worker on Election Day.

Poll workers in my jurisdiction earn a starting wage of $19 an hour. We are required to do an online training, and then another hour of in-person or Zoom training, both of which required passing tests afterwards.

We also had to fill out a glut of forms—probably the most difficult part. I spent two hours converting PDF forms to Word Docs and back, only to have them all returned because I’d typed my signature. The skeptic in me wondered if the forms were also a test—if you can survive filling them out, you’ll probably make it as a poll worker, which requires strict adherence to a detailed process.

I was assigned to work with a team of eight other people. My fellow poll workers included a high school student, two college students, a former Uber driver, a retired software programmer, and a researcher studying democracies.

We had different reasons for working: Some of us, myself included, wanted an alternative to doom-scrolling, others wanted to carry out their civic duty, and some simply thought it was fun. We had one goal in common: to do our part in ensuring that a fair and proper election was carried out.

“You have no opinions today,” our team leader told us at 6:15 a.m. as we swore an oath to do our best. “You have one job and that’s to make sure the election goes properly.” We were required to stow our phones and computers, and we were not allowed to talk about politics.

I held up my hand and swore. Inside, I worried. I definitely have opinions, which was what had gotten me here in the first place.

Politics aside

At 6:30, the doors opened and people flooded in. My job was to check if someone was eligible to vote and hand them a ballot. I was given a list of who was registered to vote, who needed their ID checked, who had already voted early or absentee, or who had received an early-voting ballot, all of which meant I needed to refer them to the team leaders for additional clearance.

I could also see which party people were registered for. This was my major concern. In an election that’s so polarized, how was I supposed to turn off my feelings about which party someone had registered with?

To my surprise, I found party affiliation was the last thing I cared about. Faced with a crowd of people who were anxious to vote and then get to work, my primary concern was getting everything right. I was so busy checking eligibility, verifying ID if needed, and making sure I handed over one ballot—not two stuck together—that I had no idea what party a voter was registered for.

Ironically, as I worked, I stopped caring about what was happening with the broader election and more about carrying out the minute-by-minute work doing my duty. Since I could not read or doom-scroll, all I could do was focus on the job in front of me.

One family stopped by with three generations of voters. Another told us they’d just become citizens and they were voting in their first election. We cheered. A mother came in with her eighteen-year-old, another first-time voter. We cheered again. When the eighteen-year-old changed her mind, asked for a new ballot and started to panic, one of the poll workers took her aside. The worker was an election veteran who wasn’t shy about arguing with our team leader when she thought his process would make us stay overtime, but with the eighteen-year-old, she had all the time in the world.

“I can’t tell you how to vote or talk about the issues with you, but what can we do to make you feel better?” she asked.

Around mid-morning, Senator Elizabeth Warren stopped by to vote. All of us conspired to make sure our high school poll worker helped her feed her ballot into the machine, and got a selfie. Despite the flashing cameras and news crew, Senator Warren also took a few minutes to thank us all for the work we did. This process is important, she told us. It’s sacred.

By 3:00 p.m., my back and feet ached. I had another five hours to go before polls closed, and after that, another hour of sorting ballots and cleanup. I was tired. Pregnancy had a done a number on my stamina, but I smiled as I checked in a young man. Perhaps he could see that I was tired. He thanked me for my service and told me I was doing a great job. “I’m so glad you’re out here voting,” I told him. He smiled back and thanked me again.

Later, I realized he was registered for a party I didn’t support. Still, I meant every word.

When I finally left the polls at 9:00 p.m., my entire body ached from standing all day, but oddly I was at peace. My phone was flooded with messages from friends who’d spent the day doom-scrolling. I took a peek, and then put it away.

Life outside the echo chamber

Usually, I spend most of an election reading about my fellow Americans and panicking. Yet, at the polls, I’d run into old neighbors, people from all walks of life and all beliefs, and I’d found most of them to be delightful. (The only non-delightful person was the relative of a political official. I’m a fan of the official in question, but the relative made sure we knew about the family connection, yelled at us for explaining the voting process, and then proceeded to screw up their ballot anyway and needed a new one. Karma.)

Working the polls, I was reminded that America is held together by processes that embody our values. We were founded as a country built on the ideal that all people are created equal and deserve life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. In recent years, it feels as if this ideal is slipping through the cracks, but at the polls I saw that the average American believes in treating their neighbors with kindness and decency, regardless of who they are and how they vote.

It is a message that I want to remember—that I hope we all remember—in the coming days and years ahead. We are, above all, a democracy, which means our guiding principle should be about doing what the people want. Not all of us may feel good about who is in power, but as citizens, we can still do our best to protect the nation we believe in and the neighbors we live with. We have pledged to be one nation, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all. Let’s do everything we can to stay that way.