One absolutely wonderful thing that happened in 2020 was the U.S. Presidential Election. Elections bookended the pandemic for me. In March 2020, I volunteered to be an inside poll observer for the Wake County Democratic Party. This gave me insight into how elections are carried out. Being one of those rare people who have never missed an election, I was already well-familiar with how the process worked from the public point of view but learning more about the various checks put in place was quite educational.
COVID was a thing in the March primary but not taken as seriously. Spending so long in a school classroom turned polling place, packed with dozens of strangers seems like suicide to me now. The general election was far more strict, with volunteers carefully limiting the number of people indoors.
I was also disappointed to be restricted in my movement during the general election. Chief judges would corral the observers into one area rather than letting us do our jobs. After some cajoling I managed to get this largely fixed. I’m sure part of the issue was the threat of violence that was on everyone’s mind due to heightened tensions.
Without exception, though, the interactions I had with the Republican poll observers I spent time with were positive. We had good chats about the state of the community and the country. In the past I would’ve posed for pictures with them but the pandemic made that unworkable.
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