Back in June, I took my first turn as an elections officer in my home
precinct for the Democratic primary. Election Day, even for a smaller one like the primary, is a pretty long one: up at four a.m., at the polling place
by five a..m., work the station for thirteen hours, then break down and repack
all the equipment and complete the mountains of required paperwork, which
takes from sixty to ninety minutes. Very tiring, but since I found working the
previous election ultimately gratifying, I decided to do it again. I'll
probably even go for it again next year for the mid-term election.
Yesterday, the election for state governor, lieutenant governor, and attorney
general, plus several local positions, brought out a record number of voters
in town for a non-presidential election. Whereas the first time around was
a slow day (I even managed to get in a significant amount of work done on my
then-current novel-in-progress), yesterday was busy, busy. Very little
downtime, and quite a few hours on my feet, which I'm feeling a bit today.
The other officials on our team are all fantastic, consummate professionals,
and I'm proud to serve with them in one of the most important democratic
processes in this country. No matter who the members of our community voted
for, it was my honor to be part of making their votes count.
WDBJ Channel 7 from Roanoke did a short segment about our election, and you can even get a quick glimpse of ye Old Dude in action in the video story. The link is here.
