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I think all US folks reading this should volunteer at their county's Registrar of Voters (or equivalent agency for their county). Spend one election working at

I think all US folks reading this should volunteer at their county's Registrar of Voters (or equivalent agency for their county). Spend one election working at a polling place, and another election working at the RoV HQ. See what it's like to go through the training, and what things are like on Election Day, and in the days leading up (for places that allow early voting, drop-off, etc.).

Sabinus 2y ago
This is a very good suggestion. The internet discourse gets further and further from reality in a lot of areas. Engaging in the actual reality of the voting system is an excellent 'touch grass' opportunity for people passionate about the election.
- thinkingtoilet 2y ago
  >The internet discourse gets further and further from reality in a lot of areas This is an intended feature, and it's exclusively a feature of one political party. The elections are always rigged, this one is rigged, the voting process is rigged, just don't ask me to present evidence in a court of law...
alistairSH 2y ago
To what end? Local to me, an “trained” election volunteer was still questioning voter’s citizenship at the polls. I’d say this was a fluke if the GOP hadn’t spent the last umpteen months pushing all this non-citizen voting nonsense. https://wapo.st/3AsIvnf https://wapo.st/3AsIvnf
- CaliforniaKarl 2y ago
  > To what end? You'll know what to do. I worked a total of eleven elections, from primarily elections to general elections. I even worked a special recall election where the recall was the only thing on the ballot. I was a volunteer for all of them. I worked as a "Polling Place Inspector", which means I was 'in charge' of a single polling place: I did the setup & teardown, reached out to the other polling place's poll workers to confirm they'll be there, and scheduled breaks etc.. I worked in Orange County, California, which is the county between Los Angeles and San Diego. At the time, it was very right-leaning. It may be so today, but that doesn't matter for this post. Fun fact: In Orange County, poll workers are the only people who are allowed to question (or "challenge") a person's right to vote. The general public are not. How do I know that? Because it's one of the things I was taught during training. You can see it mentioned in [2], on page 11, under "What Are Observers NOT Allowed To Do?". (In the document, "precinct board" means "the poll workers".) Now, three situational "pop quizzes" related to the situation from the article. In all three, you are a poll worker. Note that I will refer to procedures that were in place in Orange County, CA, not Fairfax County, VA: Pop Quiz #1: Someone has arrived to vote, and you do not believe they are eligible to vote, what do you do? Answer #1: You are challenging a voter. You have the voter vote provisionally. Their ballot would be sealed in the envelope, and their information (plus an explanation of why you're having them vote provisionally) would be on the envelope. The challenged voter would take a receipt with them, giving them a phone number to call, should they want to check up on the status of their vote after the election. Fun Fact: Challenging a voter without probable cause is a felony in the State of California. How do I know that? Because it's in the instructional handbook that every poll worker gets, when they go through training. You can find Orange County's handbook for the 2018 election at [1]. Pop Quiz #2: Someone at the polling place, who is not a poll worker, is challenging peoples' right to vote. What do you do? Answer #2: Call the dedicated polling place helpdesk, letting them know about the incident. Depending on the person's behavior, you may ask them to leave, or you may skip directly to calling the police. Your polling place inspector would have already looked up the phone number of the nearest police station, or you could just call 911. Fun Fact: As part of polling place supplies, I received a county mobile phone. I was specifically instructed to charge it up in advance of election day. They were always chunky Nokia phones, which felt like they could be used as a weapon in an emergency. Finally, to address your question… Pop Quiz #3: Another poll worker is challenging a voter, and you believe the challenge is unlawful. What do you do? Answer #3: If you are not able to dissuade the poll worker into allowing the voter to vote normally, then you have them vote provisionally. The most important thing is to get the voter through the process, and their provisional envelope into the box. Once that is done, you reach out to the polling place helpdesk, letting them know who did what. Indeed, quoting from the article you linked, "After the [polling place] manager intervened, Burrell-Aldana was allowed to vote." The article does not say, but I expect the polling place manager was already planning on how to communicate the incident back to headquarters, and was keeping an eye on that poll worker. If you had volunteered for this election, and you happened to be in the situation from this article, then you would have known what to do. :-) [1]: https://ocvote.gov/fileadmin/user_upload/elections/gen2018/Training/Nov_2018_Poll_Worker_Handbook_Online.pdf https://ocvote.gov/fileadmin/user_upload/elections/gen2018/T... [2]: https://ocvote.gov/election-library/docs/Election%20Observation%20Handbook.pdf https://ocvote.gov/election-library/docs/Election%20Observat...
  - alistairSH 2y ago
    My point was that despite all the training, some whack job was still allowed to work and question voters’ rights. How many did he successfully turn away? Hopefully none, but we don’t know.
- tastyfreeze 2y ago
  Virginia purged 1600 non-citizens from their voter rolls and a Chinese student actually voted in Michigan. Clearly requiring citizenship to register as a voter is not sufficient. Poll volunteers should be verifying citizenship.
  - elmomle 2y ago
    One person voting who is not allowed is as bad (in terms of fidelity of the vote to legal voters' intentions) as one person being kept from voting who is allowed. There is copious evidence that these purges, and the atmosphere of fear they create, cause far more harm than they prevent.
    - CaliforniaKarl 2y ago
      From one of the articles about what happened in Virginia[0]: > “Governor Youngkin has been clear: every eligible Virginia citizen who wants to vote can do so by Same Day Registering through Election Day—that’s what our law says,” said Youngkin spokesman Christian Martinez. > A “final failsafe,” Martinez added, is the ability for residents to use same day registration to vote early or on Election Day. [0]: https://www.cnn.com/2024/11/02/politics/us-citizens-caught-in-virginias-voter-purge/index.html https://www.cnn.com/2024/11/02/politics/us-citizens-caught-i...
    - gotoeleven 2y ago
      Maybe the best answer would be to just create a system where only people who are legally allowed to vote, and those that aren't allowed can't, and the provenance of any given ballot is very clear and secure.
      - dymk 2y ago
        Just make a system that works, why hadn’t anyone else thought of that?
        briandear 2y ago
        Nobody wants that. The more mayhem, the easier it is to cheat. Same reason the U.S. has such a complicated tax code.
- sixothree 2y ago
  I remember hearing polls workers saying "here comes another good republican". Next year they had monitors at the polls.
- briandear 2y ago
  Except non-citizens have voted. And the Democrats found Virgina over removing confirmed non-citizens from the voter rolls. Why would anyone support keeping illegible voters on the rolls? We all know why.
  - saagarjha 2y ago
    Nobody is going to argue that non-citizens should be on the voter rolls. They are going to be upset if your method for taking them out is too coarse and removes legitimate voters, though.
    - gedy 2y ago
      > Nobody is going to argue that non-citizens should be on the voter rolls. There are plenty of folks who think illegal aliens* should be allowed to vote. * not sure what the political correct term is now tbh, double-plus-unnaturalized maybe, ha?
      - saagarjha 2y ago
        Those people think that they should be allowed to do so legally.
    - alistairSH 2y ago
      Exactly. Non-citizen voting is illegal already. We don’t need new laws re-banning it. The numbers of non-citizens voting is small so any effort to purge them is as likely to disenfranchise legitimate voters as remove illegal voters. That’s a net negative.
- ReptileMan 2y ago
  And which is this mythical group of people that will be disenfranchised if the rule of showing photo id is implemented? How many US citizens don't have any form of valid id?
  - alistairSH 2y ago
    https://www.voteriders.org/analysis-millions-lack-voter-id/ https://www.voteriders.org/analysis-millions-lack-voter-id/ ~7 million with no ID ~29 million without an up-to-date DL
testfoobar 2y ago
What are examples of things one might learn doing this?
- tedunangst 2y ago
  Whether your local precinct uses paper ballots as suggested by the internet.
lotsofpulp 2y ago
That seems like a massive waste of time and energy compared to just implementing mail in voting for everyone like Washington and Oregon have for so many years.
- mulmen 2y ago
  Washington and Oregon still need volunteers to monitor the drop boxes and retrieve, count, tabulate, and audit ballots.
veggieroll 2y ago
I did this (3 elections in a row from 2018-2020), and .... now I don't vote, because it became clear to me that the process is not trustworthy.

Sabinus 2y ago

This is a very good suggestion. The internet discourse gets further and further from reality in a lot of areas. Engaging in the actual reality of the voting system is an excellent 'touch grass' opportunity for people passionate about the election.

thinkingtoilet 2y ago
>The internet discourse gets further and further from reality in a lot of areas This is an intended feature, and it's exclusively a feature of one political party. The elections are always rigged, this one is rigged, the voting process is rigged, just don't ask me to present evidence in a court of law...

alistairSH 2y ago

To what end? Local to me, an “trained” election volunteer was still questioning voter’s citizenship at the polls. I’d say this was a fluke if the GOP hadn’t spent the last umpteen months pushing all this non-citizen voting nonsense. https://wapo.st/3AsIvnf https://wapo.st/3AsIvnf

CaliforniaKarl 2y ago
> To what end? You'll know what to do. I worked a total of eleven elections, from primarily elections to general elections. I even worked a special recall election where the recall was the only thing on the ballot. I was a volunteer for all of them. I worked as a "Polling Place Inspector", which means I was 'in charge' of a single polling place: I did the setup & teardown, reached out to the other polling place's poll workers to confirm they'll be there, and scheduled breaks etc.. I worked in Orange County, California, which is the county between Los Angeles and San Diego. At the time, it was very right-leaning. It may be so today, but that doesn't matter for this post. Fun fact: In Orange County, poll workers are the only people who are allowed to question (or "challenge") a person's right to vote. The general public are not. How do I know that? Because it's one of the things I was taught during training. You can see it mentioned in [2], on page 11, under "What Are Observers NOT Allowed To Do?". (In the document, "precinct board" means "the poll workers".) Now, three situational "pop quizzes" related to the situation from the article. In all three, you are a poll worker. Note that I will refer to procedures that were in place in Orange County, CA, not Fairfax County, VA: Pop Quiz #1: Someone has arrived to vote, and you do not believe they are eligible to vote, what do you do? Answer #1: You are challenging a voter. You have the voter vote provisionally. Their ballot would be sealed in the envelope, and their information (plus an explanation of why you're having them vote provisionally) would be on the envelope. The challenged voter would take a receipt with them, giving them a phone number to call, should they want to check up on the status of their vote after the election. Fun Fact: Challenging a voter without probable cause is a felony in the State of California. How do I know that? Because it's in the instructional handbook that every poll worker gets, when they go through training. You can find Orange County's handbook for the 2018 election at [1]. Pop Quiz #2: Someone at the polling place, who is not a poll worker, is challenging peoples' right to vote. What do you do? Answer #2: Call the dedicated polling place helpdesk, letting them know about the incident. Depending on the person's behavior, you may ask them to leave, or you may skip directly to calling the police. Your polling place inspector would have already looked up the phone number of the nearest police station, or you could just call 911. Fun Fact: As part of polling place supplies, I received a county mobile phone. I was specifically instructed to charge it up in advance of election day. They were always chunky Nokia phones, which felt like they could be used as a weapon in an emergency. Finally, to address your question… Pop Quiz #3: Another poll worker is challenging a voter, and you believe the challenge is unlawful. What do you do? Answer #3: If you are not able to dissuade the poll worker into allowing the voter to vote normally, then you have them vote provisionally. The most important thing is to get the voter through the process, and their provisional envelope into the box. Once that is done, you reach out to the polling place helpdesk, letting them know who did what. Indeed, quoting from the article you linked, "After the [polling place] manager intervened, Burrell-Aldana was allowed to vote." The article does not say, but I expect the polling place manager was already planning on how to communicate the incident back to headquarters, and was keeping an eye on that poll worker. If you had volunteered for this election, and you happened to be in the situation from this article, then you would have known what to do. :-) [1]: https://ocvote.gov/fileadmin/user_upload/elections/gen2018/Training/Nov_2018_Poll_Worker_Handbook_Online.pdf https://ocvote.gov/fileadmin/user_upload/elections/gen2018/T... [2]: https://ocvote.gov/election-library/docs/Election%20Observation%20Handbook.pdf https://ocvote.gov/election-library/docs/Election%20Observat...
- alistairSH 2y ago
  My point was that despite all the training, some whack job was still allowed to work and question voters’ rights. How many did he successfully turn away? Hopefully none, but we don’t know.
tastyfreeze 2y ago
Virginia purged 1600 non-citizens from their voter rolls and a Chinese student actually voted in Michigan. Clearly requiring citizenship to register as a voter is not sufficient. Poll volunteers should be verifying citizenship.
- elmomle 2y ago
  One person voting who is not allowed is as bad (in terms of fidelity of the vote to legal voters' intentions) as one person being kept from voting who is allowed. There is copious evidence that these purges, and the atmosphere of fear they create, cause far more harm than they prevent.
  - CaliforniaKarl 2y ago
    From one of the articles about what happened in Virginia[0]: > “Governor Youngkin has been clear: every eligible Virginia citizen who wants to vote can do so by Same Day Registering through Election Day—that’s what our law says,” said Youngkin spokesman Christian Martinez. > A “final failsafe,” Martinez added, is the ability for residents to use same day registration to vote early or on Election Day. [0]: https://www.cnn.com/2024/11/02/politics/us-citizens-caught-in-virginias-voter-purge/index.html https://www.cnn.com/2024/11/02/politics/us-citizens-caught-i...
  - gotoeleven 2y ago
    Maybe the best answer would be to just create a system where only people who are legally allowed to vote, and those that aren't allowed can't, and the provenance of any given ballot is very clear and secure.
    - dymk 2y ago
      Just make a system that works, why hadn’t anyone else thought of that?
      - briandear 2y ago
        Nobody wants that. The more mayhem, the easier it is to cheat. Same reason the U.S. has such a complicated tax code.
sixothree 2y ago
I remember hearing polls workers saying "here comes another good republican". Next year they had monitors at the polls.
briandear 2y ago
Except non-citizens have voted. And the Democrats found Virgina over removing confirmed non-citizens from the voter rolls. Why would anyone support keeping illegible voters on the rolls? We all know why.
- saagarjha 2y ago
  Nobody is going to argue that non-citizens should be on the voter rolls. They are going to be upset if your method for taking them out is too coarse and removes legitimate voters, though.
  - gedy 2y ago
    > Nobody is going to argue that non-citizens should be on the voter rolls. There are plenty of folks who think illegal aliens* should be allowed to vote. * not sure what the political correct term is now tbh, double-plus-unnaturalized maybe, ha?
    - saagarjha 2y ago
      Those people think that they should be allowed to do so legally.
  - alistairSH 2y ago
    Exactly. Non-citizen voting is illegal already. We don’t need new laws re-banning it. The numbers of non-citizens voting is small so any effort to purge them is as likely to disenfranchise legitimate voters as remove illegal voters. That’s a net negative.
ReptileMan 2y ago
And which is this mythical group of people that will be disenfranchised if the rule of showing photo id is implemented? How many US citizens don't have any form of valid id?
- alistairSH 2y ago
  https://www.voteriders.org/analysis-millions-lack-voter-id/ https://www.voteriders.org/analysis-millions-lack-voter-id/ ~7 million with no ID ~29 million without an up-to-date DL

testfoobar 2y ago

What are examples of things one might learn doing this?

tedunangst 2y ago
Whether your local precinct uses paper ballots as suggested by the internet.

lotsofpulp 2y ago

That seems like a massive waste of time and energy compared to just implementing mail in voting for everyone like Washington and Oregon have for so many years.

mulmen 2y ago
Washington and Oregon still need volunteers to monitor the drop boxes and retrieve, count, tabulate, and audit ballots.

veggieroll 2y ago

I did this (3 elections in a row from 2018-2020), and .... now I don't vote, because it became clear to me that the process is not trustworthy.