Political participation

Much of my research has something to do with political or civic participation. I've written about participation in state environmental permitting processes, local zoning processes, even about community based participation in neighborhood beautification projects.

However, until this summer, I've done little research on participation in voting. I figured that the political scientists have that covered and any good scholar tries to find the areas that no one else is paying attention to. This summer I conducted a pilot study on community involvement with the help of young people from our local environmental justice crew, ASPIRE, and Northeastern University. The project had many goals, the most important of which was testing whether using young people as surveyors would work.

Anyway, a few of the questions had to do with voting behavior. I was not surprised to find that about a half of subjects in our study voted in the previous election. It was a landmark election and bitterly fought. Participation in that election was fairly high. In East Boston, over 50% of registered voters came out that day.

This summer I also volunteered for the first time in an electoral campaign. In the past I have helped developed policy platforms and similar things. This time I was in the thick of it. I was the bookkeeper, I went out doorknocking with the candidate, I helped keep the computer equipment working. On election day, for the first time ever, I worked in a poll.

My job was to be a poll checker. Basically, I sit behind the poll worker and listen for who comes into vote. If they are on my list, I check them off. Three other campaigns had poll checkers too. It was a long and not terribly exciting day.

However, what I witnessed was just astounding. I saw our poll worker allow two registered Republicans vote in this Democratic primary. I had to call our campaign lawyer and he had to come in and educate the Warden and the poll workers. Apparently, the poll worker was told in the last primary to allow Republicans to declare a different party and allow them to vote. In Massachusetts, only the unenrolled can do that.

The poll worker for my precinct also had some problem with her eyes. I suspect either cataracts or maybe glaucoma. In any event, she had a hard time actually reading the book with the list of registered voters. Several times she checked off the wrong voter and had to be corrected. The Warden and the other poll workers tried to get her to let another poll worker do that, but she was having none of it. She made several mistakes that took time to correct. It was amazing.

The candidate I was supporting did not win. These problems are definitely not the reason for her loss. However, I am disturbed that something that is supposed to be so important to our political identity as a democracy is conducted with such a cavalier attitude. I don't expect perfection. Mistakes happen and these poll workers work 13-14 hour days - and that's if nothing goes wrong. But these people are paid to do this work. And good money too. It is too much to ask for poll workers to not be blind and know the basics of who gets to vote in a primary?

I had tried to volunteer once to be a poll worker after I moved back to Boston. The city put out a notice that they needed volunteers. The city never called me back. I didn't think much about it. When I went to vote in the next election, I noticed that the poll site seemed to be overstaffed. There were something like 12 people for a single precinct. I guess they didn't need the volunteers in my neighborhood. But now I wonder, who chooses the volunteers? How are the assigned to the polls? And how does a woman who is half blind manage to become the clerk of a polling station?