In 2004, I was hearing some really appalling stories about attempted voter disenfranchisement. I was furious, but really didn't know if there was anything constructive I could do about it.
Someone on livejournal (unfortunately, I don't remember the name) posted a link to a group called Election Protection (http://www.abanet.org/2008election). I discovered that Election Protection was looking for attorney volunteers to help document election irregularities in Arizona, where my parents live.
I found a cheap plane ticket to Phoenix and signed up. It was one of the most frustrating and most rewarding experiences of my life. I worked a precinct that was pathetically understaffed and poorly organized (the poll workers had only one list of registered voters, so they would only check one voter at a time.) The wait for voting started out at 30 minutes and quickly got up to 4 hours over the course of the day. The head poll worker wouldn't do anything about it until nagged by Election Protection to come up with some ways of speeding things up (bringing in EP volunteers to help, breaking up the list so that one person could check names A-C, another D-K, etc.).
I learned a lot that day. I'm generally soft-spoken and don't like being loud and aggressive, but it was clear that day that my polite attempts to get things moving faster were ignored, while some of the more louder and more obnoxious people actually got things accomplished. It also became very clear to me that disorganization was the cause of a lot of disenfranchisement. One of our own volunteers disenfranchised a woman by reading her Voter ID incorrectly, and sending her to the wrong precinct to vote. By the time she realized the mistake, it was too late for her to vote.
I met a lot of people from all over the country who were really passionate about the right to vote, and we helped a lot of people. I got to see an astonishingly diverse neighborhood in Phoenix, one that I probably never would have visited had I not signed up. I wrote a really comprehensive report about the problems with this precinct (it had experienced a lot of growth since 2000 and the poll workers hadn't adjusted accordingly) and with the organization, and I hope that the report may help prevent problems in the future.
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Date: 2008-09-16 07:44 pm (UTC)Someone on livejournal (unfortunately, I don't remember the name) posted a link to a group called Election Protection (http://www.abanet.org/2008election). I discovered that Election Protection was looking for attorney volunteers to help document election irregularities in Arizona, where my parents live.
I found a cheap plane ticket to Phoenix and signed up. It was one of the most frustrating and most rewarding experiences of my life. I worked a precinct that was pathetically understaffed and poorly organized (the poll workers had only one list of registered voters, so they would only check one voter at a time.) The wait for voting started out at 30 minutes and quickly got up to 4 hours over the course of the day. The head poll worker wouldn't do anything about it until nagged by Election Protection to come up with some ways of speeding things up (bringing in EP volunteers to help, breaking up the list so that one person could check names A-C, another D-K, etc.).
I learned a lot that day. I'm generally soft-spoken and don't like being loud and aggressive, but it was clear that day that my polite attempts to get things moving faster were ignored, while some of the more louder and more obnoxious people actually got things accomplished. It also became very clear to me that disorganization was the cause of a lot of disenfranchisement. One of our own volunteers disenfranchised a woman by reading her Voter ID incorrectly, and sending her to the wrong precinct to vote. By the time she realized the mistake, it was too late for her to vote.
I met a lot of people from all over the country who were really passionate about the right to vote, and we helped a lot of people. I got to see an astonishingly diverse neighborhood in Phoenix, one that I probably never would have visited had I not signed up. I wrote a really comprehensive report about the problems with this precinct (it had experienced a lot of growth since 2000 and the poll workers hadn't adjusted accordingly) and with the organization, and I hope that the report may help prevent problems in the future.