At around 3:40 p.m. on Tuesday, Nov. 3, a friend and I trepidatiously entered the East Granby Senior Center. Inside, we were greeted by an orderly yet purposeful flurry of activity: Voters anxiously waiting to have their identification examined and their address verified, greeters noting our presence while watching the rest of the precinct, the two Moderators engaging in some recondite state-required triple-check of an absentee ballot calculation. One of our town’s Registrars of Voters immediately approached us, ushered us toward a desk, and instructed us to pick up our respective name tags and sign in to begin working well before our shifts’ scheduled start time. It was Election Night 2020 in America.
This was our second time working an election in town, as I had wrangled my friend into working August’s primary with me. I had seen a listing on my town’s website asking for poll workers which specified that those aged 16 or older were eligible to work and found myself instantly dead-set on applying – I hadn’t known that minors were allowed to work polls in Connecticut.
That primary day entailed standing and staring at the precinct’s two vote-counting machines, or tabulators, which collect ballots inserted by voters (or absentee ballots inserted by poll workers) and spit out the results at the end of the night. Our state-mandated job was to ensure that no problems arose in that process and that the occasional issue, such as an overvote or a ballot that the tabulator could not read on the first scan, was rectified quickly with the help of a higher-ranking election official. It certainly wasn’t the most enthralling task, but it left us both eager to do more, to come back on Election Day and continue contributing to American democracy through our actions.
And, over these past few months, it wasn’t just us who felt that way. During the election, students at KO found all sorts of unique ways, whether on a nonpartisan or partisan basis, to get involved in the election as they saw fit, even if they could not exercise their right to vote.
Senior Caitlin Budzik and her mother both decided to sign up to work as election officials, a choice Caitlin attributes to her family’s political engagement and heavy news consumption. While her mother worked at the polls on Election Day, Caitlin helped to pre-process absentee ballots in Simsbury by opening the ballots’ outer envelopes, preparing them to be counted on Election Day.
Caitlin said she found particular meaning in the uniqueness of her experience given the unusual nature of an election held during a global pandemic. “I thought it was really cool to see the inner workings of how the ballots are counted,” she said, “especially in a year where everything is so different.”
At the polling site I worked at, reminders of the strangeness of our times certainly abounded, from the little bit of extra space between privacy booths granted to facilitate social distancing to the massive plexiglass dividers to separate poll workers and voters from one another.
Yet, everyone present made a conscientious effort to work through those challenges to provide for a fair, accurate election while keeping each other safe. Adherence to mask-wearing and social distancing recommendations was practically a nonissue. All absentee ballots received before the precinct closed were counted with plenty of time to spare. Shortly following the poll’s closing at 8:00 p.m., our town was able to post initial results.
No less meaningful, this election cycle was the work of students who directly advocated for a certain political position – after all, differences of opinion among citizens is the force that provides for and necessitates fair and safe elections. Senior Braeden Rose took such an approach to his efforts leading up to the election. In the early days of the Democratic primary, he traveled up to New Hampshire to personally canvas for now President-Elect Joe Biden. While he was there, he also took time to hear stump speeches from various primary contenders. “It’s just very interesting hearing them speak 100 feet in front of you as opposed to on TV,” he said. “You are reminded that they’re just regular people.”
In that process, Braeden said that he saw his own political preferences shift. Through his participation in the New Hampshire primary, Braeden developed a better understanding of the priorities of each candidate and found himself open to policy proposals of other candidates, such as Andrew Yang or Bernie Sanders, that he had not previously been aware of. “If I did it over again, I’d probably volunteer for the Bernie campaign,” he said, although he still unabashedly supported Biden in the general election following his win in the primary.
In the months leading up to Election Day, Braeden engaged in phone banking and postcard writing efforts on behalf of the Biden campaign, along with other Democratic candidates and organizations. And, with senior Sloan Duvall, he started the KO Democrats Club, an organization which he hopes will long outlast the 2020 election.
He sees his work as an effective way to engage in the electoral process and make his political voice heard despite not being of voting age. “But even if I could, I think I’d still be doing something like it,” he said. “It feels like a good way to step into a leadership position.”
As I spent that Tuesday afternoon sanitizing privacy booths, checking off voters’ names, and completing various odd jobs, I arrived at a similar conclusion. Through our individual decisions as students to actively participate in the processes that govern our lives, we are self-enfranchising; we are declaring our desire to engage in the perpetuation of a more perfect union. And every little act – be it opening envelopes, phone banking, or simply working to facilitate cogent discourse that comes from a place of empathy and understanding – sincerely affirms that idea to ourselves and to our community.
