I am a long time consistent voter – one of the ones that even shows up for primaries in off year local elections! Perhaps that is not surprising since I am a political science professor. But what might surprise you is that I had never volunteered for any “on the ground” election activities like poll greeting, poll watching, or poll assistance. This year I decided to do that, in part because I was expecting my students to engage in some kind of political activity for class and I thought I ought to do what I was expecting them to do, and in part because I was concerned about claims that the election system was” rigged” in some way (I heard this claim from both sides of the aisle). This blog post is a reflection on what I learned and experienced when I left the “ivory tower” and volunteered as a poll observer on election day.
