If reasonable people don’t offer to serve, then those who do serve might not be reasonable.
On January 6th, 2021 I was ready to jump in the car and drive to DC to stand shoulder to shoulder with those defending the Capital.
It was the same feeling I’d had on September 11th, 2001.
Since then, like many of you, I still struggle to find the means to fight for that which we all swore an oath.
Ultimately, DC was over before I could get out of the driveway. I planned to write a letter to the editor, post on twitter, donate to campaigns and go door to door. But, no one publishes my letters and my number of followers on twitter makes me all but invisible.
One day, I got a phone call, and everything changed. There was an opening on the county board of elections and they were accepting applications.
I had no idea what the job entailed, and no idea if it paid, but I didn’t care. During the interview, I told them I thought the legislature wrote the laws, the Governor signed the laws, the Sec. of State implemented the laws and our job was simply to follow the law. I explained that it is like a lawful order in the military. I didn’t have to agree with the law. My job was to salute smartly and execute my duty.
Naïve fool am I.
The next thing I knew I was headed to four days in a training conference with the board members and staff from 159 counties. It was a sip of water from the proverbial fire hose along with several hundred pages of election law.
It’s been a year since that conference, a year of board meetings, primary elections, runoffs, general elections and more runoffs. We’ve had voter challenges, election deniers and conspiracy theorists. We’ve been part of lawsuits and enforcers of the VRA (Voting Rights Act).
During this year, I personally saw the system work.
Let me say that again, the system works and anyone who participates gains a real appreciation of that fact. Legally cast ballots are recorded, counted and reported correctly. Errors may be made because we’re human but the system works.
I also saw firsthand what partisan gerrymandering does to our system. I’ve seen how our hands are tied by laws written by a legislature unaware of the impact of those laws. I’ve seen how important it is to vote down ballot. There’s nothing glamorous about being the local candidate for the state legislature but that race has more impact on our lives than we realize.
All this said, I’m still struck with the feeling that we need to do more to address the threat to democracy. I’m still frustrated by the extreme partisan gerrymandering, the challenges to our privacy, the obvious voting rights obstructionism and the interference with the operations of our education systems.
In the next letter we’ll talk a bit about gerrymandering.
So I’m asking you, where do we begin?
In Service,
Your Friend in the Election Office
