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Work the polls for democracy

An editorial  —  10/09/2008 5:30 am

No act of citizenship is more essential than voting. It is the essential engagement that makes real the promise of representative democracy.

When it is easy to vote and when there are assurances that votes cast will be recorded and counted in a reliable fashion, the American experiment works.

When barriers are erected by federal officials who do not understand or respect Wisconsin's tradition of well-managed, high-turnout elections, or by partisan operators such as Attorney General J.B. Van Hollen who seek to create confusion at polling places, it is necessary and often possible to deconstruct them with smart legislative and legal strategies.

But the ultimate protection for democracy comes not from judges or members of Congress but from the people, who the founders of this revolutionary republic entrusted to zealously defend the electoral processes that allow them not merely to be governed but to govern.

And the single best way to mount that defense is to become a poll worker.

On Nov. 4, across Wisconsin, polling places will be crowded with new voters. A close presidential election in a battleground state, as well as the dynamic candidacies of Democratic presidential nominee Barack Obama and Republican vice presidential nominee Sarah Palin, are likely to produce a record turnout.

Lines will be long. Questions will be many. The potential for frustration, and perhaps even disenfranchisement, will be real.

Large teams of well-trained poll workers will make the process work.

Unfortunately, in Madison, Dane County and Wisconsin, there are not currently enough poll workers signed up to do the job.

The local League of Women Voters is hustling to address the shortage by attracting a large and diverse pool of new poll workers that includes students, retirees, folks who are taking the day off and folks who could use the $10.92 an hour pay that poll workers receive. The league is especially interested in signing up individuals who speak Spanish and Hmong fluently, and who have experience working with people with disabilities.

One of the main messages from the league is that it's easy to work the polls.

If you are 18 years of age or older, you can sign up with the Madison city clerk, either in person or by going to the clerk's Web site at www.ci.madison.wi.us/clerk and click on the tab "poll workers." High school students who are over 16 years of age and maintain a 3.0 grade point average can do the same, although they will need authorization from a parent or guardian and their school principal to become poll workers.

If you live in other communities in Dane County or across the state, contact your town, village or city clerk.

Everyone who qualifies individually will be assigned to a full- or part-time shift at a polling place in the city and provided with proper training. Additionally, community and student organizations can adopt a polling site and work with the clerk's office to set up a rotation where many people from the group can work two-hour shifts as part of an election day "Quality Assurance Team."

The poet Walt Whitman observed a century and a half ago, "I know nothing grander, better exercise, better digestion, more positive proof of the past, the triumphant result of faith in human kind, than a well-contested American national election."

Whitman's words ring truer now than they did in the days of Lincoln and Grant.

But well-contested American national elections do not merely happen.

Hundreds of thousands of Americans, working at polling places across the country, make elections happen.

Theirs is not merely noble work.

It is the essential work of democracy.

(For more information on the League of Women Voters project, contact Jen Rubin at rubinjen@gmail.com.)

An editorial  —  10/09/2008 5:30 am