I have been volunteering as a poll greeter at several of the early voting (EV) site in Wake County, NC since early voting started on October 20th. Now that early voting is over, I thought I’d share some of my experiences.
I started at Chavis Community Center located in a predominately African American part of Raleigh. Chavis is one of the highest turnout EV sites in NC. During this EV period Chavis broke its old record and then broke that record. Lines were common even at midday during the week.
The atmosphere at Chavis was a combination of block party and family reunion. It’s a fun place to be a poll greeter.
Since Chavis was fully staffed by several local community organizations like The Wake County Voter Education Coalition and the Raleigh-Wake Citizens Association, I started filling in at other sites in Wake County. Several of these sites were in redder areas of Wake County which, as a whole, is reliably blue.
At these suburban sites there were several common factors. First, the traffic was lower and there were no lines. Part of this was a factor of when and where I was. These were relatively low turnout sites and I was there during midday in the middle of the week.
The second common factor was the almost complete absence of GOP poll greeters. The GOP seemed to have the advantage in signage (more signs, better placement) but very few, if any, poll greeters.
A substantial majority of the people at these sites either accepted a Democratic sample ballot or said they already had one. The proportion of people refusing Democratic sample ballots seemed much lower than I’ve experienced being a poll greeter in earlier elections in my home (very blue) precinct.
One GOP poll greeter was offering “conservative”, not Republican sample ballots. Was he ashamed to say Republican? Afraid it might drive people away?
While driving around the county, I have noticed that most of the clusters of GOP candidate signs do not contain a Trump-Pence sign. The signs for McCrory are pretty sparse too.
Finally, I can assure you that there is not a wild goose left in Wake County. I have chased all of them out while driving to supposedly unstaffed EV sites only to find one or more DEM volunteer already there. You know what Will Rogers said about Democrats and organization.
Forward together. Not one step back.
