Casting a vote for connection

There’s a saying about extended family: “we only see them are weddings and funerals”. Depending on your family, this may or may not ring true, but regardless, it speaks to the fact that for many of us there are only specific, ritualized times when we make a conscious choice to engage with parts of our community that are always there, but rarely seen.

You might have other examples of this in your life: summer friends you make visiting the pool for a span of weeks, or people you only see at church or places of worship. In fact, many synagogues have expandable walls meant to accommodate the surge of attendees during High Holidays. Each instance, a collection of people you only see glimpses of, hold a shared connection (whether it’s purpose, location, or a combination of the two), and a fleeting connection that will likely fade soon after.

As I publish this—and hopefully as you are reading it—on Tuesday, May 19 in Pennsylvania, I wanted to call your attention to another community intersection happening one right now: one that’s personal for me and hopefully for you, at least a little. My intersection is consistent, but short-lived. Both a source of deep connection, and routine. And unfortunately, shared by not enough people.

I’m talking of course about pollworkers.

According to the Federal Election Access Commission’s 2024 report, there were nearly 96,000 polling places across the country in the latest national election. Each staffed by community members, who work 12+ hour days for a tiny stipend. There are no national guidelines about where, what, and how far away a polling place needs to be, which means that each polling place is unique.

But while the size and vibe of a polling place changes, there are some things that never do: it’s maintained by local people, from the neighborhood/area, who care enough to have an exhausting at times (and boring at most) day for a pittance of pay so people can have their say in the way our community works.

Because each polling place is a universe unto itself, I’d like to tell you a little bit about mine. I ended up as Judge of Elections for my precinct, riding a wave of popular support of one single vote (it might have been me? I truly don’t remember). Since then, I have worked eight elections in a sunless church basement a block from my house with a mostly consistent cast of people.

Each election, I check in with the church secretary to get the key to the basement; lug the large white tables around and set up the chairs, election equipment, and ballot materials the night before to get ready, including moving the annoyingly heavy statues of saints out of sight, or covering them if I can’t.

On election day, my team arrives: a motely crew of residents spanning the age and life experience spectrum.

There’s T, who has worked the polling place for at least a decade and prefers to be the one to give the ballots out. After talking with her I found out that she used to live in the residences at the affordable housing organization I worked for. She would have to leave early to care for her husband who had Alzheimer’s. She now stays the full shift, as he passed away last year.

There’s J and B, a young married couple who tag team check-in, relatively new to the roles but quick studies, enough to fill in for me as judge one election when I tested positive for COVID the night before. B and I compare our Wordle scores. J is fluent in Spanish and is invaluable for our ESL voters. They always ask for Chik-fil-A for election night dinner.

There’s our Constable from just down the street, who pays for his own badge and gear to help people feel more safe when he’s on the scene and brings us long johns from Auerbach’s every election. He started doing it because the Constable before him did it.

And then there’s an honorable—and distinguished—mention to R, who has worked every election at this spot since the 1980s, and proudly voted Republican in every election since the 1950s. He has no use for an alarm clock: he wakes up with the church bells from this polling place every day. He brings no book, no phone, or entertainment of any kind for the entire 14-hour shift.

Before I became judge, these people were just the nice people who handed me my ballot and asked how I was. We would make small talk while my spouse finished voting if I was done first, or vice versa. It was the only time of the year I saw them, in May/April for the primary, and then again in November. But each time I was surprised that they remembered me.

Now that I’m on the other side of the check-in desk, it doesn’t surprise me at all. Even though we only see each other for a few minutes, you can learn so much about the people who are—by definition—just down the street from you.

Over the few years I have worked, I have seen bright eyed children clamoring for an “I VOTED” sticker turn into tweens who wryly roll their eyes at the offer (but still take it), new children arrive in slings or strollers, couples voting together as a married union for the first time with a new last name, and people walking in alone, speaking bittersweetly of the ones who are not with us to vote anymore.

There’s the elderly man who is always the first to vote, arriving five minutes before polls open—teasing us that he wants to vote early to see if we’ll let him—who so effortlessly lets “hallelujah” roll off his tongue after every sentence I’m not convinced he even realizes he does it. There’s the couple who insist on knowing their voter number, not matter the time of day; one of the couple has begun transitioning, and their voice gets deeper and more sure of itself every election. There’s a couple who mainly speak Spanish, counting their rosary beads with one hand as they fill out their ballot with the other.

What makes my head spin if I think about it too much is that this is just my polling place. Across Lancaster County on two set days a year, this plays out in hundreds of locations across our community. In each one of these hundreds, hundreds of people from all walks of life that share a neighborhood or precinct coming together to see each other for a (hopefully) brief part of their day. Each place a hyper-local outpost of community connection that gets disassembled as quickly as it comes together.

What roots us here for these moments is the place we live. And our shared agreement that we should keep trying to make our community better, in this case by voting. But to do that effectively, we need to know each other better.

The brief community weaving that occurs in a polling place is only the tip of the ice burg of a deeper local connection that can be harnessed. And despite all the forces working against us—national polarization, time deficit, social isolation—for one fleeting moment across our community, it does happen. What opportunity does that present to us?

As you vote, either today, or in the next election, take notice: the people working, the people in line with you to vote, the people greeting outside. All parts of a local connection point that is precious, and tenuous, but only if we let it be that way. Ask someone new about their life outside this moment and better know your neighbor.

Ask, and you might learn that they’ve only just moved in and are voting here for the first time. And if that’s the case, you’ll get to say my favorite election day phrase:

“Welcome to the neighborhood! I hope I’ll see you sooner rather than later.”