They're counting on you not showing up.
Prove them wrong.
Hi everyone, Adam Mockler here.
I want to ask you to do something this year that has nothing to do with social media, and nothing to do with me.
I want you to sign up to be a poll worker.
I know. It’s not glamorous. Nobody’s going to see it. You get a long day, an early alarm, a folding table, and a stack of paperwork.
You also get to do something incredibly unique and special. You get to directly make our democracy stronger and safer.
Here’s the thing most people never think about.
Election Day doesn’t run itself. There’s no machine in a basement somewhere that quietly makes democracy happen. It’s people. Regular people. The person who checks you in, the person who hands you the ballot, the person who shows the nervous first-time voter which way to feed the paper. That’s not the government. That’s your neighbor. That’s somebody who woke up before dawn and decided the whole thing was worth their Tuesday.
And right now, we don’t have enough of them.
A lot of the people who have kept our elections running for decades are getting older. Every year more of them step back. When the tables go empty, polling places close and lines get longer, and the places that get hit hardest are almost always the ones that were already struggling to be heard.
That’s the part that gets to me.
Democracy is not an abstract idea. It comes down to whether there is a real human being sitting at that table when someone walks in wanting to vote. Take the people away and the whole thing dies. Not with some dramatic crisis or violent overthrow. It just quietly fails to function.
I don’t want our democracy to die. In fact, that’s why I do what I do every single day.
So here is what I’m actually asking.
There’s a group called Power the Polls that makes this simple. You go to their signup form, you put in where you live, and they connect you with your local election office. Most places let you sign up in about ten minutes. In a lot of places it’s paid. You get trained too, so you don’t need to be an expert on anything. You just need to be willing to show up, be steady, and be kind to people on what might be a stressful day for them.
If you’ve been feeling powerless lately, and I know a lot of you have, this is one of the few things I can point to that is real, concrete, and completely in your control to help us save this country.
We can’t make Democracy perfectly secure by Tuesday. But you can be the reason one polling place stays open, and it’s ballots are handled properly. You can be the reason the line moves. You can be the reason someone who was scared to vote enjoys it and comes back again.
Here’s the easiest way to start. Go to powerthepolls.org/signup and fill out the form. It takes a few minutes. They’ll connect you with your local election office and walk you through what your area needs. That’s it.
So do it right now, while you’re thinking about it. Sign up, and then send this to one other person and tell them to do it too.
Thank you for standing up.
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I just signed up to be a poll worker in my town
Proud to say I voted early in the primaries in my state despite the intentional closing 5 of the 12 early polling places. VOTE PEOPLE VOTE!