Election Official

 Yesterday I served as an election official in the Morgan Park neighborhood in west Duluth. Morgan Park was named after J.P. Morgan. The town was developed U.S. Steel for the employees of the Duluth Works - a steel manufacturing plant. Morgan Park was a company town. Homeowners were expected to keep their homes looking nice and if they didn't comply, pay was deducted from their paychecks. The steel manufacturing ended in 1980. The homes are modest and well cared for. I don't think there are any restaurants in the neighborhood. My day started at six in the morning and we were able to leave at 8:45 p.m. We all had a long day. We were required to wear face masks and face shields. I could handle the face mask but the face shield was giving me a headache. I noticed all the other election officials quit wearing their face shields so I took mine off too. People were waiting outside the door beginning at 6:45 a.m. We had a rush of people at 7 but then things slowed down to some extent. In total we had almost 700 voters come in. Sixty people were registered. Some had to reregister because they had a name change or an address change but many were new voters. Most of the people who registered had a photo identification but about twenty of them didn't. They got people to vouch for them living in the area. One woman came in from a recovery treatment center. She left to get an employee at the treatment center to vouch for her and when she returned she brought 7 other people in treatment who wanted to vote with her. That woman was a leader. All but one person was able to find someone to vouch for them. One poor man who lived in assisted living was unable to return with someone to vouch for him. We felt terrible because he was obviously in a lot of pain, had difficulty walking with his cane, and breathed heavily as he struggled to get in and out of the building. Some people brought pieces of their mail to confirm they lived in the neighborhood. A utility bill was sufficient. One woman showed me her paycheck. I felt a little uncomfortable opening the envelope to look at her paycheck but she wanted to vote so I did. Every hour we changed positions. We had a greeter (offer hand sanitizer and a clean pen), registration table for registered voters, another registration table for unregistered voters, a ballot table, and a person to watch the voting machine and clean the voter desks and chairs between customers. My turn to be the greeter came at 2 p.m. and that was a perfect time to stand in the open door in the sunshine. If no one was approaching I sat on the picnic table outside the building to get some fresh air. The weather was awesome. As I stood outside I saw a large white pick up approach with 3 large flags on the back of the pick up. I wondered if any of those flags were political. I could only see the American flag. The men who came from that truck were polite and even thanked me for working here today. As they left they slowly drove by our building and I saw they indeed had a political flag between two American flags. Political flags and clothing and signs are not allowed with so many feet on the building so they should have removed that political flag before they came to the polling place but oh well, they were leaving now. The head judge has been at this precinct for more than 20 years and she said there has never been this large of a turn out ever before. We had to ask that more ballots be brought to our precinct because we would have ran out. Voter enthusiasm was very high. Some people brought in their children. Some brought in dogs. I was doing the paperwork to register a new voter when I felt a dog snout on my knee under the table. Everyone was polite and I was pleased to see the large turn out. We had a rush at lunch time and another rush between four and six in the evening. The last two hours were slower. Time was going by so very slowly. We got a call at the end of the evening saying we had to separate all ballots with write-in votes. We emptied the ballot box and proceeded to read almost 700 ballots for write in votes. I knew it was my duty to read these ballots but somehow it also felt wrong. I could not help myself from judging their decisions. I found three write in votes in my stack. Two names I didn't recognize were written in. The third one was for the soil and water conservation district (for which no one was running) and someone wrote in Donald J. Trump for that office. We carefully competed our official duties, stowed the supplies away and picked up our belongings. As we walked out into the warm dark evening, I was glad to be a part of the 2020 election. Will this year be a historical election?  Aren't all elections historical?