Sylvia's Journal

I have interrupted my archiving and transcribing to focus on the elections. I decided that handwringing and despairing would do no good to anyone and certainly not to the outcome of the elections. I joined Voter Pro Pros (VPP), a voter protection program in June. They communicate via Slack, a platform that I used some years ago and now found hopelessly confusing. In September, when the heat started to rise about the elections, I opted to join the Pennsylvania team since that is a critical state with a significant number of electoral votes. I got re-acquainted with Slack and participated in the training, several Zoom recording and live meetings. And then, at the start of this month, when the early voting by mail started, I got busy calling people whose mail in ballots were rejected because of one or another error (wrong date, no signature, no privacy envelope, etc.). I am in a team that covers 15 counties where people cannot fix their ballot errors and must show up on election day to vote a provisional ballot.

I quickly learned that many of the mail-in ballots are from elderly or disabled folks, for obvious reasons. They learned from us that their ballot had been rejected (and would not have known otherwise unless they had included their email in their mail in ballot application). If we get a voter to fix their ballot (possible in some counties but not all) then it is considered ‘cured.’ But many counties don’t allow this and so the voter must go to the polling place on election day. For those who are elderly and/or disabled, this is of course a tremendous challenge. Luckily VPP is connected to other organizations that make sure no vote is rejected since every single vote counts.

Sometimes I spent an hour leaving message after message or listening to not-in-service or disconnected-line squeaks, without reaching any live person. I won’t ever know whether the messages are received, and the voter is able to cast a provisional ballot on election day or not. But at least I am not sitting on my hands complaining.

I do experience the nervousness about this election in my belly, a tension I cannot deny. Whoever wins this election, it is going to be a shit show, either a coup attempt, or if Mr. T wins, a first step on the way to some serious damage to America. One elderly voter I reached said, “people say this is the last election.” He was quite old and so I wondered whether he meant the last election for him, but then he said, no, the last election for everyone in the US. “Is that true?” he asked. I said if he doesn’t get to cast his ballot and if Mr. T wins, then we may well have a president for life, and thus no more elections. “I will cast my vote on election day,” he said with determination.