As an editor and market researcher, I spend my days studying human behavior and collecting data that tell stories about how people think and act. This election season, I decided to experience data collection from a different angle: as one of the 750,000 poll workers who helped gather the voices of American voters. In this short post, I share quick post-election insights, statistics on voter turnout, and one person’s experience of being on the front line of election security—a salient issue during the 2024 General Election.
If you’re in the United States, did you vote last week? Did you high five a poll worker?
There are literally hundreds of steps in the process of setting up a polling place, running it, and closing it down. And in a US presidential election, these steps are performed in more than 94,000 polling stations, by the hands of more than 750,000 ordinary people. As someone who designs and executes large-scale consumer-research studies, I am often struck by the operational complexity. This single-day operation exceeds the combined footprint of major retailers like Starbucks (16,000+ US locations) and Walmart (4,700 US locations).
So this year, for the 2024 US Election, one of those 750,000 poll workers was me—and it was an invigorating, back-breaking 16-hour experience.
To ensure the polls were open by 6:00 am (as scheduled by law), I arrived at 5:00 am. There was already a gentleman waiting to vote. He was unperturbed by the need to wait an hour while I, along with a dozen neighbors I’d never met, got the polling equipment online and the ballots ready. In fact, he was delighted to be our official Voter #1 for the day. The news had been blitzed for days with reports of record early voting around the country.
According to the Pew Research Center, nine in ten registered voters report confidence in the poll workers in their community. Still, election security was a primetime topic during the last phase of this campaign season, and there is now a clear political divide between those who thought the election would be run well (Harris supporters) and those who didn’t (Trump supporters).
In the days following the election, no accusations of major election fraud have been levied.
To be a poll worker, I accepted a small part of the responsibility for conducting a fair and proper election. Poll workers hand out ballots, yes, but they also help ensure a safe place to vote, free of electioneering and intimidation.
One of Illinois’ ballot referendums this year was a poll-worker-protection measure, to allow civil proceedings against candidates who interfere or attempt to interfere with poll worker’s duties. So far, 18 states have enacted protections to safeguard poll workers from harassment.
Thankfully, my poll-working experience was free of harassment—most voters were courteous and patient, and a few even gave a kind word of thanks.
The basic rules of being in public, such as forming orderly queues and patiently waiting one’s turn for the busy poll worker’s attention, were uniformly followed. One of the more active interventions I was nervous about—asking voters to take off or cover up partisan clothing—was met without complaint.
Of course, there was that one person who filled out their ballot application with the name “Jesusa Christa” and the birthdate 1101 BC. Sadly, they could not provide a valid ID, so theirs became the only voter registration we were unable to process that day.
In an extensive report from September 2023, Pew found 65% of US adults reported feeling exhausted thinking about politics, and 55% reported feeling angry “always or often.” The top words Americans used to describe their country’s politics were “divisive” and “corrupt.”
I’d argue, as many have, that polarization is to blame for these negative feelings. It’s hard to feel at home with people who don’t demonstrate they understand you, and the two-party system in the United States has resulted in a population with complex, multifaceted views but only two viable options (a Democrat and a Republican) for most high-level elected offices.
Third-party candidates tend not to prevail. In 1992, the Reform Party’s Ross Perot received 18.9% of the popular vote for US president, the highest percentage for a third-party candidates since 1912. Four years later, he got less than half that, with 8.4% of the popular vote. For a recent comparison, the Libertarian Party’s Jo Jorgensen got 1.2% in 2020.
The ballots that US voters cast are private.
As poll workers, our duties included handing each voter a privacy sleeve along with their ballot. That way, they could walk from their private voting booth to the ballot scanner with their votes safely stowed away from wandering glances.
That said, a ballot is a test with no set of correct answers, just a set of uncoerced responses. To that end, we spent a lot of our time actively assisting voters who needed help filling out their ballots. Some voters brought family members or friends to help them, which was great—once the voter and the helper both signed a form saying the ballot would reflect the voter’s choices alone.
At the end of Election Night, an envelope full of such affidavits went with the copies of new voter registrations, an official tally of the precinct’s final vote count signed by all the poll workers, and a dizzying heap of carefully numbered forms and envelopes tracking every move we made throughout the day.
Voter turnout in 2024 has been one of the early headlines following the general election. As of this writing, the votes are still being tallied—but the trend of previous years appears to be intact. Over the past 40 years, between 52.8 and 66.2% of registered voters have cast a ballot in presidential elections. This turnout has represented between 36.3 and 47.9% of Americans overall.
In other words, 4 of every 10 Americans decide who to put in office. The other six don’t or can’t show up to the polls—which makes every person who came through our doors that much more of a statistical triumph.
These participation rates reminded me of our response rate calculations in market research. Just as we carefully track who responds to our surveys and why, understanding voter turnout helps us grasp whose voices are being heard and whose might be missing.
As part of the safety protocol, poll workers are also charged with carefully keeping track of everyone in the polling place and checking official credentials from anyone on-site for a reason other than voting. We collected signed affidavits from a number of poll watchers representing both political parties as well as voting rights groups.
One poll watcher checked to ensure our polling place was accessible to voters with disabilities. Another promised to report back to his political party about our precinct’s need for Vietnamese ballots and translators, in addition to our existing ballots and translators for Spanish, Chinese, Korean, and Tagalog speakers. (Fortunately, 7 of our precinct’s 13 poll workers were bilingual.)
Our polling place had a line out the door for the first six hours it was open, from 6:00 am until past noon. These hours felt like minutes. We reached 100 voters by 8:15 am, and 200 by 10:30 am. I loudly proclaimed my wish for a bell to reward people who returned our black felt pens to the registration table. (Two-thirds were pilfered. We had to send one poll worker on an emergency run to buy pens in the middle of the day.) And our polling place was not alone: each of the investigators and poll watchers who checked into our precinct spoke of long lines at every polling place, which we all agreed was a good thing.
By the time we closed the polls at 7:00 pm, we’d collected the votes of 504 Chicagoans. That is, 504 of my neighbors. I hope to see them walking around the neighborhood and share a glimmer of recognition. If not, all they need do is vote in person at the next election. Because no matter the election or its results, I’m hooked: I’ve never felt closer to the tactile experience of democracy than I did this week. I can see why some storied polling places are staffed by the same people election after election. They’ve been bit by the bug.
We’ve only begun to tap into this year’s election data, but I’ve already returned to my day job with renewed appreciation for the human stories behind every data point we collect.
Being a poll worker is part civic duty, part service work, and part (for me, at least) fueled by a fascination with and affection for human behavior. The winners of the election will have their chance to make an impact on the world, but Jesusa Christa has already had an impact on mine, and for that I am forever grateful.
Note: This piece was published on November 13, 2024, eight days after the US General Election. Certain facts—specifically the number of 2024 voters—are still being finalized. We have noted estimates where applicable.
