Our League partnered with
Common Cause to train and deploy poll watchers on Election Day. A giant THANK YOU to Georgene Chissell for helping organize our folks and getting them the required credentials.
Our League deployed seven poll watchers who took shifts at nine polling locations throughout the day. Thank you to Alexis Kalish, Georgene Chissell, Camille Taylor, Faith Russell, Julie Hile and Laurie Bergner for your dedication. They overwhelmingly reported that polling locations were adequately staffed with knowledgeable and helpful workers, polling locations were generally set up correctly and that voting ran smoothly.
Poll watchers in general, but especially those of the LWV, help to instill confidence in our elections. From the perspective of the League, poll watchers may assist voters (only as permitted by law) and monitor voting activities and polling place set-up to see that everything conforms to laws and regulations. While I poll watched at just two locations, I visited a total of five where I was pleased to see fellow citizens engaged in making our system work and helping voters vote.
While efforts to get out the college students to vote have been successful, we still need improvements for election-day voting in presidential election years at ISU. Lines were long again this year and there was an unnecessary bottleneck caused by having only a single tabulator machine. This issue can be addressed by adequate County funding which I plan to address either through the League or as a private citizen.
Our poll watchers responded to a brief survey asking for suggestions on how the voting experience can be improved. This information will be shared with our task force working with local elected authorities particularly on improving voting for people with disabilities. The raw survey results will be made available to all League members in the near future.
I anticipate we will again field poll watchers for the upcoming local elections and give notice when poll worker applications are once again being accepted by the election authorities.