Community Gathering #2
Hey there, Neighbor! How the heck are ya? This week I’ve started my Community Building series where each month I’m going to walk through another step of how to build community in your area. Next week will be Cooking’s first page, so stay tuned for that!
Monday: “Build Community one eye contact at a time” The inaugural Community Building post that tackles the most basic but integral pieces of building your own community, being frequently visible in an area, and eye contact!
Today: This newsletter! This week I volunteered with the board of elections for the Ohio primary, helping make sure our elections run smooth and efficently!
Volunteering with the Board of Elections
May 5th was Ohio’s Primary Elections, and so I volunteered Tuesday night to help take ballots from bipartisan transporters to bipartisan counters so that the election would run quickly and efficiently.
A little snippet of the night:
Free Pizza!
Meeting new people
$75 Towards your non-profit
Learning how your elections run
Call me crazy, but I actually enjoy election night volunteering! It’s 4 hours long, standing effectively in a drive through as cars drive by and you pick up all pieces involved with that polling location, hand it off to the correct area and watch that car drive off. 300+ times. Sounds like a blast, right?
That’s just it, though. Within all these things you’d expect to be a slog, you witness something beautiful. Everyone of every political spectrum working together for a common good. People with entirely different backgrounds laughing over pizza, chatting about the big thing they’re excited about that week or month. I talked to a few people about getting my EV and they talked about their sales as a real estate agent that month, how many people they got registered to vote, or even just the movie they were going to see that weekend. We chatted about pizza favorites and which car that drove through was their favorite (shout out to the literal ghostbusters car). Some people exchanged numbers, others gave recommendations for outings. The energy and spirits were high.
To back up slightly and explain how Election night works: You start by waiting in the lobby with 30+ people for the Bipartisan supervisors to announce that polls have officially closed and that we can head into the warehouse to get briefed and ready. They explain the machinations of how the night goes, what are all the different locations for different paperwork, and where you will be stationed. You then split into groups depending on what job you would like to take and learn the more focused information there. I was a ‘runner’ so I took information from the car to the specific location that the paperwork was destined for. There was also Group Leader, and car puller. There were several different things you needed to grab, but that is the gist of the roles. There were about 6 people per station and everyone had a role. Not doing said job slows down everyone immediately. If something comes opened, you call over the bipartisan supervisors to check and ensure nothing is missing and they, hand in hand, walk the ballots over to the station. Every step has designated bipartisan eyes and stop gates to make sure there’s no funny business.
This is where the magic occurs. For 4 hours, you are working like a pit crew, knowing that everyone in your group has your back, that you have theirs and that we’re all trying to get this work done so everyone’s vote can be heard. It breaks barriers down, you start talking about things you’d be nervous to talk with someone who you don’t know, or think that they’d disagree with you. This is where change happens. People who start out hating EV’s, begin asking questions. That movie you thought looks stupid, you enjoy watching the person talk lively about it. That job that people think is so easy becomes a little more respected after conversation.
In the most unlikely of places, I saw hope in a better tomorrow. Volunteering with the Board of Elections let me see first hand just how capable we are of creating community, one common goal at a time.
Next week is Culinary Economics #0: ‘Cooking ain’t that serious’. I look forward to talking with you all next week. If you haven’t already and you enjoy the content, feel free to subscribe!