Starting in 2005, my sister Sally took over a small farm in northern Maryland that my parents had left as part of their inheritance. Sally had never farmed full-time before. Her lifelong interest in gardening was scant preparation for this late-life career transition. Especially for the first few years, Sally struggled. She wanted to run the farm as a biodynamic one, which entails paying special attention to the cycles of seasons, sun, and moon. She gradually got an acre or two into biodynamic production, renting the rest of the land to nearby more conventional farmers. The work was more than full-time, with scant occasions for the travel she had enjoyed earlier in her varied careers. We kept in touch through phone calls and through letters—her internet access was spotty at best.
For a biodynamic farmer, “cross-quarter days” are especially important in deciding planting and harvest schedules. These correspond to the days we celebrate as Halloween (Samhain), Groundhog Day (Imbolc), May Day (Beltane), and mid-summer, around August 1 (Lammas).
This November, I’ll post letters for six years’ worth of cross-quarter days, encapsulating multiple changes in government, a global pandemic, and major changes in our respective personal circumstances.
As it happens, late October is also important in the American electoral calendar. Today, I’ve put in excerpts from Halloween letters for the electoral seasons of 2020, 2022, and 2024, when I was actively involved as a non-partisan poll worker and Sally was tied up at the farm. I hope they’ll provide an interesting time capsule and perhaps some impetus for reflection as our 2026 electoral cycle nears completion.
Saturday, October 31, 2020 (Samhain/Hallowe’en)
From Jinny, in Cary, NC, to Sally, in Taneytown, MD
Dear Sal,
My last shift as a nonpartisan early voting poll worker for this year’s national election is finally over. I’m worn out. The stresses of trying to help keep myself, my coworkers, and voters as safe as practical during a pandemic competed with the excitement of participating in a historic electoral contest. I’d previously worked in both the primary and general elections in Wake County, North Carolina in 2018, and then in the primary election here in 2020, held just before covid changed our elections and our lives.
As the 2020 general election season approached, local boards of election throughout North Carolina (and elsewhere) worried about having an adequate staff of poll workers—many poll workers trend older and would thus be more vulnerable to covid and its complications. Boards of Election officials lost sleep over staff retention, staff training, and staff safety. In Wake County where I live, media ran lots of public service announcements seeking temporary poll workers. Our early voting site was fortunate that over half our primary cycle’s workers signed up again, even one fortyish former basketball center who was still on a waiting list for a heart transplant.
Before voting started, we had a full day of general, then on-site training. We had enough experienced workers to integrate the “newbies” quickly. Turnout was not too heavy for the first few days; by the time we started to get really busy, we worked together well. We typically rotated among different tasks—greeters, voter check-in (with access to computerized offline county voter rolls), voting booth assistants, help desk workers, ballot box assistants, and a shift supervisor. We also had remote access to a county-wide “help line” via secure telephone.
Because of the pandemic, the voting site, though in the same Student Center at North Carolina State University where I’d worked the primary, had been shifted to a larger room with more space and better ventilation. A couple dozen of us were assigned to a voting site in one of the large ballrooms at the student center. Early voting started on Thursday, October 15 and ran through today, before an interval to prepare for Election Day next Tuesday. Officials at our site moved Chris, our former basketball star, to a “help desk” station that involved the least direct contact with large numbers of early voters.
Each morning before the polls opened, a designated worker placed a half gallon pump spray bottle of hand sanitizer on a stand at the entrance to the ballroom. Someone regularly refilled the bottle so there was always enough sanitizer for anyone who wanted it. We also had boxes of the pale blue face masks you see people wearing in hospitals.
Due to extended early voting hours and to minimize worker risks, there were two shifts. I chose the earlier one, carpooling with a neighbor to arrive at the site at least half an hour before the first voters began to check in. Each morning, we got disposable plastic gloves, hospital-style face masks, and individual plastic face shields to minimize our chances of viral infection. No one is sure yet exactly how infection spreads, so we were cautious. Poll workers regularly wiped down and sanitized voting booths. I was impressed with how much “PPE” (personal protective equipment) our county election officials had been able to obtain and distribute in the months since the pandemic’s start.
Each shift got short breaks and one longer meal break, with about an hour’s overlap between the two shifts. Nearly everyone packed snacks and a lunch–most area restaurants and snack bars were either closed or “take out only.” As far as I know, none of our workers got covid. Some of the time, the weather was pleasant enough to go outdoors on breaks.
Over the 17 days of early voting, we’d get the occasional “in your face” voter. He (or more rarely she) would deliberately come to the voting site without a mask and refuse the offer of one at the entrance. Once he/she reached the check-in station, they’d lean far forward over the voter check-in table, spit out their name and address, and then smirk, as if to say “I dare you to tell me I’m being inconsiderate.” Because we were on a college campus, we had lots of younger voters. They were among my favorites, giving me a vicarious thrill through their excitement at casting their first ballot. I saw a lot of “NC State” themed face masks on voters of all ages. I only processed a couple of people I knew—one a member of a Cary discussion group gone dormant due to the pandemic, another a local cousin. I’m glad I had a chance to participate. I’m very relieved that neither I nor any of my coworkers got sick.
With so much up in the air because of the pandemic, our procedures adapted a couple of times during the voting period to improve safety and convenience. As far as I could tell, everyone who came through “my” line while I was processing voters was legitimate. Turnout was very high. The numerous state and local races provided additional motivation for people to show up. (Also, just maybe, because of the pandemic, there were a lot fewer other choices of how to spend your time?) Many people this cycle voted by mail, with the number of mail-in ballots increasing several fold from prior, non-covid cycles. Once the initial tallies of election results are done, I plan to write up a blog post about my experiences and the overall effort here in Wake County. This may be more information than you need, but I hope to convey both the tension and the excitement of seeing a part of the 2020 general election from a front row seat. …
Will stop here. Please take good care!
Love, Jin
(See “A Post-Election Day View,” on jinnyoccasionalpoems.com for Wake County 2020 preliminary voting totals, put onto blog on November 9, 2020).
(Between 2020 and the 2022 mid-terms, I relocated from North Carolina to California. It took me a while to learn my way around and to acclimate to voting culture and procedures, “California style.” Below is an excerpt about some of my 2022 experiences as a general election poll worker.)
Monday, October 31, 2022 (Samhain/Hallowe’en)
From Jinny in San Diego, CA to Sally in Taneytown, MD
…I’ll be participating as an early voting and election day poll worker in this year’s midterm elections, though the length of the early voting period where I’ll be stationed is a lot shorter than the two-plus weeks I spent in North Carolina—basically just an extra-long weekend. California has had mail-in ballots for several election cycles already, so the expectation is that a pretty high proportion of ballots will be cast that way, especially since concerns about covid have not yet entirely disappeared.
I’ve been through a two-day training regimen at an area library, along with workers for several other early voting sites. Our site leader seems to be a retired military officer with a good bit of prior experience running elections. The number of languages used for printed ballots is higher than I’m used to, with several Asian languages as well as English and Spanish. Perhaps because I’m new to the temporary electoral workforce, perhaps because I was just too dumb to request a voting site near where we live, I’ll have a long commute for the several days of early voting—to a county park in Carlsbad about 20 miles north of Tierrasanta. Should give me more than my fill of freeway driving.
Soon I’ll need to buckle down and research what candidates and issues I want to support via my own ballot. California allows “ballot initiatives,” some generated by the state legislature, others certified if a certain proportion of registered voters request them. Some of the issues seem important to me; others mainly seem like some disgruntled partisan wanted to stroke his/her ego by getting verbiage onto the ballot. …
Please take good care!
Love, Jin
(The 2024 Presidential campaign was both brutal and confusing. A late-summer shift from a Biden-Trump contest to a Harris-Trump contest left many of us feeling somewhat frustrated and confused. I had again signed up to be a non-partisan poll worker. This cycle, I would participate in both the primary and the general election at polling places much closer to home. Below is an excerpt about my 2024 poll working experiences in the general election.)
Thursday, October 31, 2024 (Samhain/Hallowe’en)
From Jinny in San Diego, CA to Sally in Taneytown, MD
…Not sure how closely you’ve followed the presidential campaign. I’m slightly hopeful that we’ll avoid another Trump presidency and the worst of his previous excesses. At the same time, I’m somewhat discouraged that we’re not likely to move as quickly as needed to rein in our over dependence on fossil fuels, with their negative impacts on environment and health, no matter who wins the election. When I tried to do my own post-mortem on the one Trump-Harris presidential debate in mid-September, I journaled that “Both candidates seemed, either directly or indirectly, to acknowledge the outsized role that fossil fuels (and fossil fuel industry campaign contributions) play in our national politics. As evidence, I’m reminded of the extended discussion of fracking in Pennsylvania, one of our so-called ‘battleground states.’” Ah, well.
Tomorrow I’ll start work at one of our area’s late-opening voting centers—in the auditorium of a Catholic school nearby. I worked the primary there in the spring. I’ll have a short set-up day tomorrow, then four days of increasingly long shifts, including about 15 hours next Tuesday on Election Day itself. Our work crew is diverse and generally congenial. Hope we’ll have good turnout and few problem voters.
Time for me to get some rest—the alarm will go off early. …
Please take good care!
Love, Jin
