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Scenes from My Day Monitoring the Polls in Pennsylvania
On November 2, 2020, I drove four hours from Rochester, NY, to Bellefonte, PA, to crash for four hours in an AirBnB. At 5:45am, I left to finish the trip at a polling place in State College, PA, at 6:30am. For the next 14 hours on Election Day, I was the Democratic Party’s “outside observer” — reporting voter intimidation, troubleshooting any problems that voters had, and informing the Pennsylvania Democratic Party about long lines from the parking lot.
After polls closed at 8pm, I hit a local restaurant with another poll worker, then I got back in my car and drove back to Rochester.
Here’s what happened.
The Many Problems of the Polling Place
The polling place, itself, proved to be a major character in the day’s events.
The State College Assembly of God is a large church in a new building a few miles south of Penn State University. It has a large parking lot that wraps around the building.
On Election Day, 2020, this single building housed not one, but two precincts: Precinct 20 was through the main entrance facing north (the…
