Yes, democracy is in the title of a second post about working the polls. Yes, it will be in the third, whenever that comes out.
Election day, 2025. For 16 hours I sat working the polls for the New Jersey General Election, and I got rewarded with one slice of pizza. I mean I did end up grabbing a drink and some sushi from ShopRite afterwards, but my reward was one slice of pizza, okay?
One thing I noticed very early on last Tuesday was that the vibe was very different from the primary elections. First of all, I was with three other people rather than two, and this made it slightly more complicated because it was much harder to figure out what that fourth person could do given that there were really only three things at any given time. I was somewhat liveblogging my experience to my friends via discord as the day went on, and wow I was saying nothing meaningful to them. I was basically only telling people about who all was coming in and how there were a lot of parents bringing their kids in. Number one consumer demographic for the “I Voted” stickers, have to say.
It’s weird to call myself experienced given I’ve only done this twice now, but maybe I was less nervous this time given my previous experience. I think that let me be surprisingly more productive – that and getting to skip school. I wrote a bunch of emails relating to the quiz bowl tournament we’re hosting later this week, and sent those out, ticking a lot of things off my list that have been there for a while. Strange how not going to a place designed to make me productive makes me productive.
If you’ve been reading my other posts, you may have noticed that I’ve started to apply to college, and have spent a lot of time recently working on essays and stuff for those colleges. The early round just finished, so I was starting on my applications for all the regular decision schools, and I got to spend a lot of time yesterday working on those essays when nobody was coming up to the booth. It was kind of awkward given I was writing with three people next to me, but I felt a lot better when writing for some reason. I think I hit some good headway on a couple essays for multiple colleges, but I’m still nowhere near done. I think I’m starting to understand what my friends last year were saying when they called senior year fall “hell.” Hope you’re enjoying the fruits of your labor, people I will not name.
Overall, working the polls is still an experience I would recommend. It combines some community service aspects with a day where you feel you’re actually contributing to something, and you get to earn $300 while doing it. I look forward to doing this next time!