It’s still dark when we pull into the Randolph Center parking lot at 5:50 AM, get out of our cars with our tote bags and introduce ourselves.
Mary is wearing a bright red t-shirt and her hair is perfect. She apologizes she’s not wearing any makeup “but it was just too early.”
I’m wearing red chucks, my mother’s pearls, a blue and white striped dress and a jean’s jacket with my grandmother’s pin. I’m carrying their legacy with me. My grandmother fought for Civil Rights in Mississippi back in the 1960’s. My mother left Fascist Europe in 1939, then worked for the CIA in the 1950’s translating documents during the Cold War.
Mary and I are ready to work the polls for West Pass Christian, Mississippi.
We set up a table for processing affidavit votes, one for registering voters, another for poll watchers, and another just in case. This is a presidential election. We’re expecting more than the usual voters.
Mary shows me her Ziploc bag stuffed with blue masking tape, scissors, Sharpies. Throughout the day, we use Mary’s supplies because these are not in the poll boxes where they’re supposed to be.
Our colleagues – three white men – arrive late, around 6:20.
Mary and I introduce ourselves to Steve, Jacob, and Dom with an “m.” Mary reminds them she’s worked with them before.
I remind Steve that we’ve worked together before, too, during the 2020 election. He doesn’t remember me. Steve talks a lot and often to no one in particular.
“Someone’s parked out there with Harris stickers, and that can’t happen,” Steve says to the room. “Somebody’s gotta move that car now!”
“That’s me,” I say. “My bad.” Candidates’ signs have to be 150 feet away from the polls. Days before, I called four times to see if I could work the polls, and, at the last minute got the OK to come in. I forgot about the car’s stickers.
I go out, peel the stickers off my car’s bumper, and come back in.
If my co-workers didn’t know just by looking at me, they know which side I’m on now. No matter. I’m used to my candidates losing most every election, and I still love the process. I’ve always been an optimist when it comes to democracy.
Even though the office of election commissioner says they are nonpartisan, the election commission in Mississippi is partisan, which means Republican because they are in the majority. They run the election commission and the elections.
No two state election commissions are exactly alike, but I suspect, with our new leadership beginning in January, other state election commissions in America will run like Mississippi’s.
Rigid voter ID laws, no early voting, limited absentee voting, and some of the harshest felony disenfranchisement policies in the nation make Mississippi one of the most difficult places to vote. There are other obstacles making ballot access difficult, too. Precincts close or get moved at the last minute. Poll workers give voters incorrect information. According to one 2022 study ranking all U.S. states according to the relative ease of voting, Mississippi ranked second behind New Hampshire in having the highest cost, in terms of time and effort, to vote.
Steve looks around the room, and complains about the early hour, the number of expected voters, and everything we still need to do.
“Well, if you’d gotten here on time,” Mary whispers to me. Already, she and I are a team.
“Uh oh,” Steve says, looking outside at people gathering.
We all know to be ready for anything. Disruption. Anger. Violence. Vulgarity. Plus, Hurricane Rafael might be headed our way.
“Oh good, just look at all those voters,” Mary says, seeing people calmly lining.
“I don’t like the looks of it,” Steve says. “Not one bit.” Steve once told me Mississippi voters needed more “vetting.” His word.
“Hey lady,” Dom calls to me from across the room. “I need tape.”
I bring Dom the masking tape from Mary’s supplies to tape up the district map, the sample ballots, and our certification certificates.
“Dom. My name is Margaret, not Hey Lady.”
Dom doesn’t say anything.
Dom doesn’t like the folding chairs Mary and I have set out. He’s brought a ragged donut cushion on which to sit. Dom wants the better chairs with cushions that are up on a stage. He gets one chair and puts it at his affidavit table, sits down and takes out his phone and a Tom Clancy novel.
Voters who are not in the system but want to vote anyway have to fill out an affidavit form, which Dom will help them with. There usually isn’t a designated affidavit poll worker, but because of Mississippi’s recent voting purges, Dom prepares for more.
Mary and I refold all the chairs we’ve put out. We haul five comfortable chairs for all of us to use.
“Hey lady,” Dom shouts. “We don’t need that many chairs.”
Is Dom ignorant or is he being a jerk? Maybe he can’t hear. I give up. My name isn’t that essential. We’re running out of time.
“Very good very good,” Steve says to his new chair.
“Hey lady,” Dom says from his seat. “You bring your lunch?”
What’s with this guy? Do people say “Bless his heart?” when they refer to Dom?
“I did,” I say.
“Good. Hey, you want to be bailiff?”
“Isn’t that a group decision?”
He shrugs. “I’m the poll manager.”
I assume that the election commissioner Barbara Kimball decided our roles. She does this without informing us.
It’s 6:35 and there’s no time to complain about procedure.
“Sure,” I say.
I admit, I’m pleased. In past elections I’ve served as initialing manager, registrar, but never bailiff. I’m now in charge of keeping the peace.
I even look forward to being that person who yells Poll Open and then later Poll Closed then stand behind the last person in line at 7:00 PM.
Steve and Jacob are still trying to plug in the machine.
“It’s not that complicated,” I whisper to Mary, making her laugh.
She and I unwind power chords, plug in the laptops, and the router. She shows me how to check voters’ drivers’ license, find their names, addresses, tell them what to do next. I’ve never signed in voters using the laptop and I’m nervous.
How will I do this and keep the peace?
In my first certification class in 2018, our instructor gave sage advice: “If your voter is belligerent, just smile.”
Jacob turns on the voting machine and lets the tape run. We gather around, read the zeros on the tape, which means there have been no votes cast. We each sign the bottom of the tape, then tape it to the wall for all to see.
We gather in a circle, set our phones and watches, raise our right hands, and, as Jacob reads the oath, we swear to abide by our official electoral duties. I get a little choked up, and even though I want to take a picture of the moment, I don’t because we can’t photograph anything here in this election space. The room feels sacred.
Jacob appoints himself the initialing manager, my job from the previous two elections. Jacob wears jeans and cowboy boots and holds up the red pen which he will used to initial ballots.
Steve moves his chair next to Jacob. He says he’ll make sure voters sign in.
“I sure hope my wife remembered my cookies,” Steve says.
“It’s 6:59,” I say, heading towards the doors.
“Poll open,” Jacob shouts at 7:00, beating me to the door.
He directs the first voter in, a white man, he walks to the machine. Jacob shows him the fresh tape and the empty ballot box below.
“See, no votes have been cast yet,” Jacob says. “You are our witness.”
Voters file in, and I love the civic joy in the room. It’s energizing. When Mary and I discover a voter voting for the first time, we shout first time voter! and applaud them.
Mary compliments women on their hair, their tops, their dresses. We’re smiling and happy in our work.
Every now and then, Steve says miserably, “Sign here,” in a flat monotone.
His back to us, Jacob looks at his phone.
At the affidavit table, Dom looks at his phone.
Mary and I check drivers licenses, passports, military and student ID cards. Most people show their Mississippi Voter ID Card, but since it doesn’t have a photo, we rarely need the information on it.
A black woman comes in, saying she’s from the nearby town of Waveland.
“You can’t vote here,” Dom yells getting up from his seat at the affidavit table. “You need to go back to Waveland.”
“We never turn away a voter,” Mary says. She looks up the woman’s voting information on her laptop, then turns her laptop around for her to see. The poll’s laptop is the ultimate authority. Not us. The woman’s polling place is indeed in Waveland.
In some states, you can vote anywhere. Not in Mississippi. If a voter is in the wrong precinct, we’re supposed to tell them where to go, or they can stay and vote affidavit, but that means their votes go through a committee, deciding if the vote counts.
That’s how I know Jacob. During the 2023 governor’s election, my job was to observe him and other members of the Harrison County Resolution Board at the Harrison County Court house in Gulfport, where they processed in-person and mail-in absentee ballots. Jacob challenged most of the ballots, arguing that many signatures on the outside of envelopes didn’t match the signatures on the ballots. I recall leaving that job thinking this is nuts. The resolution board workers weren’t handwriting experts, and yet, they were deciding who gets to vote and who doesn’t.
The Republican trainings in Mississippi focus on looking for ways to question a voter and a vote.
“Voting is privilege, and not all votes count,” the 84-year-old election commissioner Barbara Kimball once told us in a 2020 certification class. “I decide.”
I copy the voters’ precinct address down on a slip of paper and give it to the woman before she leaves.
Two more black women come in from Waveland. They say the poll workers sent them here. They are not in our system, so we send them to Dom, where they cast their affidavit votes.
Another black woman wearing her Army camouflage uniform comes to check in. I swing the laptop her way, showing her polling place is in Gulfport.
“I was just there. They told me to come here.”
“You have to go back to Gulfport,” Dom shouts from where he’s sitting. Gulfport is a 20 minute drive.
We check and recheck. She decides to vote affidavit.
Voters continue to stream in.
One voter says she knows she’s registered but her driver’s license is expired.
“Can I still vote?”
I love the question because I know the answer: Even if the ID is expired by ten years, it’s considered current.
“Cool,” she says, signing in and getting a ballot.
Mary and I enjoy the voters coming in with children. We playfully ask for their ID.
“I’m only six,” one little boy says, when I ask for his driver’s license or photo ID. He looks around the room. “Will there be a lot of hollering?”
“He’s been watching the news with us,” his mother says.
“No hollering here,” Mary says.
Another woman stops by our table before she leaves and says, “This has been the best voting experience I’ve had.”
Mary and I beam at each other.
An older man leaves the voting booth with his ballot.
“Sir, you can’t leave with your ballot,” I say.
“I left my glasses in my car and I can’t read,” he says.
“Take mine,” I say.
He tries on my cat-eye glasses, says they work, and goes back to the voting booth to fill out his ballot.
Squinting, I continue to check in voters.
A woman comes in holding a baby on her hip. She’s frazzled, juggling the ballot, the baby, her purse.
“I can hold the baby while you vote,” I say.
I hold the charming baby while I continue to squint at the screen, checking IDs, names, signing people in.
A few voters come and ask about another poll worker.
“She died suddenly a month ago, while she was visiting a sick friend,” Mary whispers.
Now I know why I was needed last minute to work.
By 10:00 we’ve had 18% turnout. That’s good for this part of South Mississippi. In the last governor’s race, only a third of Mississippians voted.
A black woman wearing a Harris/Walz T-shirt comes in.
Steve puts his muffin down, steps away from his table, and comes face to face with the woman.
“You can’t wear that in here,” he says.
I step between them.
“Ma’am, the rules are we can’t have people wearing paraphernalia from any candidate, but there’s a lady’s room over there and you can change your shirt inside out.”
“I’ve got a coat in my car,” she says.
She leaves, comes back about five minutes later wearing a jeans jacket, buttoned up.
We check her in and she votes.
There’s another rush of people and the line lengthens.
Steve’s cell phone rings and when he answers I hear a woman’s voice on speaker, asking if he found his cookies. Steve says no, not yet, but he found the chocolate chip muffins and they were so good. And since his sugar numbers are low for a change, he thinks it’s OK to eat them.
They continue to talk loudly as he twirls his chair around to look for the cookies.
The line of people checking in with Mary and me gets mixed up with the people signing Steve’s registration book.
“He always does this,” Mary says. “He gets on that phone and just talks.”
I excuse myself and get up.
“Steve, you can’t be on your phone.”
Steve goes pale and tells his wife he has to hang up.
We go back to checking in voters.
There’s another lull with a few voters voting in the booths.
Dom wanders over to Steve’s table. They’re talking, looking at me.
“Why can’t he talk on the phone?” Dom asks me.
“Because it was distracting him from his work and it was getting very confusing.”
“I don’t give a shit!” Steve suddenly yells. “I don’t have to listen to you. You don’t tell me what to do. I’ve been doing this for ten years.”
The room goes quiet.
One voter turns to see what’s going on.
“Let’s all take a deep breath,” Mary says.
“I’m the bailiff,” Steve proclaims. “Dom said I could be the bailiff.”
Dom walks quietly back to his affidavit table.
“No, Steve. I am,” I say.
For a minute, I think Steve might cry. “Well, I don’t even want to be the bailiff.”
The voters feed their ballots into the machine and leave.
Mary watches me take notes.
“If you file a complaint,” she says. “I’ll be your witness. Steve has made a lot of mistakes through the years, but I’ve never heard him cuss.”
I started working the polls in 2018 and have mostly loved every minute of it. I made a formal complaint once when a fellow worker left before the polls closed, and without signing the final machine tape. After I complained, I wasn’t asked to work again for two years.
Now I know I’m only here because someone died.
A white woman comes in wearing a Trump T-shirt. I direct her to the lady’s room and tell her to turn it inside out.
“Why?”
I explain.
On her way to the lady’s room, she hurls her purse on the spare table Mary and I set up for poll watchers who never came.
Another white woman comes in wearing sparkly red, white and blue Trump and elephant pins. I ask her to please take them off. She takes them off and stuffs them into her white jeans pocket.
On her way out she shouts, “May the best man win!”
During another lull, Mary checks the numbers. The number of voters registered on our laptop must match the number of signatures in Steve’s book and the number tabulated in Jacobs machine.
Steve’s book is off by one, which means a voter did not sign in.
“They were all talking to each other, visiting, getting out of line,” Steve says. He asks if any of us wants a muffin.
Mary gets to work on the number problem, tracing back to who may not have signed Steve’s book.
Jacob yawns loudly.
“We will figure this out,” Mary says.
“So let me get this straight,” I whisper to Mary. “He messes up and we’re the ones going through the book to make up for his mistake?
She rolls her eyes and nods.
While Mary deciphers the signatures in Steve’s book, I take on the line of voters and get them checked in.
During the next lull, I follow Jacob outside.
“Steve seems to be having some difficulty,” I say.
“Yeah, he’s missing a step.”
“He’s making mistakes. Could you please keep an eye on him?”
“Yeah,” he says. “Sure.” He doesn’t look me in the eye.
Mary and I go back and locate the missing signature.
A woman in military uniform comes in and shows me her California drivers’ license. She has just moved and she’s not registered. She decides to vote affidavit.
“All these people doing affidavits,” Steve says, after she leaves. “And from California, too. That sounds nefarious.”
“She’s in the military,” Mary says, sounding angry.
“Nefarious, if you ask me,” Steve says.
The voting booths are full with voters filling out their ballots.
“These voters think they can just come in here and vote?” Steve asks.
“Let’s keep our voices down,” I say.
“Why?” Steve asks.
“People are voting.”
“You don’t tell me what to do. I’ve been doing this for ten years.”
He opens a bag of cookies, takes one, starts eating. Crumbs fall on the registration book.
I check in a woman, she signs the register, gets her ballot, goes to the voting booth, then comes back.
“I need a pen,” she says.
“It’s that time of day when they’re running off with all my pens,” Steve says. Still seated, he throws a pen across the table towards the woman.
The woman takes the pen and returns to the booth.
“Did he just throw that pen at that woman?” I ask Mary.
“They’re not his pens,” Mary whispers to me. “They’re the voters’ pens.”
And it occurs to me then: This should be a day of celebration and pride in our democracy. Mary and I clearly feel that joy. Our colleagues, these three men do not want to be here and they certainly don’t want voters here either.
Steve starts reading the names out loud of people who have signed in. “You call that a name? You call that a signature?”
Mary checks the numbers.
We’re off again by one.
“They get to talking,” Steve says, checking his Fitbit.
Mary takes the signature book to her laptop and tracks down the missing name.
“His only job is to sit there and say sign in,” she whispers to me.
I suggest to Mary we put the signature book in front of us.
“Good idea,” she says.
At 3:40, we have another line of voters.
We get voters whose names come up with “Not participating. Not Eligible,” meaning they’ve been purged from the system.
I direct them to the affidavit table, remembering our mantra: Never turn a voter away.
“Well, that vote sure won’t count,” Dom says, laughing, after one voter leaves.
Steve takes his signature book back. I half expect him to say Mine!
A huge man carrying a baby comes in with a young woman. The baby uses the man’s big stomach as a ledge to scoot up to his shoulder.
Mary and I check their ID’s, they sign in, get their ballots and go to the booths, side by side, each voting their own ballot.
But then the man goes to her voting booth, and points to the young woman’s ballot.
“Sir, can you please step away from her voting booth.”
“Why?” he asks.
“Because voting is private. No one in this room can influence a voter.”
“She’s my daughter. This is her first time. She doesn’t know what to do.”
“She can ask one of us for help if she needs it. Please step away.”
It’s busy again and I’m checking in voters.
Jacob watches the man return to the girl’s voting booth. Jacob could easily stand up and tell the man to step away, but he just watches.
“He’s pointing,” Mary whispers. “He’s showing her who to vote for.”
I don’t have my glasses to see exactly what the big man is doing.
“Sir, please step away from her booth.”
Our lines are getting longer with people waiting.
Jacob stares at the man.
Steve watches too, eating another cookie.
This is a HUGE man.
“Sir, step away from her voting booth. I’m not going to ask you again.”
He says something to his daughter I can’t hear.
A voter asks me a question.
When I look back, Jacob waves me away, and says to the man, “Oh go on and help her.”
“Yeah,” Steve says, chewing his cookie. “Help her. She doesn’t know what she’s doing.”
It’s late. I’m tired. I’m angry. There’s only so much I can do. The man is huge. The line of voters is long. And I can’t trust my male colleagues to follow the polling rules.
Mary and I sign in the last voters.
Before we even close the poll, Trump and Wicker claim victory in Mississippi.
And it’s Jacob who runs to the door at 7:00, steps outside, and shouts Polls closed! He comes back in with a cigar in his mouth.
While Mary and I break down the tables we set up over thirteen hours ago, Jacob, Steve and Dom talk over their finances, Elon Musk, and Trump stock. Bros talk. It’s clear: This is the one day these three feel they have power over us and everybody else.
“No really, boys, that’s OK, we don’t need any help,” Mary jokes, but she’s not smiling anymore.
Is this what the next four years will look like? Women getting bossed around by clownish, cranky blowhards who don’t do the work but crow for the credit and glory?
My back is killing me. We carry the chairs back up on the stage.
When we check the machine’s tape, we see how voters voted:
309 Harris; 654 Trump;10 RFK
We sign the tape.
Steve helps me with the last table. Together, we carry it across the room. I bear most of the weight.
This was not how I thought the day would go. In my fantasy world, I had Madame President on my bingo card, and, in the years to come, Mississippi slowly making its way up from last place in life expectancy, health care, education, and everything else.
I suppose I should be relieved. Nobody came in yelling at me about a stolen election like last time. Later, my cousin in Canada texts me: Well at least there wasn’t a civil war.
If Harris had won, this would be a funny story I would tell my husband. We would laugh like we did on Halloween when we sat at an outdoor bar and a man came in dressed in a yellow safety vest and another wore a garbage bag. Hilarious.
But I’ve read Project 2025 and the plan to control women’s health care, heard the insults Trump and Vance hurl at women, and see how easily Republicans break rules without paying consequences. I know what’s coming and I’m not sure if our democracy will survive.
As joyful as it is to serve democracy, this may be my last election to serve as a poll worker because the system is broken. Besides, maybe there won’t be another election. It was Trump who said, don’t worry, you’ll never have to vote again.
After Steve and I stack the table, I stand there, waiting for an apology. I had prepared for voters’ rage, even for hollering, just not from a fellow poll worker.
“Very good, very good,” he says to the table, and I have to walk away from the insanity of Steve and this day.
Jacob is near the door, struggling with the plastic locks. He needs to lock the ballot box before he leaves the building with it to take to the court house in Gulfport.
I’ve been in charge of locking the box before and it’s not that difficult.
“Last time, he couldn’t do it either,” Mary whispers. “But all three of them were late this morning, and I’m tired of covering for them.”
Mary reminds me that Barbara Kimbell is retiring this year.
“You should think about running for election commissioner.”
I want to cry right then and there. I’m sad, angry, and crushed. All day, our male co-workers made us feel like we worked for them, made us feel like we didn’t matter.
I would love to run for election commissioner. I believe in this messy process, but for democracy to work, people have to vote and be allowed to vote. Clearly, the goals differ here in Mississippi, and democratic rule is certainly not the goal for Trump. He said he would be a dictator on day one, and that’s who America elected.
I shake my head and thank Mary anyway.
Jacob explains the ties to Dom, who’s watching.
“Right about here is where you want her,” Jacob says. “Then you seal her shut.”
“You ladies can leave,” Dom says. “We’ll take care of the rest.”
Margaret McMullan is the author of nine award-winning books including In My Mother’s House and How I Found the Strong. Her essays have appeared in Women’s Media Center, The Washington Post, The Montreal Review, The Hill, The Bulwark, USA Today, The Los Angeles Times, The Chicago Tribune, The Boston Herald, The Morning Consult, The Morning Edition, The Huffington Post, National Geographic, The Sun, Glamour, and Kveller, among others. She received an NEA Fellowship and a Fulbright in Hungary to research her memoir, Where the Angels Lived. She writes full time in Pass Christian, Mississippi.
