Two old men sat in the dark on a bench outside Dunston elementary school in North Charleston, South Carolina, waiting for a long day to start that would be quieter than they deserved.
Few were expecting strong turnout for the Democratic primary in South Carolina on Saturday. In pre-election polls, Biden had more than 90% support. The nomination race has no drama. But people still have to vote. And the temperamental apparatus of elections has to prepare for that vote, even when it’s not cast.
“We’ve got some people that come down here and really don’t know what they’re doing, and I try to help them,” said Virgil Middleton, 74, a retired truck driver and marine veteran of the Vietnam war. He fought for democracy, he said, “so that everybody can have a fair chance in the United States”.
Six poll workers trundled into the school gym at 6am, one of 2,351 precincts across the state, to snip the zip ties – marked with serial numbers – on the ballot box and fiddle with the polling terminals. They solemnly swore “to preserve, protect and defend the constitution of this state and of the United States”.
Up before sunrise, all would return home after dark. Take-home pay for a poll worker is about $167 for the day, said Robert Samuel Jackson, a 74-year-old retiree in North Charleston. It’s soldierly work. Four are military veterans. None are younger than 60.
And all have known each other – and known Annette Green, the precinct clerk – for years.
Green didn’t have much time to talk on Saturday morning, at least not until it became clear that there would be no rush of solemn voters waiting their turn. The process of uncorking a polling location requires meticulous work to stave off accusations of tampering or fraud. Every seal broken on a machine has to be accounted for. Every person who touches a machine has to be accounted for. Every ballot has to be accounted for.
A few minutes before the polls opened, Green took a stack of blank ballots out of a sealed box and began counting them by hand, carefully moistening her fingers to separate each paper from the next.
“We have to be here six hours before the polls open,” she said. It takes time to pack up when the polls close at 7pm, then to haul the materials back to the election office. “Then you go and get in line. You have your communication pack, your yellow bag, your black bin, your blue bin with your ballots, and then you get in line and you wait to be checked in.
“They verify that you have brought back all your zero tapes, your keys, your communication pack, your thumb drive which has all the information. They make sure that you have checked in all your cohorts. And then after about an hour, you get to go home.”
Green turned the ballots over in her hand after counting them – and counted them again. She’s been doing this for 15 years. Her daughters worked with her at the polls for years, too. One is a lawyer now. The other is in law school.
At 8.07am, a bit more than an hour into the voting day, Dunston elementary had yet to see its first voter.
“This has never happened before,” Green said. “But this is the first time we’ve been working on Saturday.”
Perhaps early voting had cut into things, she suggested.
To Green, democracy means freedom.
“We have to fight for democracy,” she said.
“I find that to be important for young kids to learn. Democracy was not ours. We had to earn it, and we’re earning it when we teach our young children – like my daughter’s coming out here to work the election poll – it taught them how important it was for them to keep encouraging each other to get out and vote.”
Green checked the first voter in at 8.21am. It was a Biden voter – as expected.
“I was trying to figure out what time they were going to open,” Villa Middlesex, 72, said after voting.
Fifty people had cast a ballot at Dunston elementary by 5 pm. The precinct has 1,754 registered voters assigned to it.
