Member-only story
Stories from the Polls, 2020
I don’t know how the elderly woman got down the stairs into the precinct. The police officer spotted her first, raced over, and sat her down in a padded office chair with wheels. Clutching her voter ID, she gasped for air, pulling down her mask to her chin. The officer pushed the chair to her electoral district table, then came over to me and said “That woman requested assistance in voting.”
I approached the table and picked up her cane, which had clanked to the floor. “I can’t see the lettering, it’s too small,” she explained, as I prompted her where to sign the tablet to receive her ballot. I pushed her to a privacy station and prepared to read the information to her, race by race.
She shook her head. “I’m only here to vote for two people.”
I nodded and readied my pen.
“Donald Trump,” she said slowly, waiting to see if I would fill in the circle by his name.
In the back of my mind, a little voice whispered, “She can’t see the lettering, it doesn’t matter what circle you fill in.” But I blackened the box above the name “Trump.”
Her other candidate was a local Democrat who had “knocked at her door.” She didn’t remember his name exactly, but I figured out who she meant.
