by I’m the type of person who likes to see and experience things for myself before making up my mind. With all the rhetoric in the past few years about elections being fake, fraudulent, or stolen, I decided to sign up as a county poll worker to see what actually happens behind closed doors. My experience was an absolute eye-opener!
Getting Vetted and Trained – You don’t just walk in off the street and start handling ballots, I had to pass a background check. From there, I went through intensive training: 9 online courses (roughly 10 hours) plus 3 in-person sessions (9 hours), totaling about 20 hours of training. (Side note: If you want a peek behind the curtain without becoming a worker, anyone can take a free tour of the Jeffco Election Centerin the weeks leading up to an election!)
The Golden Rule: Never Work Alone – Once on site, my single biggest takeaway was that nobody does anything alone. Every step of the way, our teams represented Red, Blue, and Purple political parties, keeping eyes on everything being done. To be completely honest, all of us were terrified of screwing something up and grateful we all had to come to a 100% consensus on anything we did! Also, every morning and evening, we performed strict anti-tampering protocols to ensure complete equipment integrity. Here is a breakdown of how the technology works –
- Voting Tablets: The tablets voters use aren’t general-purpose computers. They are basic, standalone marking machines that fill in the bubble for you instead of using a pen. They have zero internet connectivity, do not save any data, and cannot process votes.
- Serial Number Verification: Setting up these tablets and printers required multi-party verification of serial numbers both AM & PM, so that if an issue ever arises, the county can trace it back to the exact machine.
- Check-In Computers (Electronic Poll Books): We use check-in systems connected to official databases (like the DMV and healthcare systems) to verify U.S. citizenship and voter eligibility. As soon as you check in or submit a ballot, whether in-person or by mail, the system immediately records it and cancels out all other options so everyone gets exactly one vote.
Paper Rules Everything & Daily Reconciliations – Despite all the digital check-in tools, everything comes down to a paper count. At the end of every single day, our bipartisan teams triple-counted everything to reconcile our physical paper voter counts against computer tabulations. Even the leftover sticker backings on our official counting forms get saved for a final count! We quickly learned that while mistakes are fixable, the reconciliation process is massive and something none of us ever wanted to trigger, we just didn’t screw up or verified our hesitations with our supervisors.
Real Moments at the Check-In Desk – Voters constantly asked whether someone could steal a mail-in ballot and fraudulently vote twice, proving Election Fraud is on everyone’s mind. We politely walked them through the secure check-in protocols that prevent duplicate voting. But our #1 Challenge: Helping confused elderly voters who changed their minds multiple times, which required us to officially cancel and reissue ballots. Also, Colorado accepts multiple forms of voter identification, but every single voter I checked in brought either a Colorado Driver’s License or a U.S. Passport. Finally, I was genuinely surprised by how many voters (knowingly or unknowingly) were electioneering in the polling center.
Finding “Team Democracy” – Although everyone on our team came in with different political views, you would never have guessed it. We laughed, made friends, and NEVER discussed politics. In fact, my daily desk partner was from the opposite side of the political aisle, and we can’t wait to work together again at the next elections! Our current culture tries to convince us that we’re divided into competing “teams”, but working at the polls proved we’re all on Team Democracy! I have served as a Peace Corps Volunteer, a juror, and now an Election Judge. I do this because I truly love and believe in our country, just like everyone else.
Final Thoughts – I firmly believe every citizen should work an election at least once. Seeing the integrity of the process firsthand is the ultimate cure for online conspiracy theories. If you want to talk more in-depth about my experience, let’s grab coffee or jump on a phone call, I’d love to chat more in depth about my experience!
