Poll workers signed up to help voters. Instead, we were abused by Trump supporters Opinion

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By JEFFREY KASKY
SPECIAL TO THE SUN SENTINEL |
NOV 04, 2020 AT 12:43 PM

Tuesday Nov. 3, 2020. (Bob Self/AP)



I did not sign up for this.

When I registered to be a poll worker, I looked at it as an active, nonpartisan way to contribute to our democracy. I thought that working the polls was essential to helping others — particularly those whose votes are often suppressed — have access to open and fully staffed polling places where they could exercise one of the foundations of our democracy by voting for president.

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But I didn’t sign up for this. I didn’t sign up to be threatened, harassed, taunted, harangued and even physically assaulted. But I got all of this, and more.

Trump supporters treated the outside of my polling place in West Boca Raton like a college football tailgate party, complete with their own sound systems blasting the music of artists who most definitely do not share their political and social views. There were overflowing coolers; cardboard cutouts of Trump and his wife for the time being; gigantic pick-up trucks over-adorned with Trump, MAGA, KAG and QAnon flags; and a palpable combination of anger, stupidity and revelry. They were joined at times by local lawyer and failed Palm Beach County Commission candidate David Irving Shiner and his similarly enthusiastic and raucous team. Trump’s faithful followers blocked access in and out of our polling place with their vehicles, interfered with traffic by standing in the streets and waiving flags, and directly interfered with voters in the precinct by blasting the train horns from their jacked-up trucks directly into the polling place where voters were voting.

These self-styled patriots verbally harassed voters and poll workers, and even chanted the “n-word” at our precinct supervisor, a Black woman. One deranged Trump supporter attacked that same supervisor with an umbrella, injuring her forehead. This, to an elections office employee pulling 17- or 18-hour days to ensure your right to vote. And she wasn’t alone in being abused. A man decorated head-to-toe with cheap Trump memorabilia poked me repeatedly in the chest. Others threatened and harassed a group of teenage girls who arrived on Election Day to peacefully and quietly sit behind a “Students Demand Action” banner.

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https://www.sun-sentinel.com/opinion/commentary/fl-op-com-polling-sites-campaign-intimidation-20201104-rfr6d6npune7daoihytqsogbhq-story.html

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1. Yup! I lived this last Tuesday

I had a Trumper say that we were in violation of "federal law" and another wanted me to
read some random stuff from the internet on his smart phone which proved that being a
poll watcher was in violation of the Constitution. I declined.

BTW one Trumper rather then taking off her Trump jacket or just turning it around and then
going inside and voting she spent an hour yelling into her phone that her "free-dumbs" were
being stolen by the libs.