On Tuesday, Nov. 5, I’m going to wake up at 5 a.m., drive to a small town in Reno County and stay there until after it becomes dark outside, helping process the votes of people who I almost certainly disagree with on every political issue.

And you should, too.

Since before I was old enough to vote, I’ve served as an election worker for everything from national elections to small odd-year primaries. Doing so is extremely important — not just to preserve democracy, but to insulate yourself from misinformation about it as well.

Election workers have been in the headlines since the 2020 election for receiving death threats and enhanced security measures to protect them against potential violence from people who believe they’re an aspect of a rigged system.

These threats have been mostly contained to swing states that have seen the most allegations of voter fraud. Being constantly under threat from a lunatic waving a gun is actually far more eventful than the benign reality of what working the polls in Kansas is actually like.

In my experience, it’s a repetitive exercise of sitting in a small town community center for 12 hours, greeting and checking in voters as they trickle in and out of the door. It’s chatting with the elderly couple you’re sharing the job with during down periods and slowly realizing that they know literally everyone who comes through the doors to vote while you’re an outsider.

But all of that’s OK because it’s gratifying to know you’ve played a small, but important role in the process of democracy. And given the threats seen to our democracy over the past half-decade, we know that process can be fleeting. 

Either you preserve and defend it, or you lose it.

By participating in the democratic process, you insulate yourself from unwarranted attacks on it. I’ve worked with numerous conservative people throughout my time as an election worker, but none of them have bought into the common refrain that American elections are, or can be, rigged.

When you become a poll worker, you realize that Dominion voting machines — which are used in Kansas — are simple tools that make the counting process far simpler and can easily be verified, not Venezuelan devices that switch votes away from Trump.

You realize that it would be impossible to commit mail-in ballot fraud at a large scale because we can see if people have already submitted or received a mail ballot before we give them an in-person one and can tie every ballot to individual people in the election database.

You realize that most election workers are public servants who do a boring, bureaucratic and thankless job for the sake of the country, not partisan Democrats who want to rig elections.

Nearly half of poll workers are over 60 years old. When I go to the required training workshop, I’m often the only young person in the room. That needs to change because those old folks won’t be around forever.

Become an election worker. The job, while thankless and a little boring, is crucial to keeping democracy on track.