And it felt a bit strange to show up and be in charge of making decisions and directing the other workers, and I thought abt why am I in this role and not one of the Black election workers who are clearly as/more capable of doing the job but prefer not to.
In the downtime I asked some of them why they preferred not to be Chief and they kinda quietly shrugged and said it was easier, they were happy for me to deal w the conflicts and the paperwork and chain of custody and etc.
And like... it's a product of growing up w more privilege that I have the confidence to step up to mediate disputes and make decisions and insist that the election be carried out to the letter of the law... and perhaps some ppl are more deferential to me than they would be to a Black Chief.
And it sucks that the community either gets a Chief who doesn't look like them, doesn't live within the community or their Chief is at greater risk of being bullied or gaslit by racist voters & maybe the system as a whole - which in the past was certainly racist, like it's not an unreasonable fear.
And on the voter side - the ppl who end up at the Chief's table w issues w being able to check in to vote are almost never white ppl... non-white names are more frequently misspelled in the records, mistyped by workers, entered strangely bec they don't follow the First / Middle / Last pattern
ppl who move around frequently have trouble w the residency laws & getting their records updated when they move & knowing where their new voting location is each election ... ppl who've been through the criminal justice system lose their right and here it isn't automatically restored (sadly, imo)
multigenerational families at the same address w similar names can get mixed up by workers which leads to big delays while we sort out what happened and fix the records; absentee ballots are more often lost when the mailing address is shared by roommates or has been subdivided w unit numbers
it all adds up to a notably higher risk of having a long and frustrating voting experience which can discourage ppl from voting again in the future... here in Virginia we've had voting laws changed for the better since 2016- last year was the first time we had same day registration, etc