‘It’s up to us.’ Meet the 2020 skeptics now working the polls.
Over the weekend, the Monitor sat down with a group of Republicans in Arizona’s Pima County who, for the first time, were volunteering to work at the polls in Tuesday’s midterms. All decided to get involved after what they believed was a problematic election in 2020 – with some becoming poll workers and others poll observers.
Poll workers are short-term employees paid a small stipend by the county to work at voting locations. In Pima, where they must go through multiple hours of training, their tasks on Election Day could be anything from showing voters where to go to checking their identification.
Poll observers, by contrast, are partisan appointees put in place to watch for things like improper influence on voters or tampering with equipment. They are not permitted to handle election materials or speak with voters. Sarah Ramsey, who runs the Pima County Republican Party’s Election Integrity Program, has led two-hour training sessions for 360 new observers this year.
In an almost two-hour
