Between 7 a.m. and 6 p.m. less than 10 residents had come to vote on Nov. 3, 2015 at IM Sports-West. Election officials said that they had one of the worst voting turnouts in years. The election was for East Lansing City Council.
Though the polls open at 7 a.m. on Tuesday, volunteers working the precincts will begin to arrive as early as 5 a.m., East Lansing City Clerk Marie Wicks said. Election volunteers who chose to work the whole day could be staying early into Wednesday morning.
“That is whenever everything is reconciled and the chair says they can go,” Wicks said.
Election inspector Michael Sawyer-Todd has been working election days since the last presidential election in 2012. He said many of the poll volunteers worked past elections and work well together.
Poll workers make sure to keep the election fair, Sawyer-Todd said. Public volunteers can be of any party affiliation. The chair and co-chair are of different parties and everything is rechecked to ensure an accurate report.
“I have a lot of confidence in our system because of all the overlap and overseeing of everyone else,” Sawyer-Todd said. “There’s two parties working together in the room. We’re not there as a partisan person, we’re there because we want to have a fair election.”
Wicks said a key part in keeping the election fair is ensuring everything runs smoothly and no one is campaigning while in line for the polls.
“Maintaining order in the polls, that’s really, really important,” she said.
Wicks said she has more than 250 volunteers and workers staffed for election day, both at polls and City Hall. Though they are called volunteers, many are paid for their time at about $10 an hour, Wicks said. Volunteers are usually older than 40 years old, but Wicks said there is a good diversity this year.
DeWitt High School senior Foster Weiss volunteered to work the whole day Tuesday. He said he volunteered for the March primaries after learning about it in a class.
“(I did it) mainly because I took an AP (government) course last year and it sparked an interest when we did elections,” Weiss said. “It was right around the primaries and it talked about election turnout."
He said he was shocked by how few people showed up to the primaries, but he expects Tuesday’s election to be much more hectic.
“It’s a really big race, both contestants have a lot of controversy and it’s just going to be interesting to see what happens,” Weiss said.
Sawyer-Todd said he began volunteering at polls to serve the community and he has become closer to the community in the process.
“It’s limited so you don’t have to do it all the time, but it’s important and you meet a lot of cool people, too,” he said. “I’ve been at the same precinct for a while so I get to know the voters, too.”
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