Students and professionals alike come together to do their civic duty for U.S. elections

Grace Peng, Managing Online and Social Media Editor & Megan Serfontein, Copy Editor

It is completely dark outside when junior Elizabeth Ziabtchenko leaves her house at 4:45 a.m. on Election Day. The temperature is unusually cold for an early November morning in suburban Georgia, but it is the dawn of an exciting day for Ziabtchenko, who is finally eligible to be a poll worker.

“I've always been a very politically motivated person,” Ziabtchenko said. “I signed up for this historic election, so I can be on the front lines. I think I think it's really sad that only 50% of Americans vote in any given election, so I just want to kind of help that democratic process.”

Ziabtchenko is not the only one who has sacrificed sleep for civic duty, though.Brendan Keefe, who works in Atlanta as both a freelance journalist and investigative reporter for 11Alive News, is also up by this time, using the full force of Twitter to report hourly updates on the number of votes in Georgia counties.

“I'm literally waking up checking what's going on - tweeting - and then I'm doing that until I basically fall asleep,“ Keefe said. “On election night, I finished at 4:30 a.m. and started back up around 10 a.m., maybe 9:30 a.m., and then just kept going again until three something in the morning.”

Although Election Day has long passed, the fight for power has not yet ended. Georgia remains the site of a final, decisive battle in a long-coming political war: the state has the only Senate seats in the country that are still undecided. The results – which will be decided in a highly anticipated runoff on Jan. 5 – will impact nearly every federal decision made in the next few years, putting Georgia voters at the center of the American spotlight. This means that election workers, from campaigners to poll workers to journalists, have yet to settle down.

Campaigning

The race for any government office begins months – or sometimes years – before Election Day itself. This applies to all levels of government, and each campaign requires at least hundreds of thousands of dollars and an entire staff that is ready on the go. For freshman Avi Dhyani, campaigning is something he has undertaken prior to entering high school. He has already been a part of two major campaigns: Angelika Kausche, a member of the Georgia House of Representatives, and Rishi Kumar, a California candidate for the United States House of Representatives.

“Angelika wasn’t my first campaign. I am still working on another campaign - Rishi Kumar for Congress. He's running in California, and I really liked to help him out. My friend then connected me [to Angelika],” Dhyani said. “Campaigning for Kumar gave me that exposure on how a campaign runs and I was able to bring those skills to help with Angelika’s.”

Dhyani first began campaigning during the long summer months when the pandemic canceled all other activities he had planned. His father found a program from Kumar’s campaign for young people, and Dhyani decided to sign up. Afterward, he began spending a few hours every day promoting Kumar.

“It was like a full-time job in summer,” Dhyani said. “It is a little tough, but even with the limitations [of COVID-19], we made it work.”

Dhyani joined Kausche’s campaign late in September as an intern and soon joined more physical campaigns as well. This involved a constant active presence as well as efficient organization skills. One example of this includes a type of political canvassing called literature drops, or as they are more commonly known “lit drops.”

Traditionally, this involves delivering campaign materials to a voter’s doorstep. But Dhyani and his fellow volunteers took it a step further, using the newly developed app miniVAN to find addresses of prospective voters and drop off flyers at those houses. 

Dhyani’s work does not end there. Another major part of his work includes operating with technology, a process he was first exposed to during Kumar’s campaign.

“I ran like three operational groups when I organized interviews in California, where I had to make sure everything works, and I really liked it,” Dhyani said. “That helped me get better at being a TMT (Technology, Media, and Telecommunications) operator for Angelika.”

While campaigning for Kausche, he also works closely with many student organizations, including the High School Democrats of America and its local chapter here in Johns Creek. As someone who is more closely tied to a campaign than many other students, Dhyani is responsible for working with the heads of these groups to organize events and plan collaborations between the organization and his campaign.

In addition, Dhyani was also a fervent participant in numerous sign-waving events, which regularly occurred each Saturday for about an hour. Perhaps the most exciting one yet, he notes, was the one right before Election Day.

“It was the best event I've ever been to. It was me, the Angelika team, the Biden Harris team, the Johns Creek team, the Ralphael Warnock team, and like five other candidates,” Dhyani said. “They all spoke. You could feel that energy and show your support. So we're just like one, giant, democratic show.”

Dhyani has no plans to stop campaigning and aspires to join the leadership of a student political organization. He has already signed up to be a part of the runoff election campaigns and encourages other people to do so as well.

“I would say to anyone interested, ‘Hey, just join a campaign. There are so many,’” Dhyani said. “There is always some way you could use your power.”

Poll Workers

For campaigners, candidates, citizens, or anyone in the world who is watching, the work all comes down to Election Day, the final day for voters to go to polling stations and the evening when the numbers come in, but the people who allow this important day to run smoothly include hundreds of thousands of voluntary poll workers across the country. 

Ziabtchenko was one of these people, and she, like the rest of that group, began the process a few weeks beforehand by filling out a brief online application of her essential information and why she wanted to be a poll worker. Afterward, she attended mandatory poll worker training for all new applicants.

“It was a four-hour training you had to go through to be a poll worker,” Ziabtchenko said. “It was long, but it was honestly a lot of information that was pretty useful for Election Day, and you get to see the demographics of who's voting.”

Tara Ramesh is another Northview junior who was a poll worker on Election Day and underwent a similar training process at the Johns Creek Environmental Center, where she learned about various voter situations, such as provisional ballots. Both she and Ziabtchenko were given walkthroughs of Election Day operations, including how voting machines worked, how to operate polling pads, what kinds of security would be present, what paperwork needed to be done, and poll worker etiquette during interactions with voters.

On Election Day, poll workers are required to be at their designated location at 5 a.m. For the first two hours, they are responsible for setting up tables, signs, and breaking the security seals on voting machines, which is all overseen by one or more polling managers. At 7 a.m., the locations open up, the first voters arrive, and each worker is assigned to a different part of the voter’s brief journey through the polling location. 

Ziabtchenko’s job meant that she was one of the first people voters saw when coming through the door. With the help of a polling pad, her duty was to verify the information of voters who went through her designated location at Wilson Creek Elementary School and then give them a coded card they would insert into the machine. 

“I had a lot of voter interaction at my job, checking them and verifying their identities and then giving them the information,” Ziabtchenko said. “I did that for 12 hours.”

Ramesh, however, had a job that was towards the end of the voting process. After voters had cast their ballots at the machine, she would greet them before they left the location and scan a piece of paper that each voter’s machine had printed for them to run through a ballot passer that ensures that a voter’s ballot is fully cast. 

“Northview was my designated location on Election Day. So many people come in to vote, and as a poll worker, you get to help each person,” Ramesh said. “And especially with the training and the 14 hours [I worked], I think it was a great opportunity for me to learn more about the voting process [and] get involved in my community.”

Perhaps the only break in the long day was during lunch. Poll workers are allowed 30-minute lunch breaks during which they are served food by the Fulton County Commissions. 

“They gave us Jason's Deli for free, and in true Northview fashion, I had my chemistry textbook open,” Ziabtchenko said. 

If there are no long lines, Georgia polling locations closed at 7 p.m. However, workers still had to stay behind to help clean the location and restore it to its normal state. For Ziabtchenko, that meant breaking down all the machines and tables so that Wilson Creek could function as a school the next day. 

Although it was a long day, both Ramesh and Ziabtchenko recall worthwhile experiences from their first times as poll workers. 

“I definitely loved this experience. It helps me become more aware of the precision that poll workers have to take to make sure each vote was counted properly,” Ramesh said. 

Ziabtchenko recounts a similar feeling, describing the positive vibes she felt from her fellow poll workers and the local voting environment in general.

“In the beginning, everybody was quiet and I was like, the fate of democracy is resting on the people in this room?” Ziabtchenko said. “But then all of us were just talking, and it was very chatty in the end.”

While Ramesh is already signed up to be a poll worker for the runoff elections in January, Ziabtchenko is still undecided, awaiting to see what her school workload will look like.

Information on how to register to vote in Georgia’s January runoff elections.

Graphic by Mira Sydow, Special

“It's extremely important to perform your civic duty. Voting is a great way to help make sure your democracy thrives and to help get involved with your community and learn so much,” Ramesh said.

Journalists

While campaigners work pre-election and poll workers work during the election, journalists are the ones who put in work before, during, and after, to answer the public’s neverending need for the latest updates.

Alexandria Perry, a Northview alumna and now freshman at Northwestern University is one of these journalists. Although this is only her first year in college, she has already covered for several major news publications. She also holds a political fellowship with The Macon Telegraph, where she covered events for each campaign that took place in Georgia before the election, such as Trump’s Macon, Ga. rally and Joe Biden’s visit to Warm Springs, Ga. She is also a reporter for the Daily, Northwestern’s student-run newspaper, interviewing tudents who supported Trump. On election night, Perry updated the Associated Press’ number system for the races for Georgia after receiving them from the elections officials.

“A topic that is causing a lot of buzz in journalism right now is if it's possible for students to be unbiased about their coverage,” Perry said. "I found that it wasn't really a problem. For example, when I was interviewing Trump students, getting them to open up about their beliefs, and not being scared of being on the record was just asserting myself as this unbiased person.”

Another journalist who has been working day and night is 11Alive investigative reporter Keefe, whose near-hourly updates on voter counting has proved an invaluable source of information for both Georgians and news sources around the nation. 

Keefe's role in covering the election was running the live update touchscreen and tweeting figures out every time an update came in. This not only included reporting statistics from each county, but also dispelling rumors, myths, and misunderstandings, as other outlets broadcast his reporting. For example, U.S. Rep. Jody Hice of Georgia’s 10th Congressional District misquoted Keefe, relaying false information. President Donald J. Trump then retweeted the video of Hice saying untrue information. 

"We had to, with very little time, get a story on the air clarifying that, ‘Hey, they are referencing us as a source for this information, but the opposite is true,’" Keefe said. "In a way, we essentially called the President of the United States a liar. That takes some intestinal fortitude as a journalist."

Although this year has been one of the most chaotic elections yet, Keefe is no stranger to the election cycle or calling out misinformation. He been at the frontlines of every presidential election since 1992, including waiting outside the governor’s mansion in Austin, TX in 2000 for George W. Bush to accept the presidency, only for the election to head to the Supreme Court and remain undeclared for a month. Having seen tides turn and new issues turn up every election, Keefe reflects that the development of new campaigning and election technologies has had a major impact on modern political culture. 

"I think that whoever is able to harness the new technology first has a leg up in politics because that's where you're going to reach people," he said.

Keefe, who has seen a surge in activity and popularity on Twitter, has gone from having 5,400 Twitter followers to his current 42,500 followers. People from Dublin, Ireland and Melbourne, Australia have called to talk about the situation in Georgia for their countries’ national radios. 

A typical day for Keefe involves hours of researching, looking into data, and trying to get public records. Beginning at usually 9:30 a.m., he usually works with his team until 3 a.m. When he can, he tries to catch up on as much sleep as possible, but the low-quality rest took not only a toll on his physical health but on his mental health as well. Stress-dreams, he recalls, about numbers coming in that he was not able to share with the public, are common.

But Keefe is not alone in giving up daily routines for the sake of journalism. Perry, too, recalls the lack of rest, staying until 6 a.m. on election night and subsequently arranged her schedule to accommodate the election and her reporting. With the upcoming runoffs and post-election updates, she knows she must find a time for both election coverage and her upcoming university finals. Like Keefe, she acknowledges that finding the journalist’s  balance between the public’s desire for information and their mental health is quite a struggle. Perry copes by consulting her parents and close friends for advice.

"These next few weeks will be a balancing act and just like mental acrobatics, but I will get through it," Perry said. "I don't think people outside of journalism realize that people within journalism are also affected by these policies, so it does get personal sometimes." 

For both Perry and Keefe, however, the struggle is worth it. Their role is key to a free democracy, especially in such trying times when the trends of misinformation and false rumors are rampant in causing distrust among people, the media, and the government. 

"An informed electorate is the cornerstone of democracy," Keefe said. "If we don't have information on which we can rely as, essentially, members of the free society, then we are not a government of, by, and for the people."

This holds especially true as all eyes turn to Georgia, where the future of every national decision for the next 2-4 years will be settled. 

"Nobody anticipated that Georgia was going to be the state that just might tip the presidency to one candidate or the other," Keefe said. "There was a solid day, really, where all of a sudden it dawned on America that ‘oh my God, Georgia might be it.’"

Despite the end of Election Day, there is still much to do. For journalists that means covering transitions of power, what comes next for democracy, and the runoff here in Georgia for the Senate. For campaigners, it means helping candidates in the runoff, and for poll workers, it means showing up again come runoff day to help citizens with their civic duties. While most of America can begin to regain a sense of normalcy again without worrying about their ballots arriving in time or the Associated Press election map, reporters, poll workers, and activists know one thing: the work is never truly done.