There’s a lot more on your ballot than just the presidential election
🎉 Welcome to the 200th issue of the Medium Newsletter, which (and we definitely didn’t plan this) coincides with U.S. Election Day. Some of the most-read issues so far? A philosopher on the meaning of LLMs, the underrated rewards of cold-calling, plus: Go small and go home. Thank you for reading!
Issue #200: working the polls and phoning a friend
By Harris Sockel
You’re going to hear a lot about the presidential election today — too much, probably — so I’m going to hook a left and recommend learning a little (just a little!) about everything else you might find on your ballot.
Like my personal favorite ballot section: props (you know, “propositions”). Instead of voting for people, you can vote for an idea. One of the five props on my New York City ballot, just to give you a sense of how boring-yet-important these are, would ostensibly give the NY Department of Sanitation (heroes) more power to hold street vendors accountable for trash around their food trucks. If you dig a little deeper, though, turns out it may be a ploy to give the mayor more power over small business owners.
Anyone can preview their ballot here. If you have a sec, Google each prop and read what yays and nays are saying. If you can’t find much, that’s a red flag! Maybe it was created by a small group of elected officials pushing an agenda.
One more thing: In 24 states (not in mine), citizens can add their own props to the ballot. On Medium, intrepid LA citizen and organizer Michael Schneider describes how he did just that. It took… three years! With the help of friends, neighbors, and professional signature-gatherers, he got the 61,000 signatures needed to propose (and pass) a new law leading to miles of safe bike and bus lanes across LA.
Also today: Confessions of a Pennsylvania poll worker
Did you know that in Pennsylvania, the poll worker handbook is 67 pages long? Or that each polling machine prints four tapes reporting all the votes, and a human poll worker needs to sign off on each tape? Those are a few of the intricacies Daniel McIntosh, PhD., reveals in his Medium story about what he’ll be doing today — making sure every vote is accurately counted in Allegheny County, PA.
There may be problems, but they aren’t at the polling places. The biggest obstacles to voting in Pennsylvania aren’t at the polling booth or the precinct level. People who come to our precinct looking for fraud (and each major party has people on hand to do just that) walk away bored.
📞 Your daily dose of practical wisdom: Phone a friend
When life turns difficult — be it election anxiety or an on-coming panic attack — there’s often nothing that can help faster than a simple phone call with someone you know.
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Edited and produced by Scott Lamb & Carly Rose Gillis
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