//What it’s like working at the polls in the middle of a pandemic

What it’s like working at the polls in the middle of a pandemic

People wait to cast their votes at a polling station for the special election in Santa Clarita, California, on May 12, 2020. | Mark Ralston/AFP/Getty Images

I worked at the polls in July. We need to take steps to protect election workers from Covid-19.

With an hour-long video training under my belt, including a five-minute segment about pandemic-related precautions, I circled the halls of a government building in downtown Austin, Texas, looking for the polling location where I’d signed up to work. I tried to open just about every door, until I realized the building was deserted.

When I called various election officials, they informed me that typically these types of details were sorted out at in-person trainings before the election, but they had been canceled due to Covid-19. It turned out that the other poll workers got lost in the maze of