Ask for What You Want, Part One
Ask for What You Want, Part Two
(I knew there’d be a Part Three to this series)

On Tuesday, November 3, 2026 I worked as an election coordinator in Chicago. It was a case study of people being unable to ask for things.
All names have been changed to protect the communication impaired.

The Workload

Our precinct had a head election judge, Lisa, and three other judges. Their responsibilities included:

• Setting up the polling place (equipment, voting booths, forms and other materials).
• Looking people up on the two election book iPads and making sure they’re eligible to vote.
• Providing the voter’s preferred way of voting (paper or touch screen).
• Registering new voters.
• Breaking down the polling place.
• Completing all paperwork (numbers of registrations & provisional ballots, documentation of equipment used, etc. etc. ETC!)

As the election coordinator, I supported the judges in any and all tasks, whatever they needed me to do.

Two things to know about Chicago elections:

1. Many people vote early, which you can do starting about five weeks before an election.
2. You’re encouraged to register before the election, but you can also do it on the day of the election in the same place you vote.

We had all had eight hours of training in the weeks prior to November 3, but there was a massive amount of detailed information and no way to learn all of it in one go. Veteran poll workers were to help new ones like me. I had never done any of this before and felt nervous, but I knew I could lean on experienced people. We also learned that if we had any questions or had any problems at all, any election worker could call Election Central for help at any time.

The First Cracks

My first hint that Lisa, our head judge, might not be up to the task came on Sunday. Our training had told us to show up Monday evening at our precincts and help set up booths, so Lisa sent a text to all of us on Sunday morning. It included this: “If you can make it to assist, that’s great. If not, no worries, see you Tuesday @ 5am.”

She sounded very casual and unconcerned about getting everything set up, so I wondered if Monday were actually optional. I showed up anyway, just in case, and found Lisa and one other judge struggling to put up six booths. There was also some equipment to set up, but we didn’t get to that. I was surprised Lisa had made Monday evening sound so casual when she had needed more people.

Tuesday we were due to arrive at 5:00 a.m. because the polls opened at 6 a.m. but Lisa and I were the only ones there at 5:00. We were also the only ones there at 5:15 a.m. It was 5:30 a.m. before Judge 2 showed up, 5:45 a.m. when 3 arrived, and it was after 6:00 a.m. when 4 finally walked in.

Here’s the point at which I realized Lisa really wasn’t the best person for her job. At 5:00 she got to work setting up equipment, but didn’t guide me at all. I read through the (heavy) instruction book I’d received during training to figure out how to put together a piece of equipment I knew we needed. But even though I asked, she didn’t tell me what the priorities were or what she wanted me to do.

Troubling Circumstances

In the hour before the poll opened at 6:00, I found out that election judges 5 and 6 had dropped out. We were now down two people who were supposed to work this precinct. Lisa also told me none of the judges had ever worked an election except her. We were a staff of five, who should have been seven, with only one experienced person. That’s when my anxiety started.

We had two election book iPads and Lisa told me I’d be in charge of registering new voters. That meant leaving the two iPads on the judges’ table, and pulling one of them over to the registration table when necessary. Lisa assured me they didn’t usually get many day-of registrations so I shouldn’t have much to do.

I could tell she was annoyed by how late everyone was, but as each judge arrived, she continued to not tell anyone what to do. She also didn’t express her anger. In fact, she barely spoke to the other judges as they walked in. 

And this was the other problem: Judges 2, 3 and 4 weren’t good at asking questions. Lisa and I were over 50 years old, but the others were mostly under 30. They acted shy and quiet. It’s possible they picked up on Lisa’s irritation and didn’t want to deal with her, but it’s likely they’re also people who need direction. They weren’t taking any initiative at all.

At about a quarter to 6:00, Lisa had Judges 2 and 3 help with the most important piece of equipment: the scanner. All ballots were to be fed into the scanner and at the end of the day, the scanner would print a tape that documented how many ballots had been cast. 

The three of them struggled with it, but it just wasn’t coming together. I’d been hoping we’d have a bit of a grace period between 6 a.m. and the time when voters actually showed up, but no. People were lining up before 6. 

Showtime

Lisa has us open the doors and use the backup method of collecting ballots: the ballot box attached to the equipment container. We had people insert their ballots into that slot and it was going along all right, except that there were way more voters than I expected at that hour. Also, Judges 2 and 3 had never checked in voters before, but they were learning as they did it, and they were learning from Lisa who and didn’t have much patience with them.

So there we were:

1. One head election judge who was angry and resentful and not talking much.
2. Three election judges with anxiety, no experience, no initiative, and who struggled to ask questions or say anything at all. 
3. One election coordinator (me) whose irritation about the lateness was gradually changing to anxiety about everything going wrong and how much I’d be responsible for.
4. Plenty of voters, even between 6:00 and 7:00 a.m.

(By the way, we were all women of color. The vast majority of Chicago election workers are people of color.)

Worse Circumstances

At 8 a.m. the scanner still wasn’t assembled. Lisa spent a long time on the phone with Election Central trying to get it together which meant Judges 2 and 3 were on their own checking in people, a process they were still learning. It was terrible. None of us newbies could help each other and our leader was bogged down with equipment problems.

It was after 9 a.m. when Lisa walked over to me and handed me the phone. Confused, I took it and said, “Hello?”

A voice snapped back, “Is this the election coordinator?” 

“Yes.”

“Regina?”

“Yes.” 

“Regina, I need you assemble the scanner.” 

I walked doubtfully over to the scanner and began following her instructions. After several minutes I reached the same point at which the others had stopped: a certain part wasn’t going into the place it was supposed to. I told the Election Central woman I couldn’t do it. Then I repeated what Lisa had been saying for over an hour: we needed someone to come out and help.

“That scanner must be operating!” the EC person told me. She explained the function of the scanner. She explained its importance in documenting ballots. She told me repeatedly I had to put it together right now. When I couldn’t, she asked to speak to Judge 2. I said, “We need someone to come out and help us.” In the training they’d assured us EC could send help if needed.

She insisted I hand the phone to Judge 2. I repeated that we needed someone to come help us. She insisted I hand the phone to Judge 2. I repeated that we needed someone to come help us. Finally she ended our call.

EC Woman seemed to think that if she scolded us long enough, we’d succeed in putting together pieces that weren’t going together. We had been told that at any time we could ask EC for help. I was stunned by how untrue it was.

Knot of Anxiety

For the first few hours, I was able to borrow an iPad when someone needed to register to vote, but the flow of new voters became steady. Eventually I needed to keep the iPad which meant the judges only had one iPad to check in the voters. The flow of voters was steady, too, and getting heavier.

The other thing that was steady was my anxiety. Election Central was clearly not the source of support I’d been led to believe in. Lisa was almost completely shut down and looked like she was about to either walk out or shoot someone. And I was still learning how to register voters.

I kept the instruction book open in front of me, consulting it for valid forms of ID and address confirmation, memorizing the process of issuing a provisional ballot (after learning what the heck one was), and looking up what to do for various questions and problems. An EC worker had dropped off cinnamon rolls but I was too scared to eat. Anxiety had formed a knot in my stomach that wasn’t moving.

And Then a Hero Came Along

A little before 1 p.m. a young white man walked in. He said to Lisa and the rest of us, “Hi, I’m Paul. I’m working the precinct in the next building. You can see our site through the window here.”

We greeted him. He asked how things were going and if we needed anything. Lisa told him things were good. We were fine.

What?

Paul said to keep in mind that he was over there if we needed anything and he walked out of the room. Mercifully, I wasn’t registering anyone at that moment, so I darted down the hall and stopped him before he got to the front door.

“Paul, hey! Uh, just a sec. On a scale of 1 to 10, how big a nightmare is it over there?”

Paul hesitated. “Maybe a 3. We’re not as busy as you are.”

“Okay, well we’re at 8. None of us have ever done this before except for Lisa, and it’s kind of shitshow.”

“Oh! What do you need?” 

“Well, we could use another iPad, but just more workers would be good, too. We need someone else who’s done this before.”

“We can’t give you any equipment, but I can come back. Would that help?”

“Yes!”

Fifteen minutes later Paul walked back in with another person, Amira. They repeated that they weren’t as busy as we were and sat down at the judges’ table. Within 15 seconds a voter asked a question none of us could answer, but Paul could. Yay, Paul! Yay, Amira!

The Slog

My stomach loosened a bit after Paul and Amira joined us. They were not only seasoned poll workers, they were fresh and hadn’t been demoralized by the morning.

Then my stomach tightened again. Not long after our reinforcements arrived, around 1:30 p.m., the line for registration solidified. Now I constantly had someone in front of me, no breaks, no way to even see across the room. The check-in table was equally busy. It was a full room and we were still learning our jobs.

It took me a while to figure out that the increase happened because class had let out. Most of the registration line was Loyola University students. Later I’d learn that the way the precincts were set up, our precinct had the bulk of the college students in the area while Paul’s precinct had mostly retired people. 

And college students don’t register ahead of time. [Horror music sting]

I’ve been a restaurant server with full tables in a full restaurant and a kitchen that was struggling with a 30-minute cook time. I’ve been a nine-year-old desperately scrubbing at the carpet while my mother screamed at me for ruining her rug. But as frightening and draining as those experiences were, they didn’t include following election rules. They didn’t involve the law.

Every minute I felt terrified that I was either screwing up someone’s right to vote or risking prison time. What do I select from the pull-down menu for this piece of ID? Was this a valid form of address confirmation? What happened to the person I sent off with a provisional ballot? She must give me that ballot and not put it in the scanner (yes, the scanner eventually worked, but I never had time to find out how that happened!).

At 2:30 p.m. my lower back was hurting from the lousy folding chair I was sitting in. 

At 3:00 p.m. I’d been working non-stop, each newly processed voter stepping away from me to be replaced immediately by the next one. 

At 4:00 my back was really hurting and the only time I’d been out of the folding chair had been to go to the bathroom. One of those times I told the next person in line, “Okay, I just need to take a minute. Let’s not be like Amazon!” Fortunately, she smiled.

I Asked for What I Wanted!

A few minutes after 5:00 p.m. I was thirsty, hungry, in pain and needed to use the bathroom again. At this point it occurred to me, “I should ask for a break.” I don’t know why I hadn’t thought of that before. I think I was hypnotized by the rhythm of asking “Is this your first time registering in Chicago?” and then staring at the scrawl of an 18-year-old, trying to decipher the name.

Leaving the next person in line standing there, I stepped towards the judges’ table. Judge 2 was handing out ballots while Amira worked the iPad and checked people in. Paul and Lisa also sat there. I humbly asked, “Could someone do registration while I take just a ten-minute break?”

They all looked at me. It was really Judge 2 and Lisa that I was counting on. There were four people at that table and only Amira was using the only iPad. Certainly one of them to do this, right? But they didn’t move, not at first.

I resented Lisa at that moment because she didn’t seem to have a clear function just then and she could have registered voters. But I also knew she’d had a horrible experience that day. She’d been let down by her late-arriving team members, and when she finally asked for help, the EC staff hadn’t listened. I understood why she wasn’t ready to do one more thing.

After several beats, Amira stood up. She passed the iPad to Judge 2 (who didn’t look thrilled to get it back) and sat in my place. 

I stretched. I used the bathroom. I tried to take a walk, but it was cut off by the big line of people. I phoned a friend and whined for two and a half minutes. I got a bottle of water. I managed to get half a sandwich inside me.

Then I went back and resumed processing registrations until 7:30 p.m. The polls closed at 7:00 but we had to serve everyone who was still in line at that time. (I told Paul not to tell me how long the registration line was, but later I found out it had gone out of the building and a bit down the sidewalk.)

This Sucked

I’ll never be a poll worker again if only to avoid working with Lisa who couldn’t ask for what she wanted or even express herself in a mature way (pouting and snapping at people don’t count as mature even though it is adult behavior). Election workers can’t request locations and it’s likely I’d end up in the same place along with her.

But the young people were worse. They seemed to prefer making mistakes to asking questions. What made them so afraid to interact with others? You can’t function well on a team if you don’t know what to do and you can’t ask questions. They baffled me. Who taught them this behavior? How do these people get through life? Has the human race developed a mind reading skill I missed?

It would have been fascinating to watch these manifestations of not asking for what you want if I hadn’t been so dependent on all of them. To hell with the EC, I needed this team to function for my peace of mind and stomach. Annoyingly I don’t think any of them knew Paul and Amira had saved us only because I had asked for help. As we closed down everything I tried to tell Lisa that, but I doubt it sank in.

A Pain Worse Than My Lower Back

There was much more that went wrong that day and my fear of making federal-level mistakes continued all the way up to the moment we walked out of the building at 10:00 p.m.

But even more painful was missing out on watching the blue wave, minute by minute, hour by hour. I didn’t even know the Democrats were doing well until 9:30 p.m. when Paul walked in and announced it!

Between 7:45 a.m (my last text to my sister) and 10:00 p.m. I hadn’t had time to glance at my phone to see how the election was going. I hadn’t even had the brain power to wonder how it was going.

When Paul said the Democrats were winning, I gave a “Really?” of surprise, not because of the news but because I’d forgotten there was a world outside of that overheated, cramped polling place. I thought, “Oh, right. There’s an election.” Talk about missing the forrest for the trees.

But here’s the absolute worst part of the whole experience: I missed out on the excitement and wonder and joy of watching the blue wave wash over the country, minute by minute, hour by hour. I missed the moments when Kansas and Georgia went blue. I didn’t get to celebrate the moment when my Houston family and the rest of Texas succeeded in voting Governor Abbott out of office.

I didn’t get to send any of the dozens of texts I would have shared with friends and family, crowing over specific victories and scooping them on news they hadn’t heard yet. I missed the shocked and/or delighted expressions of all the pundits and broadcasters and talking heads as they watched states go blue that had been red for decades.

Yes, of course, the happiness and celebration lasted past that night, but it’s important for me to feel part of it in real time, sharing a historic, national experience with everyone else in the same moment, or at least the same hour. I cherish those shared experiences and I missed a huge one. 

It’ll happen again. There will be someone else who leads the U.S. to the brink of dictatorship and another nationwide rebuke that finally puts him in his place, but I won’t be alive for it. This was my once-in-a-lifetime, ding-dong-the-authoritarian-is-dead election and I hadn’t felt the joy of it.

I spent Wednesday physically recovering from the day and emotionally coming to terms with the experience I’d missed. My happiness over the blue wave has come gradually, over days, through political analyses and opinion articles and Seth Meyers routines. Of course I’m glad the Democrats routed the Republicans, but I wish so much I’d stayed home and enjoyed the returns with everyone else.

Later I learned that precincts across the city and the country were swamped with voters. Ours wasn’t a unique experience. But it’s very thin comfort to know we weren’t the only ones.

I regret working the polls on November 3. It wasn’t worth the money I earned and I wish I’d never signed up to do it.

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