Jeremy Jones is taking the reins from Bekah Saxon and Kristin Clarens after two election cycles of their good and gracious tutelage (and his prior 2020 experience working as an election official on Election Day). Jeremy really enjoys helping people on Election Day, when everyone’s excited about casting their ballots and having their say in who governs.
Jeremy is looking to expand the VoPro Team to not only cover all the Charlottesville precincts in November, but also hopefully to help out in some other key VA races across the state, so everyone who’s eligible to vote gets to do so.
Voter protection requires a lot of behind-the-scenes work, so there are many ways you can pitch in. The main three:
1. Observe polling place operations and use an online system to file reports of any problems with the State Democratic Party’s boiler room of lawyers ready to handle them. You don’t have to be a lawyer to do this! The only prerequisites are:
- Taking a 2-hour training session before Election Day (since it’s all about making sure the rules are followed, step #1 is having lawyers explain what the rules are!).
- On Election Day you must work either the entire long exhilarating day (5am to 8pm!) or a more moderately thrilling half-day shift, either 5am-1pm or Noon-8pm.
- Being able to keep your cool and speak diplomatically if any problem(s) should arise.
Two examples of issues last year’s team helped with:
- Explaining the new same-day registration and provisional voting rules to make sure that all such votes could be validated and counted.
- Dealing with a traffic accident in front of Tonsler Precinct that temporarily blocked voter access.
2. “Chase and cure” (remote work, flexible schedule over the six weeks of early voting) — after a bit of training, help voters fix problems with their mail-in absentee ballots so those ballots can be counted (e.g. when someone gives a PO Box mailing address rather than the required street address).
3. Help staff the Voter Protection Hotline (also remote) — answer problem report phone calls and then try to resolve those problems. This also requires training.
If you might be willing to get involved in these kinds of efforts, please contact Jeremy: hijeremyjones@gmail.com
NOTE: Threats to our elections are not hypothetical… VA counties not so far from us are under attack and we need to stay vigilant! For example:
“Allegations of misconduct and incompetence have bombarded the Buckingham County election office since last November …. after the entire office chose to resign rather than tolerate the accusations, a staff of four has been replaced by a staff of two …. The chairwoman of the Buckingham County Republican Committee who is now trying to assuage voter concerns may be the very reason voters had concerns in the first place … two sources told The Daily Progress that [Republican Committee chairwoman Ramona] Christian emailed an unsubstantiated document to the local Republican Party that claimed absentee ballots in the county’s 2022 General Election came from nonresidents.” Daily Progress, 7/11/23
