Following the 2020 presidential election, Donald Trump tried to villainize poll workers with accusations of fraud, corruption and all sorts of harebrained schemes as part of his attempt to reject the electoral results. The strategy is still popular among far-right candidates: After she was defeated at the polls in October, Franklin mayoral candidate Gabrielle Hanson cried voter fraud despite providing no evidence and never communicating with the election commission there.
It was a particularly egregious line of attack, because if you’ve ever actually met a poll worker, you know that almost all of them are passionate civics nerds who take a boring but incredibly important job deadly seriously. You probably took the old lady who helped pull up your ballot for granted when you voted for mayor a few weeks back — which is how the whole process is really supposed to work! — but she had to put in long hours for not that much pay to make sure votes were tallied fairly.
The full-time election administrators deserve some credit too. Many field constant and seriously bad-faith emails from Trump-inspired “election integrity” groups who are “just asking questions” about voting processes. But every time I’ve read an election commission response to one of these complaints, it’s been the kind of thoughtful and well-evidenced response that truly builds public faith in the democratic process.Â
—Cole Villena
Associate Editor, Nashville SceneÂ
Our notes of gratitude to the teachers, workers, nonprofits and institutions who make Nashville special
