On Election Day, I had the opportunity to work for the Bangor Daily News as an exit pollster for the 2018 Maine General Election. This experience not only taught me about exit polling and how complicated elections and voting are, but it also showed me how my fellow Mainers feel about different types of polling strategies, and how our ballots are structured.
BDN sent me to Lincoln, Maine to poll at Mattanawcook High School, where the local polls were being held for the gubernatorial and local House of Representatives/Senate elections were being held. My job as an exit pollster was to approach every fifth voter (every three voters when it got slow) as they came out of the polling center and ask them to fill out a poll for the Bangor Daily News to educate the public about the election and what the results looked like as the votes were coming in. I learned so much from the people who I got the chance to speak to and who filled out the polls.
The first important thing that I learned is that when issues are important to people, they will come out and VOTE. In a town as small as Lincoln, over 1,700 voters came out on Tuesday to let their representatives in our state and local government know how they felt.
A very important question on these exit polls asked voters about their confidence that the Senate race and gubernatorial race would reflect what they and other voters in the state of Maine wanted. As I was entering my data during my input times, I was shocked and saddened to know that so many voters did not believe that their representatives in the state and federal government was going to put their best interests as citizens first. As we live in a representative democracy, it is of the utmost importance that we as citizens have faith in our representatives that they will listen to us and put our interests first when making policies that affect our everyday lives. It is especially important that people feel they can trust their government representatives in the state setting, as the decisions they make affect us directly every single day.
Another important thing that I learned from working the Election Day polls is that the issue of rank-choice voting in the state of Maine is a very hotly contested issue. Many people while filling out the exit polls expressed to me directly that they hated rank choice voting because they believed it didn’t accurately represent their desires as a voter. However, there were many other people filling out the polls who expressed to me that they loved rank choice voting and that they believed it was actually the best way to elect candidates, as it allowed voters to choose who they would want if their chosen candidate didn’t win- it would allow them to still be able to put their vote somewhere else if the numbers came down to it.
Lastly, I think the most important thing that I learned from working Election Day polls is that more people than ever are enthusiastic and eager to get out and vote. There were countless people in the polling center, including school staff, that came up to me while filling out their exit polls and told me how amazed they were that so many people came out to vote that day from their small town. One voter told me that even during the presidential election, the amount of people out voting didn’t even come close to the amount of voters that were out on Tuesday. I witnessed two classes full of kindergarten-aged children coming into the polling center and observing the election process and talking about the mock election they held in class that day. If anything is most important about the electoral process, it is showing people what happens during the elections when they are young and beginning their process of political socialization.
The sooner children learn what elections are and why they are so important, the more likely they will be to engage in political activity when they turn 18 and can register to vote. In my American Government class at the University of Maine, my professor, Mark Brewer, talked to us the past few weeks about political socialization and why it is so important. The most important and effective avenues of political socialization are the family and school. If schools make government, voting, and a general overview of the electoral process part of an elementary school curriculum, it will create a generation of adults who are enthusiastic about voting and making sure their voice is heard loudly and proudly during election times.
If reading this article has told or taught you anything about elections, I hope you take away that your voice in the electoral process is not silenced when you step into those voting booths. If anything, you turn on a microphone and shout out how you feel to your representatives. Because you have the choice to trust that they will listen to you, you must first make the choice to speak first so your government officials have something to listen to. Don’t forget to vote in your elections- they’re super important.