For a dozen or so elections since 2020, I have worked as a poll worker in Cobb County, Georgia. It has been an eye-opening experience that has made me more certain than ever that the voting process, at least what I’ve seen of it in my slice of the state, is safe, secure, and fair. Which makes me believe there’s little reason to question it anywhere else in the country, despite what the election deniers say.

Georgia has changed a lot over the years. I live with my husband and kids in a suburb about 30 minutes northwest of Atlanta. Our area is both hyperlocal and big-box, historic and modern: from Marietta Square—site of a Civil War training ground and military hospital turned walkable plaza with upscale mom-and-pop businesses—to, five miles up the road, a commercial district anchored by Target, Home Depot, and IHOP. It is an area that used to be very white, and very conservative. In the 1994 congressional election, voters in the nearby 6th District had to choose between Newt Gingrich and the actor who played Cooter from The Dukes of Hazzard. Gingrich handily won.

My family is proudly part of the browning and purpling of this rapidly growing area, which gets more diverse (by some estimates, Cobb County’s white population has fallen below 50% of the total) and more college-educated (16 percentage points greater than the state average) each year. Living in a swing state (and in possibly the swingy-est county of that swing state) means, perhaps by definition, experiencing life as a study in contrasts. Already in this fast-moving 2024 election, metro Atlanta hosted a rally for the Harris-Walz ticket the same day that the Georgia State Election Board, dominated by known election deniers, approved a new rule codifying a means for delaying—and potentially denying—the outcome of voting here in 2024.

This push-and-pull has been ongoing. In 2018 and 2020, the 6th District elected Lucy McBath, a Black gun control advocate, as their representative. Then the Republican-dominated state legislature redrew the maps and effectively gerrymandered her out of office. In 2022, she switched to the adjacent, Democrat-friendly 7th District and went on to win her primary and general elections.

I’ve worked multiple elections since that first year, and it has utterly transformed my faith in our system.

I first got interested in working at the polls in 2018, when Stacey Abrams, a Black, progressive, up-and-coming state representative, was running for governor against Brian Kemp. Kemp was then Georgia’s secretary of state—basically, in charge of our elections—and refused to step away from the role during the campaign. To me, this seemed to be such a gross conflict of interest, I wasn’t sure I could trust the election. So I decided to learn for myself how the process worked. In that way, I’d be doing my own small part to ensure any portion of the election I participated in was handled fairly.

I filled out an application and emailed it to the county elections office, which informed me that my name would go into a database and that there was no way to know when I’d be called to work. Sure enough, it wasn’t until 2020 that an area supervisor contacted me to let me know where I’d work and how to sign up for training (where I’d learn voting procedures, how the equipment works, and what to do if a voter doesn’t have ID, is at the wrong precinct, has pending citizenship status, and so on).

COVID made things a bit more complicated, but on Election Day, we successfully aided voters as we had been trained: confirming their identity and eligibility, showing them how to use the touchscreens and where to insert a printout of their choices into a scanner that delivered a satisfying “Ballot Successfully Cast” notification. We sent each voter on their way with a cheery “Thank you for voting!” and an “I’m a Georgia Voter / I Secured My Vote” peach sticker.

I’ve worked multiple elections since that first year, and it has utterly transformed my faith in our system. Voters are in charge, every step of the way. Poll workers are there merely to guide or to answer questions. Our training is ongoing, thorough, and frequently updated. Everyone I ever worked with at the polls was committed to a fair election—taking it upon themselves to ensure that every eligible voter got to cast a ballot and feel confident it would be counted. Our personal beliefs were a non-issue. With a couple of exceptions, I don’t even know my poll coworkers’ politics.

The experience has made me a proselytizer for voting. I encourage everyone I know to make sure they vote (Are you registered? Do you have a valid picture ID? What is your plan for casting your ballot? Do you know the location of your polling place and the options for voting early and/or absentee?). And my neighbors and local friends know they can reach out to me if they have any questions about the process. If I don’t know the answer, I will find out for you!

Happily, most voters I encounter at the polls seem to trust the process, too, though every election, there are people who grumble that the system is inherently unfair or that voting doesn’t matter. No explanation or reassurance seems to sway them.

This year, I worked the polls for Georgia’s primary and will also work the general election. I’m excited to prove once again that our elections are conducted in a fashion that is fair and completely aboveboard. I only hope the voting public is equally confident in the results.

I feel less certain about what color our purple state will turn this time around. As optimism rose among Democrats this summer after Kamala Harris moved to the top of the ticket, I couldn’t help but remember the Abrams-Kemp election, when many rallied around a strong Black female candidate, only for her white male Republican opponent to win by a comfortable margin.

For all the yard signs, prophetic think pieces, and high-spirited rallies, there is no relaxing into hope, no blithe belief in its inevitability. For every positive sign, there’s a reminder that no outcome can be taken for granted.