Most poll workers this year are veterans that have returned for at least several years, and roughly 80% of poll workers this year are faithful retirees in the older age categories at risk for more severe complications from COVID-19, according to data from Webster County Auditor Doreen Pliner.

“COVID has played a large part in the elections,” Pliner said, having recruited enough volunteers after struggling more this year than usual.

Many poll workers are motivated by a sense of community volunteerism and civic duty.

“There’s limited people in a small town like Gowrie,” said Dixie Harrison of Gowrie, who has been working the polls for the last nine years. “I enjoy it and the people I work with.”

-Messenger photo by Britt Kudla
Gowrie residents cast their ballots at a polling station located inside the Gowrie Community Center on Tuesday.

For Diane Boerner and Allan Wooters, who both have worked with Harrison to process Gowrie’s voters every year, the camaraderie of working with the same folks each year makes the job even more enjoyable.

But even with the same faces at the poll each year, the faces coming in weren’t always recognizable.

“It’s really weird. In a small town, we only have 900 to 1,000 people, and 75% of the (voters) I’ve never seen before until they come to vote,” said Boerner, who has been volunteering since about 2005.

“Who are these people?” another poll worker asked her once.

“They live in town, evidently,” Boerner replied.

-Messenger photo by Britt Kudla
Diana Boerner, left, of Gowrie, scans Rachel Schill's license during Election Day 2020 on Tuesday in Gowrie.

“There’s a lot of enjoyment in it in that, one, you end up working with a team you get to know year in and year out,” said Steve Rehman, 70, who worked Fort Dodge’s second precinct this year at First Presbyterian Church. “Secondly … it’s fun to interact with voters as they come in, because we know a lot of them.”

Even though the gig pays, Boerner said she does it for the community — it’s just one more way she can help out.

Others enjoy seeing democracy at work.

“You’re doing democracy at the grassroots level,” said Allan Wooters, who was forced to sit this year out after a serious bout with COVID-19. “This is where it gets decided, right here in your own community.”

Wooters has been volunteering for so long that he remembers a time when voters in rural areas like Gowrie didn’t even have to register.

-Messenger photo by Britt Kudla
Mary Egger, of Gowrie, volunteers for the first time during Election Day on Tuesday at the Gowrie Community Center.

“The people that worked at polls were expected to know their neighbors and friends in small towns,” he said.

Amid nationally swirling concerns about the integrity of elections, as concerns about absentee ballots and Russian election interference continue to loom large, most poll workers believe that seeing the same faces every year instills a sense of confidence in the democratic process.

“We know the voters as much as the voters know us,” Rehman said. “I think the fact that voters know the precinct workers provides them with that extra level of comfort — ‘as I complete this ballot and put it in the machine, I know these folks and what’s going on.'”

“I have never felt in my 40 years at the courthouse like the process was flawed,” Wooters, a former deputy county auditor, said. “I have never felt in all my years that there was something not right.”

Over the years, he’s seen the process go from dictionary-sized registration rolls and manual processes on paper to a computerized process that works, for the most part, like a dream. Volunteers, he said, have always prided themselves on knowing the law and knowing their precinct. And in his experience, he said the changes he saw over the years included those in the community’s voters.

“I would say that people, to me, seem to be a dab more civic minded,” Wooters said.

That’s true even for some poll workers, who say they paid more attention to politics after they started helping process ballots.

“I voted before, but I never paid too much attention unless I saw them on TV or I liked them,” said Boerner. “It’s just fun how diversified it is now.”

When he was forced to start recuperating from COVID-19, Wooters said he was forced to stay home from the Gowrie precinct this year.

“I’ve always believed in the seriousness of the virus,” he said.

Other volunteers in his age category, though, showed less concern or concern that was at least somewhat mitigated by the precautions being implemented at polling stations: plastic glass barriers, gloves, masks and sanitizing supplies galore as voters file in and out.

“I’m confident we’ll be able to get through it,” Rehman said, so as long as precautions are followed diligently.

“I don’t feel scared about it at all,” said Harrison. “God’s there to protect us.”

Wooters was the only one she knew to get COVID-19, after all.

“I’ll just wear my mask and gloves and be careful,” Boerner said.

Like others, she hoped those attending the polls would considerately do the same.