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Old Gold&Black
WAKE FOREST’S STUDENT NEWSPAPER SINCE 1916 VOL. 107, NO. 11
T H U R S DAY, N OV E M B E R 5 , 2 0 2 0 “Cover s the campus like the magnolias”
wfuogb.com
Sustaining democracy: a poll worker’s experience Staff writer Melissa Cooney shares her experience working as a poll worker in a pivotal election year BY MELISSA COONEY Staff Writer coonme17@wfu.edu
and International Affairs Professor John Dinan said on Nov. 4. “The U.S. Supreme Court declined to intervene before the election in litigation concerning an extension of the ballot-receipt deadline, essentially putting the matter off until after the election; but several Justices signaled at that time that the Supreme Court may have to address this issue after the election, and they may well be right.” The full results from the North Carolina election will not be finalized until Nov. 13, as the state will be accepting ballots postmarked by election day up until Nov. 12 and will work to count provisional ballots through the coming days. So, while we may know which candidate has reached the threshold of electoral college votes to be declared the winner before then, North Carolina may remain uncalled for as long as a week.
I spent most of the fall feeling frustrated, knowing that I had the privilege of voting, but not knowing how much of an impact I would actually make. There’s something so powerless about the election. Your vote counts, there’s no doubt about it. But I still needed to do more. After listening to my favorite comedy podcast Girls Gotta Eat and learning that one of the hosts had signed up to be a poll worker, I was intrigued. This is my first time voting in a general election. I have, however, voted in the 2018 primary elections and I have attended polling places with my mom when I wasn’t of age. The poll workers always seem to be on the older side, and it was surprising to me to hear that this cool 28-yearold podcast host in Manhattan would be working the polls. I had no idea how necessary poll workers actually were until I did some research. The thinking goes like this: the more people they have working the polls, the more polling places can open. Opening more polling places allows for shorter lines, a greater ability to reach marginalized communities and subsequently less voter suppression. Not only that, but in the middle of the COVID-19 pandemic, poll workers are more important now than ever. Traditionally, the majority of poll workers are retired or older Americans. Now, it just so happens that this age group is extremely susceptible to contracting the virus and are more likely to suffer from it than their younger counterparts. So just like that, I applied on the Forsyth County Board of Elections website. Just a few days later, I got a call from a representative who had told me that my application had been passed, and that I would be an “alternate.” This meant that I would definitely be working on Election Day, but I wouldn’t know what precinct I would be at until midnight the night before election day or in the early morning of election day. This is because the board of elections expected people to not show up at the last minute, and needed people on call ready to go if this happened. I agreed, and signed up for a three hour training session at the Forsyth County Department of Agriculture building.
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The presidential race between President Donald Trump and former Vice President Joe Biden continues to be contested as key battleground states like Pennsylvania, Arizona and Nevada have thousands of uncounted ballots remaining.
Election results remain unknown amid tight race Both candidates remain in the presidential race as the last ballots are counted going into Thursday BY OLIVIA FIELD Editor-in-Chief fielor17@wfu.edu Anxious. Scared. Great. Moderately Hopeful. Frightened. Pumped. Not great, not bad. Fine, but depends on results tomorrow. These are the answers from Wake Forest students to a simple question posed by the Old Gold & Black on election night: how are you feeling? More than 24 hours out from when the polls began to close on Nov. 3, we still do not know who the next president will be.
Depending on what news organization projections you are looking at, the amount of electoral votes belonging to each candidate varies. According to The New York Times, which has been more modest than organizations like the Associated Press, there is still no call for the following states at approximately 12 a.m. on Thursday morning: Arizona, Georgia, Nevada, North Carolina and Pennsylvania. Biden is currently at 253 electoral votes and Trump is at 214, leaving 71 electoral votes up for grabs for the candidates to reach the 270 threshold. “Certainly, we can expect litigation in the aftermath of the election, just as there has already been plenty of litigation in the lead-up to election day. Issues in Pennsylvania are likely to attract particular attention, especially regarding the handling of ballots received after election day,” Politics