CLEVELAND — Republican voters in Iowa and New Hampshire had something in common beyond the large victories handed to former President Trump — a majority of GOP voters in both states do not think Joe Biden legitimately won the presidency in 2020. The number in New Hampshire was 51%, but in Iowa, it was 66%.
"Two-thirds are believing something that is flatly untrue," remarked ABC's Jonathan Karl during the network's caucus coverage.
As Scripps and the News Literacy Project wrap up National News Literacy Week, an annual initiative that underscores the vital role of news literacy in a democracy while providing people with the knowledge and the tools to become better informed and more civically engaged, this was a good topic to discuss. The simple reason is that the easiest way for voters to be educated about the integrity of the election system is for them to be a part of it; the easiest way is signing up to be a poll worker.
"Being a poll worker is probably the single best thing you can do if you have any doubts about the election system," said Aaron Ockerman, Executive Director of the Ohio Association of Election Officials, a bi-partisan trade organization representing all of Ohio's 88 county Boards of Election. "Honestly getting that firsthand experience is just irreplaceable."
"We hear all of the time that poll workers come to us because they are skeptical, and once they go through the training and they perform a day as an election official, as a poll worker, they go back, and they become some of our greatest evangelists," he said.
Ockerman found the exit poll numbers among GOP voters in Iowa and New Hampshire eye-opening.
"We take those kinds of concerns very seriously," he said. "Obviously, if we don't believe in the results of our elections, our democracy has been completely undermined. So when we see data like that, it's certainly alarming and certainly something we want to work to address here in 2024."
That's why poll workers we've spoken to in the past encourage those with election doubts to go to the internet — not to post them on social media, but to sign up to be a poll worker and have them dispelled.
"When you see the results on TV, you just don't see the whole background, so that was really eye-opening for me, and then just to be a part of that was really gratifying," Tucker Handley of Cuyahoga County told News 5 after signing up in 2022.
And if you want to sign up for the March 19 Ohio primary, there's still plenty of time. You will earn, you will learn, and then hopefully return, Ockerman said, with the tales of what you saw.
"They talk to their families and friends about how secure our elections are and all of the checks and balances and how they had no idea just how secure our elections are until they got in there and kind of got their hands dirty and worked with us first hand," he said.
