One of the nine domains of the Durham Comprehensive Aging Plan is Civic Engagement. AWD’s goal is to establish an age-friendly Durham that provides safe ways for older adults to be civically engaged, by voting or volunteering for example.
AWD had the opportunity to chat with Rachel Keeler, a volunteer with Bull City Votes / Durham Drives, an organization dedicated to helping Durham residents vote. They are a non-partisan non-profit organization and they drive people to the polls, offer information—anything to help people vote.
Tell us about Bull City Votes / Durham Drives, please.
- Bull City Votes / Durham Drives is an entirely volunteer organization. I’m one of many volunteers. In particular, I do a fair amount of coordination on the driving side. Durham Drives is our driving project.
- We have a hotline. (919) 525-1645. The hotline will be fully staffed to answer calls starting the week that early voting begins, but we can schedule rides sooner than that! Before early voting starts on Oct. 15th, if folks leave a message with their info, we’ll call them back within a day to get a ride scheduled.
- We, anytime during early voting, will take you to vote.
- We will take you to get an ID.
- We’ll pick you up anywhere in Durham County and we’ll drop you off anywhere in Durham County. That’s what we’re here for. That’s what we want to do.
- If you want to vote, if you’re not sure about voting, if you have questions, there are so many great organizations in North Carolina that have this kind of information about voting, like Democracy NC and You Can Vote.
All we want to do is help you vote, exercise your civic right and your civic power in the way that you want to. I hope that people don’t hesitate to leave us a voicemail. I will be the one calling you back. I promise I’m friendly. (AWD: We can confirm this!)
We’ll schedule rides in advance so you can plan around it. A nice thing about Durham is that our polling places are open on the weekends during early voting. The hours are Saturday 8am-3pm and Sunday 2pm-6pm. Weekdays are 8am-7:30pm.
I went to the website and I clicked on the About Us page and this just jumped out: “In Durham, the majority of eligible voters are low-propensity voters or are unregistered,” and that Bull City “focuses on partnering with members of this overlooked majority.” Can you talk to me about that a little bit?
For so many people, they think voting doesn’t affect their life. It’s really hard to draw that connection between “I cast this vote along with millions of other people in Durham,” thousands, or hundreds of thousands of other people if we’re talking about a local race and what changed? It can be really difficult to draw that line if you are working 2 jobs, if you’re a single parent–it’s hard to do anyway, right?
The “overlooked majority” is about specific voter suppression barriers to voting that have been put in place. But it’s also about being able to see and understand the power of your vote.
As we talk to people and as we listen to people, we try to draw that connection for them . How their vote affects the things they care about.
Durham turnout is often much lower than you might expect. We try to be both open-hearted and practical about changing that, not because we tell people that they should vote, but changing that because we help people see how meaningful it is to vote.
It’s really important to help equip older people and people with disabilities to be able to get out there. AWD is the backbone agency of the Comprehensive Aging Plan where civic engagement is a domain . I think we share those intersections, those barriers of ability and education for example.
If you want to vote curbside, if you have mobility issues, we’re here to help. We’ve had voters ask us— “Hey, I trust you more than I trust this random poll worker. I forgot my glasses. I’m blind. I don’t read well. Will you read the ballot to me and mark where I tell you?” They trust us to do that.
We are not a taxi service. We are volunteers who will drive, among other things.
When we think about the barriers to voting, what do you need to actually be able to vote and then have that vote count? To your point about technology, so much of these systems are online now. You can use Bull City Votes Durham Drives to help you:
- Check what’s going on with your provisional ballot, that’s an online system that you have to do exactly right and format exactly right.
- We have experience with these systems and we will help you with it if that’s the help that you want.
- Whatever that help looks like: do you need a ride to get an ID, for instance? We’ll give you a ride to get an ID.
You mentioned policies earlier. Can you think of any policies that could make voting challenging now?
There are all sorts of new rules with Absentee Ballots: you have to get a photocopy of your ID and put it inside the inner envelope of your ballot. There’s an inner envelope and an outer envelope. They changed the rules so that if you didn’t seal your inner and outer ballot envelopes in exactly the right way, they wouldn’t accept the ballot. There’s currently a challenge to this in state court. You need two witnesses now and not one.
These rules and regulation, changes, to how absentee ballots are processed makes that option not as viable. It means that fewer people can take advantage of it. In a way, that will mean their ballot that they cast – doing their best to follow all the rules in good faith, following every rule they could as well as they could – is still in doubt.
The general atmosphere of polling stations is there’s a sense of urgency. Everybody’s stressed out, and very hushed. I think that also, if you’re up there and you have a hand tremor or you can’t see well for instance, you feel this pressure, this sense of urgency.
This is why we really encourage folks to vote early. Same-day registration is nice and it’s a huge part of it, but it also means that you just have more time. If something goes wrong, you just have more time. Every voter has the right to bring someone in to provide assistance in the polls.
In the past, the voter filled out a little form. We don’t know of any changes yet.
The person assisting them filled out a little form saying: this is who I am. I certify that I will be neutral and do exactly what they tell me to. That’s another thing that we’re happy to do for folks if they would find it useful and that we’ve done before is: if you do have a hand tremor—and it’s difficult and annoying for everyone to fill out those little Scantron bubbles—that’s something that we can do, and you can look at us the whole time to make sure we’re voting for who you want us to.
We are nonpartisan. We will do what you say. But we try to be as helpful as we can in the face of this bureaucratic system.
People are losing their SNAP. They’re losing their benefits.
Oh, absolutely. Most of the races this year are statewide, but the Senate race is not the only thing on the ballot, right?
There is the Court of Appeals. There’s a really important Supreme Court race. State Supreme Court race, and then the constitutional amendments too, a lot about voting rights. The photo ID constitutional amendment would be devastating for our ability to vote in this state if it passed.
That’s right. Thank you for saying that.
