Attorney Jay Rigdon, who provides services to Warsaw Community Public Library, is pictured in this InkFreeNews file photo. Rigdon was in Detroit Tuesday, Nov. 3, serving as a poll watcher for Tuesday’s election.

By Dan Spalding
InkFreeNews

WARSAW – Jay Rigdon, an attorney and longtime supporter of the Democratic Party, found himself in the trenches of a battleground state on Election Day Tuesday. Nov. 3.

Rigdon had informed the Democratic National Committee months ago that he’d be willing to help during the upcoming election. On Sunday, he got his marching orders and was directed to provide oversight at a polling place in Detroit.

The call to help came amid concerns among Democrats about voter suppression at the same time President Donald Trump was repeatedly alleging voter fraud ahead of Election Day in his bid to win re-election against Democrat Joe Biden.

His job on Tuesday was somewhat simple.

“They wanted to make sure there are particular protections for voters to vote because there is a trend somehow that the way you win is to keep people’s votes from existing or being counted and that’s not really how America should work,” Rigdon said.

In his role as a poll watcher, Rigdon spent the day looking for any rules violations or problems and directing those concerns to the election inspector in charge of the polling place.

One trend they saw yesterday involved people who changed their minds after requesting an absentee ballot and wanted to vote in person for fear that mail-in ballots would not be counted or collected in time. That scenario played out several dozen times at his polling place at Love Rising Lutheran Church in east-central Detroit where voters are predominantly African-American.

The polling site remained busy throughout much of the day and Rigdon said they did not find any irregularities or problems unlike other polling places in the city where circumstances were described as tense after people armed with guns were seen loitering nearby.

Rigdon headed back to Kosciusko County Tuesday night at the same time Michigan was emerging as one of the key remaining states still undecided over the presidential contest.

While his work did not involve counting absentee ballots (apparently hundreds of thousands of ballots still needed to be recorded in Michigan), Rigdon can find satisfaction in his effort to make sure every vote on Election Day was cast.

In a handful of conversations with InkFreeNews on Tuesday, not once did Rigdon mention Trump or Biden.

“The politics don’t matter. You follow the rules and you vote and that’s the important part,” he said.

“Just watching everybody show up and make sure they get to cast their vote to have control over the way our country is going – that’s heartening by itself.”