I’ve been a volunteer election official for the Wake County Board of Elections in North Carolina since 2016. Trump’s first run at the presidency prompted me to serve.

      After nine primaries and one run-off, eight early voting stints and eight November election days, I’m at it again. It’s exhilarating and exhausting at the same time. But I’ve never encountered what I experienced on Day #1 of this year’s early voting at my polling location.

      The lines never let up from the time the polls opened at 8 a.m. to closing at 7:30 p.m. My job was to greet all voters with a smile as they entered the polling place, answer any questions and direct them to a long table with five anxiously waiting volunteers who looked at their photo IDs, found their registrations in the voter database and gave them an ATV (authorization to vote).

      I would then send them over to a table where they picked up their ballots, went to a voting booth and filled them out. That’s how it’s done in North Carolina. No chads, no pulling of a lever. Just plain old markings next to the candidates of their choice unless they decide to use an express vote computer which few do. There’s something empowering about marking your vote on paper!

      There were mothers with their noisy young kids, excited teens voting for the first time, new state residents who moved down from the cold north and naturalized citizens from another country grateful to have the freedom to vote.

      When the polls closed, the ballot tabulators totaled almost 1,800 votes. A record-breaker for the first day of early voting at my polling location.

      As I walked back to my car in the fall chill, achy from standing all day, I thought one day down, 17 more to go. I was happy to have met so many people who cared enough to exercise their civic duty.