As she accepted an award for her service before and during the 2022 election cycle, Linda Dwyer pressed her fellow Republicans to step up and work the polls each Election Day.
“There were six Democrats [at each precinct] all the time – we had one,” Dwyer said in remarks after receiving the Alice Sayre Commonwealth Club Award at the Nov. 29 Arlington County Republican Committee meeting.
Dwyer was honored for multiple roles within the committee, including service as a poll-greeter, handing out the party’s sample ballot for voters before they entered polling places.
Noting the lopsided presence of Arlington’s dominant Democrats – whose get-out-the-vote operation is known as the political equivalent of a panzer division rolling over its opponents – Dwyer pressed for the GOP rank-and-file to give up part of their day to help out.
“We have to do better than this. I would love to have people do shifts,” she said. “It’s not a hard job.”
On Election Day itself, Arlington’s 54 polling places are open from 6 a.m. to 7 p.m., plus there are early-voting sites to staff, as well. The Arlington County Democratic Committee usually scares up a roster of more than 500 poll-greeters – even more for presidential elections – and woe to the Democratic precinct captain who ends up with any shifts unfilled.