https://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2020/11/what_it_was_like_to_be_a_republican_pollwatcher_in_new_york.html
Call it civic duty. Call it curiosity about the other side of the process. Call it profound commitment in getting insight into knowing who won.
Whatever you call it, I was on the other side of the election procedures I’d been teaching for about a decade. I’d always cautioned students in the election law classes to beware of poll-watchers, since they are not “part of the election team.”
They are to be accorded courtesy. They are not to be given privileges when the election staffers at the tables, scanners, BMDs (Ballot Marking Device — essentially a large metal device that functioned as a giant pencil, amplifying type, changing the color of background so voters could more easily vote, or doing a variety of tasks that can be utilized by the visually impaired or the physically challenged. These devices have a variety of accessories, too, for the quadriplegics or those with breathing difficulties. But for all that, it’s still a big marker device, not a scanner), and privacy booths are otherwise busy with voters. They are people who come, usually, from one party’s HQ, or they come from a candidate. There are accordingly rules for poll-watchers prominently posted in all official polling sites.
But this time, I knew that poll-watchers were needed, and I decided to join their ranks for the first time.
The room where tables and absentee vote ballots were being opened and screened was vast — by rough estimate, 3,000 or 4,000 square feet. All separating room dividers usually in use during the rest of the year were down, and conjugal tables, each about 6 ft long and 3 ft deep, were juxtaposed against another identical table, with two seats for a bipartisan pair of readers on one side and, usually, one or two chairs for a poll-observer or watcher on the other.