Every day for the past two weeks, commuters streaming through Durham’s bus terminal have been met by a question from a rotating crew of volunteers: ‘Do you need a ride to vote today?’
These volunteers, part of a longstanding grassroots effort now known as Bull City Votes, are more than just drivers and canvassers—they’re democracy’s ground crew, ready to help voters navigate an increasingly complex process. Their mission has taken on new urgency this year as North Carolina’s voter ID requirements have led to longer wait times at polling places.
“The new voting restrictions are making voting take a really long time for folks,” says Hope Tyson, a volunteer with Bull City Votes. “A good rate for us is one volunteer driving one voter per hour.”
Early voting ends tomorrow. With Election Day approaching, Tyson spoke with the INDY about the group’s mission and the challenges facing transit-dependent voters.
To join the team of volunteers on Election Day, click here. If you need a ride to the polls, including handicap-accessible transportation, call the Bull City Votes hotline at (919) 525-1645.
INDY: Can you tell me about the work that y’all do?
Hope Tyson: We work in a very specific niche, which is that we don’t just advocate for voting, we actually take people to the polls and also advocate for them if needed. That can include helping to make sure that people’s registration gets filled out right. It can include reading ballots to folks.
The work that we do is not necessarily numbers-oriented. We care that a lot of people reach the polls, but our work is not necessarily efficient. We’re working with people who are facing a lot of barriers to vote, and we’re working with those folks on purpose. That’s really where we want to be in the community. The people who are facing the most barriers will need the most advocacy and support and accompaniment to be able to get to that space.
What might an Election Day driving shift look like?
Our shifts are about three and a half hours, which includes about 30 minutes of training at the beginning.
Some volunteers will be at the bus station. That’s one of our home bases, which really is responsive to our niche, which is people who don’t have as much access to transportation. So we’ll have a big crew there, and we’ll drive people to their precincts, and then the volunteers will come back to the bus station and grab another person.
For the non-bus station based volunteers, we’re going to be out doing door knocking and going through community spaces and just seeing if people need rides. We’re going to focus geographically on the precincts that are at the lowest turnout at this moment.
And do volunteers then drop voters off at home afterwards?
Or wherever they were on their way to. Sometimes we’re taking them to work or to Target or the grocery store.
Is Bull City Votes a partisan organization?
It started, decades ago, as a partisan organization, but shifted to being nonpartisan at some point before the 2020 election. We don’t want to be telling people how to vote. Our goal is around lifting up the voices of the community and listening to people’s stories and why they believe what they believe. The bipartisanship really comes from that belief in voting and democracy and in how people exercise their voices.
In general, we want to work with people so that when they get to the polls, they’re prepared. Part of that is having the right documents and ID. Part of it is giving people sample ballots and nonpartisan voter guides. And part of it is talking to voters about issues. Even though we’re nonpartisan, we can still ask them: what do they care about? And then we can discuss: what have the candidates for these different races said about the issues that they care about?
What do you hear from people who accept rides? Are there a lot of people who say they otherwise wouldn’t have voted?
It’s a real mix. Some folks are likely to have voted anyway. Some people tell us outright that they would not have voted without this. Others, we have conversations with them over the course of several days, where they might not be interested in voting at the beginning, but then—you know, we’re outside the bus station for two weeks, so I’ve had people who have said ‘no’ to me multiple times, and then one day they come up to the table and say, ‘All right, let’s go.’ We’ve had a ton of first-time voters this year, of all ages. We’ve had 18-year-olds who this is their first time voting, and we’ve had 75-year-olds-who this is their first time voting.
It’s inspiring to see the lengths to which people will go to vote. If you’re a person who’s using public transportation, your time is really precious. One woman that we met this year takes five buses to get to work. I always hope that we can help people get to where they’re going more quickly. It might take you an hour to vote, but maybe we can still actually get you to work earlier than planned. It just takes a long time to get anywhere on the bus.
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