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Monique LaCroix for many years donned a clown costume to do a “Magic of Reading” show for kids at local public libraries in the Carver County area. Her other services to her community include both paid and volunteer work at the Minnesota Landscape Arboretum and at a 12-step addiction-recovery center near her home in Chaska.
Amelious N. Whyte, a resident of Loring Park in Minneapolis, has pitched in with service to local AIDS victims, crisis nurseries, the Big Brothers Big Sisters program, and as fraternity adviser at the University of Minnesota, where he’s employed as an administrator of racial diversity initiatives.
Diane Younggren is a retired special education and home economics teacher from Hallock, up in the rural northwestern corner of Minnesota, the location where much of the “Fargo” movie was filmed. She’s an organist at her Presbyterian church, helps teach music to young folks, and volunteers for pretty much every event on the community calendar.
These are the kinds of neighbors we all value and trust, the folks who keep an eye on our property when we are out of town or send us a text when the dog gets loose. Monique, Amelious and Diane also are highly trained and seasoned volunteer election judges. And they are proud to be part of a Minnesota election system that they know to be both accessible and secure, despite an unprecedented wave of falsehoods alleging stolen elections, systemic fraud, and even threats and intimidation of election officials.
“We election judges can see first-hand the safety measures in every step of the voting process,” Monique says. “For instance, anytime where a voter needs help, there are two judges, one from each major party, and nobody is ever alone with the ballot.’’
Amelious says that although election judges who identify with both major parties are always present in the Minneapolis precincts he has worked, poll workers are not allowed to even talk about politics. And he has never seen anyone even suggest that rules and standards be relaxed for someone who wanted to vote if they couldn’t prove eligibility. “We turn down people all the time,” he adds.
