DAVENPORT, Iowa — The day starts with a knock on the Fairmount Library side door long before the sun comes up. It's 6 a.m. on Election Day, an hour before the polls open.
Brenda Abel-Streicher walks from one end of the library to the other, letting her four teammates through the door.
The Davenport library is a polling place for Scott County's 2023 city school elections.
By 6:03, Abel-Streicher, the precinct's election chairperson, swears her team of poll workers in. From there, they begin setting up the voting machines, signs and organizing the ballots.
"The hours are six in the morning until about quarter to nine," Abel-Streicher said. "It's a long day."
They're ready for the polls to open at 7 a.m., and the first voter is there right on time.
Abel-Streicher has been helping as a Scott County poll worker since the 2020 election. She's one of the hundreds needed to make Election Day run.
"The auditor was on the news asking to come out and help and I said, 'I can do it.' And so I decided to clean, so I did sanitary because of COVID," she said. "Every little thing that I can do for Scott County, and working with the auditor's office has been wonderful."
"They do a great service to the voters," Ryan Lage with the Scott County Sheriff's Office said. He's the point of contact for this precinct. "They make sure that everybody can come in and vote and make sure all the machines are running and all the votes get counted and everything runs smoothly."
Voters appreciate the effort the poll workers put in too.
"These people are dedicated, they're hard workers," said Janice DePover, a voter and former poll worker of 15 years. "I mean, even after the voting is done, they have to put the machines away. They have to, if there's somebody write in, they have to write all that stuff down. So yeah, there's a lot to be done."
Abel-Streicher enjoys getting to spend time with her group and see people she knows come to vote. This year, she cooked lunch, while others in the group brought snacks and utensils.
It's an important job to her.
"Once you work one election, you will see the flow of why we have an election, how important it is," Abel-Streicher.
Scott County is looking for people to work the 2024 elections. You can sign up with the auditor's office here.