In North Carolina, it’s illegal to hand anything to voters within 50 feet of a polling place. David Fowles knows this better than anybody.
He parks his camping chair and pile of sample ballots about 15 feet in front of the limit. As he walked to show me the 50-foot marker — a foreboding line of purple chalk — he exclaimed “Stop right there!” to a voter about to step over it. He handed her a flier. She took it and passed safely over the threshold. He exhaled, relieved.
“You’ve got about 10 seconds to educate people before they go in and cast their ballot,” Fowles explained. A tiny window of opportunity.
Fowles lives in that window.
He volunteers with the People’s Alliance PAC to stimulate voter turnout and promote progressive candidates. During elections, the Durham group keeps two representatives stationed outside the Karsh Alumni and Visitors Center polling place. Fowles is always one of them.
That’s right. For all 17 days of early voting, Fowles works the 15-foot stretch from open to close — 8 a.m. to 7:30 p.m. Monday through Saturday, and 2 p.m. to 7:30 p.m. on Sundays. He cashes in most of his annual three weeks of vacation time as a LabCorp lab technician just for this. He did the same thing in 2020. And 2016, 2012, 2008, and 2004.
“It’s a privilege,” he said.
His uniform is a denim bucket hat, a black T-shirt with a PAC pin, a pair of jeans with a Mo Green pin, and red Adidas shoes. In the quieter hours, it gets a little boring — but he takes advantage of it. He brings a pen and paper, and uses the extra time to write.
“See that tree over there?” he asked me. “A few days ago I wrote 200 words about it.”
He never abandons his station, not even for lunch. He leaves home with three ham sandwiches, a bag of chips, a soda and his blue water bottle.
“I have one more sandwich when I get home, and that’s my day!” he said.
Fowles is 54 and lives alone. He grew up in Newburgh, New York in a politically active family. He put up signs for Jimmy Carter with his mom at age 7. “I was always aware of my city council, my state senate, my mayor, my governor, and my president,” he said.
He moved here to study journalism and mass communications at Duke in 1988, and after moving back home for a decade post-graduation, he returned to Durham for work. That same year, he joined the People’s Alliance.
Here, outside Karsh, he passes out sample ballots with the PAC-endorsed progressive candidates indicated. He also has a sheet with short bios of all Democratic candidates running for office.
But Fowles is an unaffiliated voter. He follows every race, carefully researching and selecting the candidate he’ll vote for instead of choosing solely based on party. He likes People’s Alliance for all of its voter turnout initiatives, but if he had it his way, there would be a bio for every candidate on the sheet. Not just the Democrats.
“Voting is what’s important to me, not who you vote for,” he said. “I’d rather someone vote for a Republican than not vote at all.”
That’s why, every four years, he takes almost three weeks off to educate voters in the brief moment before they enter the polls. Voting is good. But informed voting is great.
And every election, Fowles says, people walk in to mark their ballots unprepared, like a test they haven’t studied for. A test that determines their lives for the next four years.
“It’s probably the most important test you’ll ever take.”
Above: David Fowles passes out candidate information each day during early voting. Photo by Sofie Buckminster — The 9th Street Journal
