By Louis Aguilar for BridgeDetroit
It’s a hard image to forget: dozens of white conservatives pounding on a glass wall, demanding to get in a convention hall room of predominantly Black election workers tabulating Detroit ballots.
“Let us in!” some protesters shouted, according to numerous accounts. The pounding on the glass wall was so forceful that workers in the back of the 90,000-square-foot room at TCF Center could hear it. Some workers like Carolyn Geck worried the huge glass was going to shatter. Some Republican challengers inside the room tried to feed the chaos by chanting, “Stop the count!”
And yet the more than 1,000 Detroit election workers — most of them temporary workers and many never having worked an election — kept doing their job of processing the record number of absentee ballots cast by Detroiters for the 2020 election.
The scene at TCF Center happened Nov. 4. Ten weeks later, several Detroit election workers say that moment has given them strength as Trump and his supporters have attempted numerous legal challenges to cancel Detroit votes. Trump still routinely spreads baseless accusations about the city’s election.
“It was something we will absolutely never forget,” said Sommer Woods, a Detroit election worker, of the attempted storming of the city’s ballot counting. “The image of it was real, it will forever be cemented in my brain. And it’s the reason I’m like, ‘When can we sign up for the next election?’”
