COLLEGE PARK, Ga. — Outside a neighborhood recreation center, Evelyn Myers steps off a blue and orange bus retrofitted with desks and recruitment posters.
Inside, Myers has just signed up to work her first election, hoping to inspire her four grandkids.
“My 17-year-old will be 18 in June, so he’ll have a chance to vote,” Myers says. “And I’m so excited for him.”
Myers says she also felt compelled to serve after Donald Trump and his supporters baselessly attacked the integrity of Fulton County’s 2020 election and the people who ran it, including two Black women who endured threats and harassment once Trump and others falsely accused them of election fraud.
Despite that onslaught, something surprising is happening here in Fulton County: People are still eager to serve as poll workers.
“I’m not a fearful person,” Myers says. “God has not given me the spirit of fear, and I think I can do this.”
Until recently, fear was not something poll workers had to think much about.
But that changed after the 2020 contest, especially when Trump and allies like lawyer Rudy Giuliani singled out mother and daughter election staffers Ruby Freeman and Shaye Moss, peddling baseless claims about them even after multiple investigations found the allegations to be untrue.