As Election Day, November 3, draws closer, Jean Thoensen’s heart beats a bit faster. Not because of the possible outcome—although that could do it, too—but because of where she will find herself on that eventful day: Mountain View High School in Centreville, which serves as one of Fairfax County’s 243 voting precincts.
Thoensen, who at age 59 describes herself as a “non-traditional college student,” is the chief election officer of a Fairfax County polling place. Her duties on November 3 will be to assure there are no complications when duly registered voters want to cast their ballot. While she’s a polling place veteran, this year—with accusations of mail fraud, a compromised mail system, threats of voter intimidation at polling stations, and efforts to disenfranchise voters—will be different.
“Voting was always important, but now so many democratic norms are unraveling that it's become a matter of life or death importance,” she said. Does she expect a crowd to line up on November 3?
“See, that's the problem,” she said. “In the ‘before times,’ yes, we expected massive turnout on Election Day. Possibly historic levels of 85 to 90 percent according to Kate Hanley, Secretary to the Fairfax County Electoral Board. But now, no one knows, and that's a problem across the country.
“People are applying for absentee ballots nationwide in record numbers. Early voting is expected to be much heavier than we originally thought, too. But there is a subset of voters who have fallen for false reports of voter fraud and will only vote in person on Election Day. So we have to plan both for heavy turnout at early voting and on Election Day.”
She already knows that as of October 14, when early voting centers open in Fairfax County, she’ll be on duty six days a week.
Thoensen restarted her college career after a short stint at Ohio State University by attending night school, going to classes after working her day job for a technology company in Cupertino, Calif.
“It took 15 years across three states—Ohio, California, and Virginia—and six colleges to get the first associate degree from Strayer in 1994,” she said. “I took a couple of classes at Mason and Northern Virginia Community College before transferring to Strayer in 1993.”
After an 18-year break to tend to her family and her self-employment in the medical billing industry, she returned to NOVA in 2013 and earned her second associate’s degree in 2018. “I used the Guaranteed Acceptance Agreement to transfer to Mason in 2018,” she said.
Her experience studying with professors and students at the Schar School helped bring her future into focus: “Along the way, I realized that election administration was really where my heart is,” she said.
As an undergraduate student in the Schar School, Thoensen has been involved in several extracurricular projects, including serving as assistant editor of the Almanac of Virginia Politics, a massive, multi-faceted database of the Commonwealth’s legislative history. The Almanac is published by the Schar School and directed by associate professor Robert J. McGrath; Muzhdah Karimi is the managing editor.
“I'd been looking for ways to get involved in research related to elections even before my first class here,” Thoensen recalled. “Helping out with the Almanac came from simply asking Professor McGrath last summer if he happened to know anyone who needed a hand with their work.”
Her participation in the project—scraping text of legislative bills from the Virginia Legislative Information System website—was an experience offered by the Schar School’s Undergraduate Research Assistant Program (URAP), which offers hands-on volunteer opportunities and mentorships with professors.
Thoensen recently took part in an election webcast, How to Run an Election in a Pandemic, hosted by Schar School associate professor Jennifer N. Victor. This was followed by another webcast in September, How to Vote in a Pandemic, sponsored by Community Engagement and Civic Learning, University Life, and Schar School professors Jennifer N. Victor and Robert McGrath.
“I absolutely love being in the classroom,” Thoensen said. “I'm nobody's mother, wife, daughter, or employee. I can just be myself when I step on campus. Age and the trivialities of life fall away. I've been at this for 40 years, and I'll die with my boots on if I have to for my degree. It's not for career advancement or to enter a new field. It's just for me. I realize my privilege in being able to do this.”