#WhyIVolunteer – Volunteer Spotlight: Rosalyn Coates

Meet Rosalyn Coates! She is a dedicated Election Protection volunteer.

Q: Alright, well thank you for joining us for this interview. My first question for you is what is your name and where are you from?  

A: My name is Rosalyn Coates. I’m from Los Angeles, California. 

Q: Alright, it’s nice to meet you, Rosalyn. My second question is how many years have you been volunteering, and how many hours have you done? 

A: I’ve volunteered since 2020, I can’t really remember the month. It was March, or April, or something like that because I retired in January 2020… that’s how I know. And I began working with the Lawyers’ Committee in election protection very soon thereafter.  

Q: Okay, well that’s quite a turbulent time to start working for the hotline. Can I ask what is a core hotline memory that you have—that makes you smile, think back regularly, or motivates you?  

A: There’s several, and they weren’t very nice experiences. I was working as a volunteer because I really like… I’m a lead and I’ve been a captain, but I also like serving as a volunteer because you get to talk directly to voters or people who are representing voters on the ground. And so, one of the experiences—there were two, actually: 

One where an advocate called on behalf of a voter who lived in a very small town in Texas, and this voter was Native American. She and her family were the only ones who lived in this small town. And so, the polling place… no. There was a white guy standing on his porch, and his home was directly across the street from the polling place. And he had, you know, a long gun. I don’t know if it was an AR… AK-57 or whatever it was. But he was standing there, right, just like in a sort of menacing way. And of course, he knew… he would of assumed who she was voting for. So, rather than get out and vote she just drove past the voting place and called EP and reported voter harassment because she felt intimidated.  

And then the second incident that just lets me know that what EP does is so critical, and our partners on the ground, is just so critical to protecting voters rights and Democracy was: another polling place… I forget where this one was. But a voter walked into the voting place with her seeing eye dog, right? And she got into the polling place… one of the election workers at the polling place was letting her dog just run a muck throughout the polling place—and had intimidated her dog… her service dog, to the point that she could not stay because she didn’t want her dog to be harmed. So, she left without voting.  

And so, you know, both instances of course were reported to the teams. And obviously I don’t know what happened, but it’s those kinds of situations that make it clear to me that it’s important for people to have a place that they can report those incidents to and then action can be taken to prevent them going forward. 

If you would like to learn more about the upcoming volunteering opportunities that Election Protection offers, please click here!