Passion at the Polls: Virginia Election Workers Find Love

This year’s in Virginia may go down in history as more so-so than super, but for Carole Hirsch and Stephen White, it’s a chance to go down memory lane and recall their first meeting while working at a precinct in Fairfax County’s Sleepy Hollow neighborhood.

It was the 2008 presidential election, and voters in Virginia turned out in droves to vote for Barack Obama or John McCain. White, a Republican who moved to the area from Louisville, Ky. and works at the World Bank’s credit union, was serving as chief of a Fairfax County precinct at .

According to protocol, he was matched up with an assistant chief, who must be a Democrat. That’s where Hirsch came in. The two got together the day before the election at the precinct, to check on things and make sure everything would run smoothly the next day.

“We got there and I thought, ‘Hey, this guy’s a pretty snazzy dresser,’" said Hirsch, an attorney, in an interview this weekend at her Kingstowne condo. “The next day, it was 5 a.m. and I was ready to go.”

"There were about 100 people in line before we opened,” said Hirsch, who grew up in the  in Vienna and attended Georgetown Day School. “We had never had the paper ballots or the optical scanner, and so Stephen and I were in a frenzy getting things set up. And the people in line were creating more pressure.”

The two wouldn’t get home until almost 2 a.m., thanks to a touch screen voting machine that cracked after White dropped it while trying to help a curbside voter.

“We laugh and say our first date was 21 hours long,” Hirsch said.

After the polls closed at 7 p.m., and after trying everything they could think of to get information off of the broken voting machine, the two were told to drive the machine to the county elections office at the Fairfax County Government Center.

They got into White's car with the broken voting machine, followed by the precinct’s poll watchers. On the way to the elections office, they stopped at a off of Route 50, at Seven Corners, just before 10 p.m. to pick up something to eat. “The poll watchers were like, ‘What are you doing?’” White said. “We were starving.”

They pulled up to the and took the machine up to the county election office which is covered in maps. “They were breaking everything down, because they were done,” Hirsch said. “And over his shoulder… I could see the TV, it was on mute and they kept saying Virginia was too close to call, and I thought ‘Oh my gosh, it’s all our fault!’ So we were joking that they’ll never let us work again.”

After getting everything straightened out at the , White and Hirsch went out on a real first date to in Bailey’s Crossroads the following weekend. “I said I wanted to take her out to dinner, and Chipotle wasn’t dinner,” White said.

“I thought, ‘My gosh, this is a date,’” Hirsch said. “My sister was telling me to wear high heels and I was wearing Spanx and I couldn’t walk because I never wear high heels.

“She looked beautiful, she was all decked out,” White said.

After dating for two years and breaking up, an email snafu got them back together. “Allegedly his email got a virus,” laughed Hirsch.

“I said I would fix it, but then a week later, I got an email from her asking me to stop the spamming!” White said. The two decided to get together for dinner to catch up.

The two started to date again in the summer of 2010. After helping Hirsch nurse and eventually say good-bye to her mother after a long illness, White waited for just the right time to pop the question after she had time to grieve her mother’s passing in January 2011.

White tried to propose at a bed and breakfast in Middleburg, but when Hirsch found out the B&B included a second suite, she invited another couple. To throw her off, he presented her with a diamond necklace at dinner.

When they returned to Hirsch’s, flowers and a cake White had ordered were waiting. “I was like, ‘We didn’t have dessert, I took the liberty of ordering a cake for us," he said.

He had asked CakeLove to write “Will You Marry Me?”….in Latin on the raspberry cream torte.

“I was trying to read it and I was thinking...I was suspecting,” Hirsch said.

It became clear he was proposing when he presented Hirsch with her mother’s diamond ring, which her father wanted them to have.

“This is a way for her mother to be a part of us,” White said.

Hirsch went to the Fairfax County Elections Office last week for a training session for Tuesday’s primary. Word spread quickly about her happy news. 

“I wanted to tell them they’re great matchmakers,” Hirsch said.

The two plan to marry in October in Williamsburg. (Hirsch attended college at William & Mary).

They’d like to work at the polls again this year. Hirsch plans to work at a precinct on Tuesday, but White will be busy at work that day. The two said they might serve as election workers during the presidential election in November, but they’re not sure if election rules allow married couples to work together.

“That would be fun,” White said.

“If there are any curbside voters,” Hirsch said, “I’ll take the voting machine outside.”