Not sure if it’s a sign of the times or just of my age, but Washington has a new law that would have seemed unnecessary when I began covering politics and elections four decades ago.

Gov. Jay Inslee signed a law last week that makes it a felony to threaten or harass an election worker. The bill, which passed the Legislature with large bipartisan majorities, took effect the moment it was signed because, it stated, such protections for elections workers were deemed “necessary for the immediate preservation of the public peace, health, or safety.”

When I became The Spokesman-Review’s political reporter in 1984 and for many years afterward, my Election Day coverage started with voting as soon as my poll site at a South Hill church opened at 7 a.m., before making the rounds at other sites to get a feel for the early turnout and voter mood.

My poll workers, some of whom had been volunteering at the precinct for decades, offered early voters freshly baked treats along with a smile and an “I voted” sticker. The night ended at the courthouse where a steady stream of other volunteers drove in sealed boxes of ballots from the poll sites and county workers kept their fingers crossed that the computer wouldn’t go down as each batch of punch-card ballots was fed in.