Worried about poll-worker safety, Cambridge to bolster police presence on election day

A police officer has invariably worked at the sign out desk of the precinct I vote at for the past 27 years.

I don't know where you live and vote, ibb, but that's voting in Boston. Police, armed and uniformed, working the log books.
It's not some odd exception, either. Between different places lived in the city and the one or two years I worked elections, I've been involved at four different buildings and seen it at all four, some of which were multiple precinct (and had a police officer for each precinct).

Personally, there are few reasons there should be police in/around the polling place (absent a danger to security of the polling place).
Outside - to enforce the statutes about candidates (or their reps) not campaigning within a certain distance of the doors would be a refreshing change.
Inside... in these 'troubled times', I could see maintaining proper security in a school building that hosts a polling place, to keep strangers from wandering from the polls into other sections of the building.
My suburban hometown schools, which have gone for security features like cameras, more fences, defined paths, locked building doors, etc... have also unfortunately gone to the somewhat dipshit extreme of closing school on election day the last few years instead of posting a doorkeeper at the most practical entrance and posting a guard between the polling place (usually the gym or caf) and the classroom section of the building.