General Election 2008

To remind the latecomers, I've been working for the past two and a half years as a Machine Inspector at my local polling place for Primary and General Elections. I'm mainly responsible for operating the voting machines throughout the day, as well as opening them up at the beginning of the day and closing them down at the end of the day.

This year, as you may well imagine, we were expecting a very busy day, with a large volume of voters, many first-time voters, and possible shenanigans by various partisans. In anticipation of that, last week I went to a refresher course for poll workers to brush up on procedures and find out if there would be anything new I should be aware of. By the end of the meeting, I hadn't really heard anything new, but at least I had the sense that I was pretty well-prepared for Tuesday.

On Monday, Andy, my next-door neighbor and Judge of Elections for our precinct, and I went up to the polling place to set up the room for Tuesday. It's our Township Commission meeting room, so we mainly had to move out the chairs normally set up for the audience, arrange tables for the voter sign-in and place the voting machines in position to be ready for opening the next morning. It didn't take long, but it's good to get that done ahead of time so there's no sense of rush on Tuesday morning.

Our polls in Pennsylvania are open from 7AM to 8PM, so we poll workers got there between 6 and 6:30AM to get everything ready. We posted all the informational fliers for voters, including several sample ballots, which are helpful because many voters seem not to know what candidates or questions are on the ballot before they get to the polling place. We signed our oaths and did all the paperwork and mechanical details involved in opening up the voting machines and set the clock to official Verizon time. We were pretty well ready by 6:50 and Andy went outside to catch a smoke before the polls opened officially. He came back in and told me that there were over 60 voters in line already. We've never had that kind of crowd at opening before. I think people had heard so much from the media for the past couple of weeks about possible crowds and problems at the polls that many wanted to get there early.

We opened up at 7:00 to a large but very orderly and patient group of voters. In our first half-hour, we had 100 people vote. We were busy all through the morning with fewer and shorter "slack" periods than we usually see, and before noon, we'd seen over 400 voters. We joked that, at that rate, we might get every voter on our rolls (around 1100) in to vote and be able to close the polls before the scheduled closing time at 8.That didn't happen, of course, but it was a good thought.

Overall, even though we had a busy day, it was probably one of the smoothest election days I've worked. We had the usual cases of voters who weren't sure if they were supposed to vote in our precinct or somewhere else, or people who weren't in our books, which led to our making calls to the County Clerk to verify registration, and many first-time voters, or people who hadn't voted in a few years and were unfamiliar with the electronic voting machines. Our people at the sign-in table used the sample ballot to show people what the machine would look like and what the candidates and question on the ballot would be, and I could usually take the time to show people how to work the machine, before I turned it on for them to vote "live". I must say, I remain very impressed with the dedication and patience of my fellow poll workers to help every voter to make sure they could find the right polling place and to make sure they understood the machine and the process. I was also impressed with the patience and understanding of the voters. If I was explaining the machine to a first-time voter, or an older voter unfamiliar with the machine, no one waiting in line complained that this was holding them up. If our people had trouble finding a voter's correct polling place and it took a while, people waited patiently and invariably thanked us for our efforts. People wanted to vote, and they were understanding of the time and effort that would take, on everyone's part. I don't think I heard cross words exchanged all day.

There were, of course, the amusing moments. There were the voters who still insist that the electronic voting machines are new, and they know that last time, they used the machine with levers, or the people who will stand in front of the curtains waiting for them to open, even when I say, "Walk through the center of the curtains." There was the teenage first time voter who came out of the voting booth and shouted "I just voted!" to cheers and applause. Then, she went out to the parking lot and got the same reaction from the people out there. There were the people who wanted "I voted" stickers so they could get a free cup of coffee at Starbucks or a free ice cream from Ben and Jerry's. We didn't have any of those stickers, but fortunately some of the political party workers out in the parking lot did. There were the Moms and Dads who brought their kids to watch them vote. They nodded and smiled knowingly when I suggested they keep the kids on their left side in the booth, so the kids wouldn't accidentally push the "Vote" button before Mom or Dad was ready. I could usually hear them say, when they were ready, "Okay, you can push the green button now.", and we'd make a big fuss for the kids that they'd helped Mom or Dad vote. One other suggestion for any parents who bring their kids with them when they vote: Please do not, as soon as you bring them into the booth, say, "Don't touch the green button." Consider: What do you think of if someone says to you, "Don't think of a blue elephant."?

We finally hit our big "slack" time around 7PM, by which time we'd had 848 voters, more than I've seen in my time working there, and over 75% of our registered voters. We ended the evening with two Dads and their kids arriving at 7:55 (Remember: Polls close at 8.), who brought the total of voters on our machines to 850. We also had one or two voters who cast provisional ballots, and around 30 absentee ballots. That was a wonderful turnout. By the time we closed out the machines, it was about 8:15. I left the hard-core political junkies to pore over the vote tallies and I headed home, with aching legs but a glad heart. People care about the process and will act patiently and cooperatively to make it work. It's not perfect, because people aren't perfect, but, especially when it goes smoothly, it's very, very good.

Pennsylvania Primary 2008

You may have heard that there was a primary election in Pennsylvania on Tuesday. As I've done for the last couple of years, I worked as a Machine Inspector here in Haverford Township, Delaware County, just outside of Philadelphia. The main interest, of course, was the Democratic Presidential race between Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama. Although our precinct is very heavily Republican, most of our voters were Democrats. Some of them were very obvious in their preferences. One woman came up to me and asked, very loudly, "Where do I vote for Hillary?" I said, "In the voting booth." While she was in the booth, she called out to me, "Who are these other people? I don't know who they are." I figured out that she was referring to candidates for state offices like Attorney General or State Treasurer. I told her that the offices people were running for were printed on the screen. She asked what she should do about those, so I told her she could vote for those offices or not, as she liked. She decided that she only cared about voting "for Hillary".
We still have people who are confused by the electronic voting machines, even though they've been in use here for two and a half years, that is, five elections. Some people insist that we're using different kinds of machines every time. I tell them that the only things that really change are the offices and the names on the ballot. The use of the machine is the same each time. I realize that some voters are new, but they're usually not the ones who seem confused by the machines. Often, if a voter approaching the machine seems to have a confused or apprehensive look, I'll ask if they want me to show them how to use the machine before they vote. The ones who try my patience the most are the ones who insist that, no, they don't need any help; they've done it before. Then, they go into the booth and say, "Oh, this looks different." and then they want help, at which point, I can only talk to them through the curtain, or ask them to step out so I can show them on a sample ballot.
Because it was a primary, we had the usual problems with voters who want to vote for candidates not in their party. We try to explain that, in the primary election, voters can only vote within their registered party, but some people don't like that. They want to do what they want, regardless of party rules or the law, and they get angry at the poll workers, as if it's our fault. Fortunately, I didn't have anyone get angry with me when I asked their party so that I could set the machine properly, as happened in the primary last year. I did have one woman, a Republican, who was in the voting booth with her little girl, who was asking why Mommy wasn't voting for "the girl", at which point, the woman came out of the booth and asked me if she could change her choice of party. I said that, yes, she could do that, but not at the time she was voting.

We had the usual cases of voters who came to our polling place who didn't know where their polling place was. We could deal with those questions with a single phone call, but it surprises me that people seem unaware that they could make that phone call themselves, or find the information on the internet. In thirty-four years of voting, I have never failed to find out, before Election Day, where my polling place was. I don't think it's that difficult, really.
It was, as always, encouraging to see the first-time voters, often young people, but also some older ones this time. They're usually pretty excited to be voting. I also enjoy the little kids who accompany Mom or Dad into the voting booth. They're usually pretty excited, too. I hope that continues when they are old enough,themselves, to vote. Contrast that with a few voters who, when they found out they couldn't vote in the other party's primary, just left without voting at all. I mean, there are people in this world, and even in our own country, who have fought hard for the right to vote. I don't like to see people casually walk away from that right.
It was a fairly busy day, from 7 AM to 8 PM, and we had only a couple of stretches of "dead time". We ended the day with, I think, 465 voters, a pretty good turnout for a precinct with about 1000 total registered Republicans and Democrats combined, especially in a primary election. I think we must have seen just about every registered Democrat on our rolls. By the time I got home, I was exhausted, and glad I don't have to do that again until November.
I must add one last episode from the night. After I got home, I put on the TV to see election results. Obama had won our precinct by a very narrow margin, and I wanted to see how the state went. At the moment the news people were calling the race for Clinton, a huge sound of celebration erupted from the neighbors down the street. It seemed odd to be hearing very loud, very young, very male voices celebrating this news, then I realized that the Flyers had just beaten the Capitals in overtime to take Game 7 of their playoff series.