I have a good excuse for not blogging yesterday, I was working the polls from 5 AM to 10 PM, with two one-hour breaks. I set my alarm for 4:15 but somehow awoke on my own a few minutes after 4:00 I decided to use that extra time to eat breakfast sitting down at home as opposed to on the walk to the poll site. The timing for that was perfect, I arrived at 4:58. The polling site is the one I’m assigned to vote at though I’ve only done once or twice, otherwise I’ve done early voting or absentee ballot. It’s across Mosholu Park and a bit up the road from me, a five-minute walk. That made things much easier for me than I first feared when I signed up to work the polls. Things did not go smoothly as eight workers didn’t show up! That was somewhere between a third and a quarter of the staff. I was a scanner inspector. Each scanner is supposed to have two workers, we only had one per machine and one of those was supposed to work a desk but was transferred because we needed him. We were all inexperienced and it perhaps the most technical job there is. It is the job I expected from the way things went in training. As we were all rookies the coordinator walked us through the opening. That’s detailed oriented with things needing to be done in an exact order and accurate records kept. There are all these seals that we need to record the serial numbers of. That way they know if the seal is tampered with.
There were a few glitches, the most glaring of which is we were given the wrong code for opening the machine. It’s exactly like signing into a computer. Then I had an extra problem. There was a glitch on my touchscreen. When I pressed “1” it showed up at “ ‘ “. Just for fun it quickly converts what you typed into asterisks so you can’t check to see if you entered it right. I hadn’t and had to turn to reboot. This time I went super slow and saw that it had trouble with another key, I pressed it, and nothing happened. I had to hit it a few times until it was recorded.
As we were getting ready, I noticed that one woman wasn’t wearing a mask. When I reminded her to put it on, she literally waved me off, with both hands. She was going to have none of it. To make things worse she was coughing up a lung. Then to compound the problem she was assigned to the machine used for people with disabilities, the most vulnerable population. Later in the day an inspector came, and I pointed her out to him. He made her wear it. A short while later it was around her neck then totally off. I found out that she’s been working the polls for decades and the job became a sinecure. She should have been told that if she won’t wear a mask she can’t work. There was one other worker that took off his mask and never put it back on. In all other ways I loved the coordinator, but she took worse her mask on her chin and didn’t enforce the mask rules at all. As we were understaffed her job was particularly difficult.
The experience reminded me of volunteering at WFUV and I found myself acting the same way. I got impatient and paced. Another scanner inspector broke the cardinal rule, she handled people’s ballots. It’s a secret ballot, we are not allowed to touch them. She was not altering the ballots but if workers routinely handled them, it would make it easier to commit voter fraud. With things the way they are it’s important for us to avoid even the appearance of impropriety. I gently told her that we are not allowed to handle the ballots and should step away from the scanner when people enter their ballots, so we can’t see how they vote. She asked what she should when someone has trouble inserting the ballot. I told her to just tell them where it goes and to look at the video on the screen which shows them exactly where it goes. I made an adjustment myself, I would point to where the ballot goes before they approach the screen. There were no poll watchers from the parties. I guess they don’t care about a Bronx polling place where the vote will be overwhelmingly Democratic. I have been an inspector and I would have objected to what she was doing if I were one.
I had early breaks, my lunch break was at 11:00 and my dinner break was at 3:30. I didn’t know there would be hour breaks, so I packed food, a peanut butter sandwich for lunch and ham and cheese for dinner. I ate the peanut butter but was not hungry at the early dinner time. I had left the sandwich in my fridge at home. I spent my dinner break watching TV and going through emails.
Getting through the day was not too bad as I brought two 12oz travel mugs of coffee that I brewed in the morning, and they gave us coffee from Dunkin Donuts. I drank 40 oz of coffee in all. It didn’t start wearing off until the evening. I should have made more coffee during the break to drink from 4:30 PM on. I don’t get the jitters or any negative effects from coffee. It just makes me concentrate better. Around 8 PM fatigue hit me but not for long and I got my second wind.
We tried to keep the number of people voting on each scanner about the same. Early on people chose their own scanners and based on positing mine was the most used. It’s why I chose that scanner. After we were told to keep them more even, we’d point to the scanners that were behind. We ended up perfectly even, each scanner took 157 ballots. That’s 628 voters in total.
There were many little glitches. Early in the day the people at the tables kept accidentally handing people two ballots so they’d fill out the front of one and the back of the other. The machine catches that immediately. When that happens, they have to complete one of the two ballots and return the other to be voided at the table. Some people must have not done that, perhaps they noticed the extra when filling the out and didn’t realize it was important for us to keep track of every ballot. Consequently, we were short some by the end of the day. Many people overvoted, voting for two people for the same position, usually mayor. The ballot is clear but so many people were running they were listed on two lines. Some people voted for one candidate on each line. The second line is all minor party candidates. I’m sure that means they weren’t even looking at whom they were voting for. Once I learned the problem, I would show the person on the sample ballot what I suspected they did so they wouldn’t do it again. When you overvote the scanner detects it, tells you, and you can get a replacement ballot. I saw two people have the machine say they submitted a blank ballot. One clicked on “accept blank ballot.” He wasn’t listening and I suspect this was not some sort of protest vote but simply a mistake. The other insisted he voted. When he had the machine return is ballot it was blank. What happened? The pen they give is also a stylus that you use to sign the roll book screen at the table. You have to click it for the pen to come out beyond the rubber stylus. He hadn’t done that. First rule when dealing with people, if there is a way it’s possible to make a mistake some people will do it. I take that lesson to heart with myself. I want things foolproof because I’m the fool.
The polls close at 9 and then we had to close up and make sure everything is secure. There is a lot the scanner inspector has to do with keys, record keeping, and seals. The vote is kept three ways. There are the physical ballots which make the legal count, which takes week to go through. There is a printout from each scanner that looks like a CVS receipt. That’s the joke we all made. It gives the tally for each scanner. Finally, there’s a flash drive so the votes can be counted fast. There is a lot of security around each of those.
It took an hour to close shop, I left at 10:00 That was a long day. My 13 hour shifts at WFUV helped prepare me for it. As always, the place I feel it the most is my lower legs and feet. My back hurt too. I still feel it in the legs even though I was sitting for much of the day. I walked 5.93 miles, 12,793 steps during the day. I slept late today, a total of about 10 hours. It’s late, 4:25 PM, but I’ll make myself take my Donut Walk™. Then crash some more. I’ve been busy so far today keeping up with emails, DJ duties, and John Platt’s On Your Radar social media maven duties. I hope all My Gentle Readers in places that held elections voted. If you have the time, consider working the next election. We should all know about the mechanics of democracy.
Wise Madness 