Polling School

Last night, I went to a class on the polling process. It was...instructive, though not always as they had wanted.

Because I'm a judge, I got about a half inch of papers on processes and procedures that I have to be familiar with, from handling absentee ballots to people who aren't registered to people who are but their info has to be verified to disabled people to.... lots of stuff. And lots of forms, from the tally sheet that shows that no votes have been registered (you run it before opening the polls) to the pay sheet (showing who was working there that day) to the runaway voter log (which is a nifty little process all by itself) to what to do if the machine starts beeping (depends if someone is standing there) to....argh! I'm going to be doing some studying for sure. This is like becoming a parent, when you look at this infant and think Do these people realize that I'm virtually clueless here? I can't believe they gave me this job. About the only problem I likely won't have is people coming to the wrong polling place -- mine is one of the new ones, so if you come, its probably because you got a card telling you to do it. Unless, of course, you just happened to be driving by and said Hey, look, I didn't know there was one there, lets just do it here!

The room was pretty full, about sixty or so people, and the overwhelming majority were in their late sixties plus. I get the impression that these are the only people who have the time to do things like this. Kind of reminds me of the old joke about a jury of your peers being composed of the only people who were dumb enough not to have a plausible reason to get out of it. Most of them seemed reasonable -- no lawyers like the last time, bent on showing how this was a lark for them, they knew it all already -- though a couple of people seemed intent on wanting to have everything written down, particularly anything where you might need to challenge someone. It says right here... For example, you can't bring a camera or recorder into the polls. You can't bring an active cell phone (only I can do that, so that I can call for help if needed, or to handle problems). You absolutely cannot wear political buttons or slogans (the state says you can, the local board of commissioners says you can't). That last is particularly bizarre -- if the person cannot or will not take the political stuff off, they have to cover it somehow, and if they won't, they still get to vote, but you have to take their name and send it to the Board of Elections..for some unspecified reason. Me, I think its to intimidate them.

And then at the end of the day, you get to do fun things like add up all of the absentee ballots (writing down on a roster the names that were written in; apparently, you do NOT write down the names that are already on the form, even if someone wrote it in anyway -- doing that effectively invalidates their vote (!) )-- and then sealing it all up, along with all of the other forms and paraphernalia, shut down the machines, and guess who gets to truck it all back to the election office?

And, oh yeah, I get to go to another class just for new judges, next week.

Hoo, boy.