Poll-working:
a remembrance
By Jake Christie
Writers'
Preface: This was written directly after the primary election in 2012, though
it contains elements of previous elections. It was originally written for the East
County Californian before Greg Eichelberger quit the editor’s position. The
piece is still “current” because the writer hasn’t worked a poll since.
I‘ve worked polls
about five times and this is what it’s like to run a polling station. To begin
with, nobody starts out as a “precinct inspector”, i.e. the person in charge.
You usually begin as a “clerk” or a “touchscreen inspector” (anybody with any
clout in polling is an “inspector.”) All poll workers go through four hours of
training, which is conducted usually by three people on radio headsets….I often
wonder if the trainers are failed actors or just Registrar of Voters employees
who have a love for “theatre.” If you have done training before (and training
is mandatory each election) you get
bored with it even quicker than the first time. Training for East County
workers used to be done down at the Jack Murphy stadium in a “clubhouse” near
the nosebleed seats; for the last couple of elections it’s been done in a dead
mall in El Cajon.
After the training is done, the
touchscreen people stay after and learn how to operate the Diebold machine,
taking it down on its spindly aluminum legs, sticking the voter cards into the
slot, working with the paper, and all the other nitpicky technical junk that
will mean nothing because 99.9% of
voters do their voting with paper ballots. If you are a clerk you can go home,
but if you are a PI or TI you are given a paper receipt and have to pick up
equipment. In my case, it is a large white box and a few sleeves full of
cardboard voting furniture. If you are a precinct inspector you have to contact
the site host, i.e. the people who own the space you will be working in. I
started off working in church basements; this last time I was working out of a
person’s garage in Spring Valley. The Friday before election day, the PI has to
go out to the site and set up the poll furniture (I do that myself, though you
can call your poll workers for help if you want) and do some “homework”; i.e.
count ballots, check to see if the white box has all the necessary equipment, and
call the other poll workers to introduce yourself, because I’ve always worked
with a random group of people. This election I worked with a young Hispanic man
(the TI), a high school girl (clerk), and my Assistant Precinct Inspector was a
pastor.
So now it’s Election Day. I bring
doughnuts, water, and soda to the site. I’m supposed to be the first one there,
but I’m always beaten to the punch because I have to cram all the poll
equipment into my truck cab. The mornings are the worst because everybody is
half-awake and quickly taping things up. Because this election is in a mazelike
suburban area, I have to use all seven of the yellow plastic signs to point out
where the polling place is. Just before 7 a.m. and the start of polling, the
API pulls up; he had just come from a thirty-hour deathbed vigil and would not
call in to be replaced. Five minutes before seven the first voter shows up to
hand in a mail ballot, we turn him away; he comes back five hours later. At
7:03 I shout out the poll worker’s call to arms: “Hear ye, hear ye, the polls are now open!!” and the poll haltingly
comes to life.
I’ve seen a lot of odd things at
polls; people voting on one issue, people with annoying children, and so on. In
fact, the reason I am at a garage off Calavo Street is due to a crazy lady at
my old poll, a church on Lamar Street. We had gone to high school together and
every time we bump into each other she plays the fool, talking loudly, having
her children act disruptively. I said enough of that and requested, in writing,
a change in polling places – which I got.
This year was the year of handing in
mail ballots and changing parties; we had a wad of yellow (mail) and peach
(provisional) envelopes. It was also very crowded in that garage, especially
after 5 p.m. All pollworkers are granted two 45 minute breaks and this year I
really needed them because the voting was hot and heavy.
After the near-fiasco of the
morning, I was terrified of how the breakdown at the end of the night would go;
I’ve had them where the clerk had a near-breakdown because she would not open
the big white box to count the ballots; I’ve also had sharp people who got the
job done in 15 minutes. This was in between. I got all the signs together, the
API and the TI broke down the furniture, but near-disaster struck when we had
to sign the ballot cartons and the API had left to mail the mauve
end-of-the-polling slip. I finally just too the responsibility and the boxes
went unsigned by him. After it was all done the TI and myself went to the
drop-off location, a school on Fury Lane. Like the pickup spot, the drop-offs
are a box truck, a bunch of temporary workers, a table, and a special rack for
the touchscreens. They take your stuff, and give you a slip. The polling day is
over.
-30-
889 words
[This piece was rejected by The East County Californian and by the editor of The East County Magazine, even though it was written to be "eternal".]
