We left the hotel early so I would have time to help open the polls today! It was an amazing experience.To start the day, I helped tape out the perimeter of the polling place with a retired attorney named Doug and verified the serial numbers and security seals on all the ballot scanning machines. They assigned me to a pollbook for the opening, which is a little touchscreen computer that looks up and registers voters. It was fun work and I got to meet a whole bunch of different people! It slowed down after an hour and myself and one of the line managers (whose whole job is to literally manage queues of people) spent the downtime scoping out and chastising all the people who were on their phones (YOU'RE NOT SUPPOSED TO HAVE IT ON!) It combined two of my favorite things from childhood: spotting hard to see things and shaming people for not following the rules. I could've done just that all day.
Then I moved to the ballot scanners, where I mostly stood in a blue box outlined on the floor and watched people fumble through inserting each of the three pages of their ballot into a glorified copy machine shaped like a garbage bin. Well...technically I couldn't watch them because of voter privacy, so to help I kinda had to stare off into the distance and infer what was going on with sound and peripheral vision. I liked it.
Afterwards I took a short, much needed break and when I returned, I stood around and hung out with my new best friend Janice. She was working on the provisional ballots, a position that doesn't see more than 30 people a day. Janice was delightful and I kinda want her to adopt me. She'd already called me her "Election Son" and we hadn't even known each other for 24 hours. While we were talking, an election chief stopped by and asked us if we could help count these tiny scraps of receipt paper called VACs. I jumped on that because I was burned out on seeing people and it was a blast. I met Janice's friend Francis and he was all smiles and his metal footed cane and my water bottle became friends.
Unfortunately the counting dried up, and I was put onto ballot issue for like 4 hours. It's non-stop talking, greeting the voter and then explaining the format of the ballot and pointing them in the right directions. A VERY chipper man working with me decided to tell me all about everything poll related...he just happened at me for an hour or so. The shitty thing about that job was that myself and my fellow election judges were packed elbow to elbow on one side of the issuing table, each of us giving the same but somehow different spiel. Everyone was speaking over each other so it was cacophony, pure and simple. And sometimes you'd end up starting at the same time as the person next to you and then you couldn't stop listening to them while still talking to the voter which made the whole thing hella overwhelming. But I got good at it in my own way and I rocked the "dinner" rush.
I then went back to counting VACs up to poll closing and teamed up with a couple little old ladies to make sure they all matched up with the numbers from the night. I'm glad I did it and can't wait to do it again next week and on election day itself!
Then I moved to the ballot scanners, where I mostly stood in a blue box outlined on the floor and watched people fumble through inserting each of the three pages of their ballot into a glorified copy machine shaped like a garbage bin. Well...technically I couldn't watch them because of voter privacy, so to help I kinda had to stare off into the distance and infer what was going on with sound and peripheral vision. I liked it.
Afterwards I took a short, much needed break and when I returned, I stood around and hung out with my new best friend Janice. She was working on the provisional ballots, a position that doesn't see more than 30 people a day. Janice was delightful and I kinda want her to adopt me. She'd already called me her "Election Son" and we hadn't even known each other for 24 hours. While we were talking, an election chief stopped by and asked us if we could help count these tiny scraps of receipt paper called VACs. I jumped on that because I was burned out on seeing people and it was a blast. I met Janice's friend Francis and he was all smiles and his metal footed cane and my water bottle became friends.
Unfortunately the counting dried up, and I was put onto ballot issue for like 4 hours. It's non-stop talking, greeting the voter and then explaining the format of the ballot and pointing them in the right directions. A VERY chipper man working with me decided to tell me all about everything poll related...he just happened at me for an hour or so. The shitty thing about that job was that myself and my fellow election judges were packed elbow to elbow on one side of the issuing table, each of us giving the same but somehow different spiel. Everyone was speaking over each other so it was cacophony, pure and simple. And sometimes you'd end up starting at the same time as the person next to you and then you couldn't stop listening to them while still talking to the voter which made the whole thing hella overwhelming. But I got good at it in my own way and I rocked the "dinner" rush.
I then went back to counting VACs up to poll closing and teamed up with a couple little old ladies to make sure they all matched up with the numbers from the night. I'm glad I did it and can't wait to do it again next week and on election day itself!
Today's Haiku
Painter's tape arrows
mark the early voters' way
Civic Center indeed
mark the early voters' way
Civic Center indeed
Today's Workout
TOO BUSY AT THE POLLS!
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