Poll Worker Check-In Thread
I know many people from DU have volunteered to be poll watchers in the past, and I know some had been poll workers in 2008, as I was. I had the opportunity to be an alternate again this year, and was called to a much smaller precinct than I was in 2008.
I had a few questions for those of you who were workers:
1) How was overall turnout? How many of those in your precinct early voted, if you were able to tell? Any demographic differences between those who early voted based on results in your precinct?
2) Did you have machine-only voting, or a choice of paper ballots? If your precinct used electronic voting techniques, did the machines have a voter-viewable printed audit trail?
3) Are you aware of people who were turned away from your precinct? If so, did anything seem unfair or did you feel that more could have been done to help the voter?
4) Voter ID Laws: If your state has them, did they impact check-in procedures? If your state doesn't, was photo ID being required anyway, and so what type?
5) Any overall impressions? Was this your first time as a poll worker, or had you done it before? If you have worked previous elections, any differences?
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My answers:
1) According to my sister's mother-in-law (who used to work for the election board), our 132 voters who showed up on Election Day was very good turnout for the small precinct I was called to work. We had a significant percentage of registered voters who had voted early, more than any of the ladies who had worked that precinct on a regular basis had seen before. It did seem like we had a lot of elderly people who were driven in by their children to vote, and usually their children had voted early already. It was easier to get in and out of the local precinct probably for them -- it was a local church that many of our voters attended -- than driving all the way in to the county courthouse. (Our precinct was on the edge of the county.)
2) Voters were not offered the choice of a paper ballot -- they were directed to two machines. I knew we had paper ballots available if someone requested one, but they were not offered as a choice, as they were in 2008 at the precinct I worked in another county. Since I had computer experience I was mainly working the machines, and yes, our machines had a voter-visible audit trail, which I pointed out to voters who said they were unfamiliar with them. I did most of the take-down of the machines at the end of the night, though I had not had to work on the audit log printers before, and we did have to call in for a walk-through of how to take out the first machine's spool. We got the second's on our own, and all of the workers signed both the audit trail log printouts, as well as the three copies of the end result report printed before we took down the machines. We also had a paper box with tokens per each person escorted to the machines to be a check for voter turnout/undervotes/overvotes. However, we had enough time throughout the day to do periodic double-checks between the machine tallies of votes and the list of checked-in voters.
3) Only one person was turned away, and we made every effort to find out if he was registered at all. Per the state website, he was not registered anywhere in the state -- I used my iPhone to do that search while the precinct captain was calling in -- and our county clerk said his voter registration had been purged many years before due to inactivity and returned mail. I almost feel like perhaps we should have offered a provisional ballot, because he made the effort, but he didn't ask about it or seem put-out that he'd come out and not been able to vote. He appreciated the fact I showed him the website so that he could make sure he was registered next time and which precinct before making the trip out again, and was given a voter registration card to take to the courthouse the next day. So of 133 people who showed up, 132 were able to vote. We did have a few name change issues but all that was done was a call-in, they filled out a new voter registration card, and voted per normal procedure. One had an address change that was not on the local precinct logs but was on file with the county clerk, and that person also voted per normal procedure, and her information was written into the back of the book.
4) Similar to the way that things are available to voters in Arkansas but procedures are designed to make it seem like they may not be, the poll workers here are required to ask for identification, and there are signs that say to be prepared to show identification. However, they are only *required* to show ID if the precinct log book says they are required to. The lady working the log book seemed to be under the impression that ID was required to vote at all. She was, however, familiar with the types of ID that Arkansas requires (not just photo ID). We did have a slightly sticky situation where a gentleman drove himself in to vote but didn't have his driver's license with us -- had he shown up when the local constable was voting, that could have been uncomfortable. But it was slow and I went outside to smoke a cigarette while he was looking for identification of some sort. He was the only voter at the precinct at the time. When I was halfway through and he was still looking, I projected my voice where he could hear me and said "Hey, anything with your address that comes from the government, or a utility bill with your address, something like that -- that's what they need". He found a food stamp application that had been mailed to him, and his work ID. He was in the book, and the lady saw that it was from the government, and let him vote by normal procedure.
5) This was the first time I'd ever worked a "slow" precinct. It was also the first time I escorted the voting data into the county courthouse, turned it over, and verified that it was written up on the big board correctly. I enjoyed getting to see how the process worked on that end of the house, but I wouldn't object to a higher turnout precinct at all.
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