General election judge

Today was election day and I volunteered to be an election judge again.

For my work as a primary election judge this past June, read here.

What an early morning as I had to be at the polling place after 6 am to help setup the poll before the doors opened at 7 am.

This time the setup went smoother than during the primary as Carmen, Pam, and I all have gone through an election before. Tom had a work commitment and was not able to come help until noon so we were short one person. Replacing MacKenzie was John, a new volunteer. We all worked non-stop and were able to be ready when the polls opened.

Because Tom was not there, I took over his position at the M100 ballot reader, in addition to handling the provisional judge's duties. I also handled the automark machine that visually impaired and handicapped voters used to mark their ballot. So my morning got crazy!

John took over my former job of handling out the ballots. He got to repeat over-and-over how to mark the ballots. By the end of the day I think he was at the point of repeating the instructions without actively thinking of what he was saying. I know I felt that way by the time the day ended during the primary election.

John also had two different ballots to hand out. Most of our precinct is in the city of Whitefish, and the rest in the county. The city residents have a different ballot than the county residents.

My job got hectic in the morning as many people were voting and I had to tear the ballot tabs off their ballots and explain how the voter was to place their ballot into the counting machine. A few voters incorrectly marked their ballot and I had to help them get their new ballot.

In addition I had several voters using the automark machine and I had to help them get started. One elderly voter's hands shook so much he couldn't mark the ovals correctly, so after he spoiled a ballot I had him try using the automark machine.

Then I had to act as a provisional judge for a few voters and determine their situation and how we could get them to vote. Sometimes they had to fill out an additional form, other times I sent them to the courthouse to get registered as Montana now allows same day registration, or I sent them to get re-registered as they were inactive voters. Inactive means they are on the voting lists, but because they haven't voted in a number of years, they are put in inactive status. Later the election office said the inactive voters can be reactivated at our polling place by them filling out a new registration card. I guess the election office was getting overwhelmed by all these types of voters from all the precincts.

We had quite a number of voters who moved since their registration, or got married and a new name. They had to fill out new registration cards.

We also had a "problem" with a few voters who got an absentee ballot when they claimed they hadn't requested one, and wanted to vote in person. Or in one case got an absentee ballot but changed their mind and wanted to bring their children with them to the polls to show them how the election process works. Or voters who lost their absentee ballot so they showed up.

The problem is how to prevent these voters from voting twice. We had a form where the voter signed and declared they had lost or destroyed their ballot. The problem is the form said it needed to be notarized. No notary was available so I was told by a county election official to have the voter fill the form out and sign it, then let them vote. Okay. The election office will verify later that the voter didn't vote twice as they would match names from the sheets, or notations in the voter registry book (the method the two other precincts in our building used - and so did we after we ran out of the forms) to the absentee ballot envelopes which the voters signed if they returned their absentee ballots. You know, now that I think of it, I believe the voter registry books are left at the polling places in a locked room, so how can the election office verify there was no double voting by using absentee ballots?

Our Montana U.S. Senator race is very, very close. It appears the control of the U.S. Senate is hinging on the outcome of the Burns / Tester Senate race. I hope this absentee ballot situation doesn't end up to be like the hanging chads in Florida in a recount.

We had 527 people vote. A lot more people voted today than at the primary. I believe we had 317 voters in the June primary. That does not count the people who voted by absentee ballot earlier, or the people who showed up at the polls and brought their absentee ballot here.

Tom showed up after noon and took over the M100 voting machine. I was able to then relax a little bit as now I only had to act as provisional judge and automark judge. My provisional judge duties lightened up by then as we has procedures in place for the out of the ordinary voters, and there were less of them.

The automark duties got busy as the automark machine started to act up. The machine marks (prints) the ballot after the voter select his or her choices. Like your computer printer acting up, the machine marked half the ballot then jammed. I had to disassemble the machine to get the ballot out of the machine. The voter - a woman who appeared to be in her 90s - then had her son help her mark the ballot by hand as I worked on getting the automark machine restarted. This woman - apparently a Democrat as she verbally commented she didn't want a 'Republican ballot' - felt the machine was 'illegal'. I guess being that old she had a right to be cranky.

The next attempt to use the automark machine had the ballot again jam when the machine tried to mark the ballot. This time none of the fields on the ballot were marked. The woman then got out her magnifying glass to used it to hand mark her ballot. I spoke with the other two precincts and neither of their automark machines would work or print the ballots. I heard the problem with the automark machines was countywide with many machines failing.

After the second failure I tried to run the machine in the diagnostic mode but there was no documentation on how to do so. So I ended up shutting down the machine. Fortunately we did not have any more voters who needed to use the automark machine.

My precinct's typical voter looked to be younger than your typical voter and also looked to be blue collar workers. Unlike warm weather June, none of the women voting in the building wore miniskirts and cowboy boots, or other 'summer' skimpy clothes. Coats and/or sweaters were typical clothing choices.

My precinct, 20, is a Democratic stronghold in a Republican county. After the poll closes the machine's paper trail is printed out. We could see that the Democrats handily won every race in our precinct. I had a few people ask about non-partisan races - like the judges - if the candidates were really Republicans as they didn't want to vote for any Republican. As an election judge I can't comment on things like that and had to keep my mouth shut.

The other precincts had most of their same election judges as during the primary. The 'Butler' was there again. Fortunately the day was busy as he was kept busy and didn't poke his nose into other judge's business.

The odd red haired woman was also there again. She was the woman who drank some of our team's coffee and ate some of our food we had stored in the little kitchen room during the primary. For this election our precinct only brought food for ourselves and didn't store any of it in the little kitchen room. Later when I was in the little kitchen room the red haired women commented no one brought coffee or a coffeemaker. I told her I didn't care as I don't drink coffee. She then opened the refrigerator door and commented the refrigerator had plenty of room to store food. None of our precinct stored food in the refrigerator as we didn't want her to start eating our food again.

Tom again brought his OCD energy to our precinct team and livened things up with his comments and by joking around. He and Pam also did their gentle verbal sparring again, though not as much as during the primary.

At the end of the voting our shutdown of the machines and the activities went a little smoother than during the primary. There are lots of procedures to follow, lots of items to put here and there, such as ballots with no write-in marks and ballots with write-in marks. Some items had to be taken to the election office,other items left in a locked room at the polling place after being sealed with stickers that all the election judges had to sign. A lot of items had to be signed by all the judges: the paper trail, the ballots with no write-in comments, the ballot stubs and spoiled ballots, each poll book (as one was needed for the city residents and the other for county residents), and so on. Lots and lots of signing.

While the poll closed at 8 pm, for the primary we didn't finish everything until after 9:30 pm. Tonight we finished up at 9 pm.

It is after 2 am and still the U.S. Senate race is up in the air. The nation is now looking at our race as to who controls the U.S. Senate. Our county, Flathead, has election machine problems as two types of machines aren't able to 'talk' with one another. Apparently the election officials have to hand count the precincts' results. Our county and a few other Montana counties have not reported their results yet. Our county is the third most populous county in the state so we will have an effect on the race, especially as we are a "Republican county".

Good night.