Primary election

It's been over a week now, but I thought I'd write about my experience as an election judge before I forget.

In the photo to the right you can see the voting booth. The gray box on the right is the M100 voting machine.

I was asked to be an election judge for the June 3 primary in the same precinct I served in 2006: precinct 20 in Whitefish.

This year the County election officials moved our precinct and one other (47) from the Armory to the Golden Agers senior citizen center west of downtown Whitefish. This made it easier for some of the older people to come to the polls as the armory is a little ways out of town. The senior center part of the building was still open as a few people came in to have a hot meal for lunch.

Karen was the chief election judge this year as Carmen married and moved away. Karen came Monday night and set up the voting booths and checked stuff out. I and the rest of the judges came in at 6 am so we would have an hour to prepare prior to the polls opening at 7 am. For all there is to do an hour is barely enough time.

Man, 7 am is early!

I got up at 4:40 am (a crazy time to get out of a warm bed!) after waking up a few times during the night to check the time. I seldom use an alarm clock and didn't trust it.

It was dark at this time and during my drive to the polling place few cars were on the roads. Fortunately no deer were seen either.

While the forecast was for sun and a decent day it was drizzling lightly during the drive. That's ok, I'll be inside all day. Unfortunately the sky cleared later that morning and I missed out on a decent day by being indoors.

We rushed around and were able to hang the signs up, set up the handicapped voting machine, and prepare the M100 regular voting machine and be open at 7 am to a short line of people waiting to vote before they headed off to work. It would have been nice to have had a couple more minutes. The chief judge for the other precinct was pushing to open the doors to the voters even though we would have liked a few more minutes to double check we had prepared everything. Nope, the doors were opened.

Karen had all the keys we needed on a loop around her neck. The loop wasn't long enough so she had to stoop to use the keys on the machines and boxes to open them, and to activate the machines. All the keys looked similar and each time they were needed it seemed as if the last key was the correct one. I am not a fan of stooping to use a key; I would have taken the loop off my neck and used the keys. Stooping seemed to make it take longer to find and use the correct key.

Karen seemed to be the coffee addict of the group as she mentioned several times she was not functioning well because she had not had her coffee yet.

We had 6 election judges until 5 pm when two of the women left due to other commitments. Of course after they left we had our largest group of voters as people came to vote after work. It was pretty crazy there for a while.

One woman was a real estate agent. Another woman has a business taking photos of kids sport teams that play at the local KidSports public complex.

Another woman was a long time Whitefish resident and knew quite a number of the voters. She is a bookkeeper for her husband's business, volunteers at the local spay and neuter clinic, and at the O’Shaughnessy center in Whitefish. One of her voter friends told us she used to be a hippy from San Francisco. We kidded her about that as she shows no signs now she ever was a hippy.

Things were going smoothly for a few hours until the M100 ballot machine had a paper jam. We called one of the 'runners' who travel between the precincts in town to help solve problems, and she ended up calling the main office. We were told we could turn off the machine, remove the counter unit to reach the jammed ballot to remove it, then put everything back together without a loss of counted votes. *whew* It worked. We didn't want our machine to fail as that meant we would have to hand count the ballots at the end of the night.

Before the voter feeds their ballot into the machine we remove the ballot stub so the ballot no longer can be tracked. Apparently when the judge removed the stub she also tore/removed part of the bottom of the ballot. There was of just blank space at the end of the ballot but it confused the machine. Instead of the machine counting or rejecting the ballot, it jammed. Once we freed the ballot we took and sealed it in a 'hand count' envelope to be counted by the election department at the end of the night. After this mishap we all were careful when removing the ballot stub.

After what seemed to be all morning I discovered it was only 9:30 am. Oh boy, this is going to be a long day! Every few hours Karen wanted us to change positions to do another job. That was fine with the greeter and M100 judges as they had to stand to do their jobs. I did all the jobs but the greeter. Once the two women left the greeter job was eliminated and Karen stepped in to do one of the jobs.

As in the 2006 elections I found that the other precinct's women voters looked prettier. Why is that?! The women voters we had seemed to look older than their age. And it wasn't just my imagination. When I took turns handling the registration book, I found the voters birth date was listed with their name and address.

Our oldest voter was a 98 year old woman. Another woman was 88 years old. One 80 year old woman walked over from an assisted living facility a few blocks away using her cane. She forgot her id and said she would walk home to get it. But we found two people in the senior center who knew her and could vouch for her identify. We let her vote instead of making her walk home to get her id.

One of the voters when I was in charge was Tim Torgenson. I remember that name from the music concerts last summer. I asked if he was the musician and he told me he worked with hand puppets and was a magician. Huh?! He then confessed he was pulling my leg and he was indeed a musician. He offered to get my email address to email me a list of his concerts this summer, but in the hubbub I didn't give it to him.

The Democrat running for county commissioner lives in our precinct and he voted. He had to point out he was on the ballot as no one recognized him.

My friend Jackie stopped by. It turns out she votes in the precinct still at the armory. And after giving me something to eat left to go vote.

This being Montana, each election we have citizen initiatives to be on the general election ballot. Two groups were gathering signatures outside the building as precincts are a good place to get signatures from registered voters. One petition was to establish an individual provider program to provide assistance to the elderly and disabled to remain in their own home instead of having to go into a nursing home. I guess this initiative is modeled after a program in Washington state.

Another petition is to amend the Montana constitution to say that life begins at conception, or some such. This is more controversial and I read that Planned Parenthood or other groups planned to also have people at the precincts to try to dissuade people from signing the petitions. No counter groups were at our precinct.

I am proud of Montana's tradition of citizen initiatives unlike Minnesota where it is pretty much impossible for citizens get something on the ballot for a vote by everyone. There the bureaucracy and lobbiests control the legislation. So, while I may not agree with all initiatives, I support their right to be on the ballot for all to vote on and take a dim view of groups that try to prevent the people from getting a chance to vote. I guess I'll never be one of those slimy politicians.

Other judges brought food. Cookies, brownies, bananas, chocolate, peanut candy clusters, turkey roll wraps, tea and coffee. The other precinct also brought sliced melons and pasta salad. I got all the pasta salad at the end of the day as no one ate it and the woman who made it didn't want to take it home. It turns out the lady who made it use to live in my mom's house back in 1972 before mom bought the house. What a coincidence! Unbelievable. She knew some of mom's longtime neighbors.

Karen was more than ready to quit at 8 pm. 10 minutes prior she was starting to take down extra voting booths. When John mentioned we needed one more voter to make 33% voted, and I asked what time it was and he said 8 pm, Karen rushed over to open the door and announce it was 8 pm and the polls were closed, and then she locked the doors.

A voter came a minute later and I prevailed on Karen to let him in to vote. It turns out he was a voter for the other precinct. Darn. But a couple came a few minutes later from the other precinct and they were registered to vote in our precinct. Karen was not pleased but we let them vote. By now we only had one voting booth set up so the guy had to use a table where the senior citizens had their lunch.

Our precinct had 1240 register voters vs. less than 1,000 for other precinct. Yet they had more people who voted. Figure that.

We had 409 voters for almost a 33% turnout. It turns out math is not John's strong suit when he thought the couple would make it over 33% for our precinct. The 409 does not include absentee ballots. County wide the turnout was 41% as it is easy to vote via absentee ballot.

Our precinct is a Democratic precinct as 274 voters were Democrats and 135 were Republicans.

It was a rush to get everything taken down and put away. We had to put stuff to be taken to the election headquarters in the right envelopes. Other stuff put away in a locked closet. And a number of items had to be sealed and all our signatures on the seal.

We didn't get out of there until 9:30 pm. That explains why it takes a while for votes to be tabulated after the precincts close.

This was a good group of judges and I would be fine with working with them in the general election in November.