From census to primary election

My census work is winding down.  All the households in my district have been visited and their information has been sent into the Missoula census office.  Because my girlfriend Tammy was here the last two plus weeks and I wanted to spend time with her, my boss tried to offload two pieces of my remaining census work to two fellow crew leaders who were close to being done with their districts.

In theory that was a good idea.  One of the crew leaders did a good job with her piece of the work.  The other crew leader - although he had promised me I would be happy with the work he'd do for me - well... I wasn't pleased with it.  I spent a few days with him, my boss, and a few other crew leaders getting the work he did up to my standards.  Even then I spent over 8 hours the final day fixing the final product.  My effort seems to have paid off as it appears Missoula accepted the almost 300 forms.

While my census area was the largest in both in size and in the number of households it appears I have finished close to when my fellow crew leaders did.  And it appears I finished before a number of other crew leaders in other parts of western Montana.

*** just patting myself on my back ***

Of course the word "census" became a dirty word to my girlfriend as my census work took too much of my time away from her.

Then there was the matter of Tuesday's primary election.   Yesterday was Montana's primary election and I was the chief election judge at one of the precincts.  This was my first time as chief judge so that meant extra work before and after the election.

A big problem was that the election was held the day Tammy left to return to Minnesota. I didn't realize the day of the election was the day she left until she arrived here.  Oppss. The election's hours were from 7 am to 8 pm and I had to be at the election site an hour prior to 7 am to do last minute setup before the polls opened.  So I arranged for Jan to take Tammy to the train station. Not what I wanted, but I had no choice.

The election went well.  On Monday Tammy had helped me do much of the set up at my precinct.  As our election site was held at a church, and some people get offended by religious materials, we had to use a large sheet of paper, and a cloth covering a table, to cover two bulletin boards with cards and posters with religious themes.  We also took down a painting of Jesus.

Monday evening I picked up from election headquarters the ballots and other last minute stuff for the election.

I had five election judges (Ted, Terry, Donna Jo, Peggy and Fred) to help me and they were all waiting when I arrived at the election site at 6 am with the keys to the church the pastor had lent me.  Since Tammy and I had done the preliminary set up we were able to easily complete the set up and preparation before the polls opened at 7 am.

Three of my election judges were new and one other person hadn't worked an election in four years, so it was up to Ted and I and help them with their jobs.  It is not that the judge's jobs are difficult it is that one must be aware of the correct procedures.

As this was a primary election with few high profile offices being contested the turnout was lower than in other elections.  At times it was slow but still a decent turnout.  At one slow point I reviewed one of the election judge manuals and briefly fell asleep.  One of the dangers of being able to sleep sitting upright.

Since Montana allows for voter ballot initiatives we had representatives from two of the eight initiatives that are currently in the signature gathering phase.  Because the people were gathering signatures for initiatives not currently on the ballot they were allowed within 100 feet of the election site.  One group had arranged for a table in the entryway.  The other initiative was staffed by one woman who stood and used a tall stand to hold her materials as no tables were left. I brought her a chair but she rarely used it.

A series of women and one man staffed a table for Constitutional Initiative No. 102 (CI-102). This initiative will amend Montana's constitution to define a person as all human beings, irrespective of age, health, function, physical or mental dependency or method of reproduction, from the beginning of the biological development of that human being.  Or in short, this is a pro-life initiative as even a few of the signature gatherers called it before explaining the initiative's details.  They seemed to do well in getting people to sign their petition.

The other signature gatherer was for Initiative No. 160 (I-160). This initiative I-160 prohibits trapping of all wild mammals and birds by any means on public lands in Montana, subject to limited exceptions.  This initiative was a hard sell in this area.  At the end of the day she was discouraged by the low number of signatures she had gotten, but considering the area I thought she did better than I expected.  Several people strongly disagreed with her petition and voiced their objections especially as they were trappers but no one was overly rude and I didn't have to step in.

As chief election judge I remained neutral and did not sign, endorse or have any opinion pro or con on the initiatives.

The petition gatherers were respectful and polite.  Even though the two initiatives seemed to generally attract  people of opposing beliefs the two sets of gatherers were respectfully or one another and helped each one with the rules of signature gathering. I only stepped in once when a woman for I-102 discussed her petition with an elector before he voted.  The rules are that the signature gatherers are not to interfere with an elector's voting and therefore were not to talk with them until after they voted.

My judges and I all had a good time at the election.  Our personalities meshed well and they all had a good sense of humor which helped passed the time during the lulls in people voting.  We had a small 'bet' on the number of electors we would have and one of my judges lost and was suppose to stand up and do the chicken dance.  We never made her actually do the dance but we all had fun lightly teasing her about it.  Even the signature gatherers commented on what a fun group we were and how they enjoyed being there that day.

Since we can't leave the polling place until the election is over we remarked that for the fall election we should bring crock pots and have pot luck.  My girlfriend sells Homemade Gourmet and they make excellent meals for crock pot cooking so I will have to make one for my election team in November.

After the election was over we had to take down the voting booths, posters, etc., return the church to how it was before the election, print out the results from the machine, pack up what needed to be returned to the headquarters that night.  I, and two other election judges, took the print outs and the machines' cards back to the election headquarters and then we were done for the night.

I was back home at 9:30 pm after leaving home that morning at 5:30 am.  A long day, and after eating some of the homemade gourmet dip Tammy had made for me, I went to bed and slept long and hard.