Election judge 2012

Tuesday I again was the chief election judge for my precinct.  Tammy again was an election judge on our team of six judges.

The first inkling of trouble was the night before the election.  From the election department Tammy and I picked up the ballots, precinct register, poll books and the other stuff we had to keep with us overnight and not in the locked room at the precinct.

Our precinct location again was in a church.  The difference - we learned shortly - was that the church pastor was no longer there and apparently much of the church staff left or was removed along with him.  I am still not clear about the left/removed part.   Ever since I have worked at this precinct Pastor Joel was the church official in charge and I had no problems.  It appears the church is trying to get its footing again after the departure of many of their staff.

I like to do a little setup the night before the election as I don't operate well at 6 am.  We got into the church only to discover we had no key to the locked room where the county had delivered and stored the voting machine, the automark machine for disabled voters, the voting booths, and all the rest of the election supplies.

We had only gotten one key and this key was for the church's outside door and was nowhere close to even fitting the inside locked door.

I called the election department and Jan told me she was told only one key was needed.  That's when I learned Pastor Joel was no longer there.  The election department didn't know the new pastor's name and they only had a church phone number and the work number of the woman acting as church secretary.  They didn't have her home phone number.  We called the church phone number and sure enough a phone rang behind another locked door.

Tammy and I checked all the church bulletins on the bulletin board and found a phone number.  This person gave us the secretary's home phone number.  We called and she didn't answer.  She also didn't have an answering machine so we couldn't leave a frantic message.

The election department brought out from storage another voting machine, an automark machine and nine voting booths.  We couldn't get the voting machines electronic card until 6 am the next morning when the election department office opened.

Complications.  

The guys who delivered the machines told us the room's door was open when they brought the initial supplies and they locked and closed the door behind them.  They now tried to pick the door's lock.  It was a cheap lock but they were unable to pick it.

Just as they were leaving Tammy got through to the church secretary who told us:

1. the door doesn't have a lock.   Then...
2. the door shouldn't be locked.

She consented to coming down to the church.  When she came she had a key and unlocked the door.  She was unhappy the door was closed and locked as she said they never lock or close the door. Well... we close and lock doors to our equipment.

So our normal quick setup of an hour turned into a two and a half hour wait and setup and we only did a few basic checks and setup steps.  The majority would have to wait until 6 am as it was after 8 pm now.  We still had to drive back to Kalispell to get grocery items for our potluck meal the day of the election.

After we got home Tammy discovered her computer was infected with a virus rendering it unusable.  By the time I finally removed the virus from her computer it was about 12:30 am.  So much for getting to bed early.

4:30 am arrived rather fast.  We had to be at the precinct at 6 am and had to drive a fair distance to get there.

My election judges were the same people I had in the primary election last June.  Everyone knew what to do and we finished setting up the polls five to ten minutes before we opened at 7 am.

When we opened there was a long line of people outside the door wanting to vote before they went to work.  It was busy all day.  In the 2010 general election we ran out of ballots and an election department worker brought out more ballots.  In the end we needed only one more ballot.  For the 2012 election I had a few less (435) ballots than in 2010 - most likely due to an increase in absentee ballot requests.

When our poll runner from the election department stopped by mid morning I let her know we had a higher than normal amount of voters so far and I had a feeling we would run out of ballots if the rate of voting remained high all day.

When I had 135 ballots left it was early afternoon. I called my poll runner to let her know I would need more ballots.  I called again when I was down to 50 ballots. She said she was on her way to pick up the newly printed ballots.  And again when I was down to 20 ballots.  Then all I got was her voice mail.   When I was down to five ballots I called the election department and was told my poll runner was on her way.  My precinct is in a small town outside of Kalispell.  So I ran out of ballots at 4:30 pm before she got here. 

We were out of ballots for ten to fifteen minutes.  The poll runner was on her way so we encouraged the people who came to vote to wait for the ballots to arrive.  Everyone did except one man. I was in the bathroom when he came and got upset and quickly left before the team could convince him to wait.  He came back later and voted.  He still was not happy.  He said he knew we were volunteers but he felt the election department screwed up.

He may have been the person who called one of the local TV stations as Dax showed up to interview me about running out of ballots.

The level of voters picked up after work and we went through the 100 ballots in 90 minutes.  When my poll runner delivered the 100 ballots I told her we would need at least another 50 ballots.  We ran out of ballots again before she arrived with 46 ballots.  The printer jammed and rather than waiting to print the last four ballots she came with what she had.  Again it was a ten minute wait from when we ran out of ballots to her arrival.

Of the 46 ballots we used 35.  So again I was sweating as the clock ticked down to when the polls closed.

In the end we went through 570 ballots between the voters and the seven spoiled ballots.  More voters than we have ever had.  One 57 year old man told us this was the first time he has ever voted.

Just before we closed the polls a reporter from the other TV station arrived to interview me.  That was a longer interview and apparently parts of it made it on air.  Neither Tammy or I saw it but some of her friends and co-workers saw it and commented to Tammy.

I wasn't thrilled at being interviewed but went along with it as it was news.  In the end apparently one or two other precincts ran out of ballots.  My precinct was the one that made the news.  And they got it wrong until speaking with me.  One TV news station claimed we were turning voters away and that was not true.

It took longer to close up after the polls closed.  Because I had three groups of ballots we had to go through extra steps to verify all the ballots were accounted for.

The polls closed at 8 pm and by the time we handed off the ballots and material to the election department it was 10:30 pm.

A long day.  I could sleep in the next morning but poor Tammy had to go to work early.