Election day

Another election has come and gone.   I once again served as the chief election judge at my precinct.  For this election I downsized the number of judges on my team as it was just a single ballot to hand out.  I didn't have different ballots for city residents or county residents.  A downsized number of judges meant all my judges had something to do and wouldn't get bored due to lack of work.  Another team had a couple of judges who couldn't work all day for a few reasons.  One of my extra judges then worked for her team.  I'm glad he was able to work at our polling location.   In the future if I am short of judges I can get him back on my team.

I, and the other two chief judges at my polling location, partially set up the night before.  It makes it easier on election day to finish the set up and get the other judges up to date on the latest.   Especially as the day is long as the polls are open from 7 am to 8 pm.

Flathead county had lots of people who were voting at the election department the week before the election.  Add in that 69% or so of voters received an absentee ballot and don't have to show up at the polls.  So I didn't expect as many voters voting in person at the polls this time.  When we opened at 7 am there was a long line at the door waiting to get in.  Much of the day we were busy with voters.  More than I expected.  My precinct had the most voters at 286, a few more than another precinct and even more than the third precinct.  So we got bragging rights for the number of voters we handled.  Statewide 72% of the voters voted so we had a high turnout.

All of our judges go in on potluck for food for the election judges and we had plenty of food and wonderfully made food.

We had a person who came to hand out pamphlets and we had to tell him he had to be 100 feet away from the polling location to do this as this is the law on electioneering in Montana.  He ended up just outside the parking lot.  He stood there and walked back and forth for most of the day.  I doubt anyone went over to talk to him as we never saw anyone do so.  I think his actions therefore were a waste of time.  He must have been paid to do so and that was why he did this for hours and hours and much of the day.

We also had two election observers at our polling location from the Montana Election Observation Initiative.  MTEOI aims to enhance transparency and public understanding about election procedures in Montana, detect and deter electoral malfeasance, and offer evidence-based recommendations for electoral reform to improve the conduct of elections, if warranted.  They watched us all day to see if we were doing things right.  Well one person did.  The other appears to have worked only a half day.   They didn't interfere with us, just sat or walked around and watched.

My last voter came in with his son a minute before the polls closed at 8 pm.  Once he voted we took stuff down, cleaned up and did some final paperwork documenting the ballots and sealing stuff.  Then for my precinct I and another judge took the ballots, register, poll books and other stuff to the election department where we showed with what we had and counted and recounted the number of ballots to make sure everything was there before they took the ballots off to be counted.

It was now 10 pm and time to go home.  Another successful election, and I and my team were happy with what we accomplished.