There have already been a few diaries (two
good ones from SharoninMD) and a
front page story
about the mess that was Primary Day in Maryland, particularly in Montgomery County. Since I served as an Assistant Chief Election Judge (in charge of provisional balloting and filling in for other positions when needed), I just wanted to share some of my experience of all that happened and perhaps a few reflections to throw another perspective into the ring.
Do note, though, that I'm typing this on a grand total of 10 hours of sleep over the past two nights, so you'll forgive me if I'm not completely coherent, right? Oh, and I don't have the energy for the fancy HTML either, so it's plain....deal with it! :-)
Follow me below the fold....and kudos to those who read through to the end. Since I am a good Street Prophet, there will be milk and cookies waiting for you.
Background
When I moved to Maryland in 2004 and registered to vote, I received info in the mail (or maybe I found it on the Board of Elections-hereafter BOE-website) about the need for election judges. For whatever reason (not sure of my original impulses) I decided to sign up. Since I moved after the presidential primaries and I was pissed as hell about the results, I registered as an "unaffiliated" voter and was assigned to a team that was led by a Republican Chief Judge. To give you a sense of how desperate Montgomery County, MD and probably all locations are for election volunteers, I was made an Assistant Chief Judge my first time around, in a Presidential election year, after THREE hours of training!
2004 was my initiation in to the mess that is our voting system (as a college and grad student in previous elections, I had only voted by absentee ballot before). We got our polling place open on time, but were so swamped with voters in the morning (2 hour waits or longer for the first bit) that some of the opening paper work never was done properly. Because of the long lines we were pressured to move quickly, so pretty early on we lost track of some of the tallies we were supposed to be keeping. By the end of the day, our written records were hopelessly off-none of the ending tallies matched and I was embarrassed by what I had to turn in to the BOE. But, the fact was that we were undertrained, understaffed (and according to the BOE we were fully staffed), and the procedures were so removed from common sense that all of my honest and hard-working fellow judges were utterly frustrated and unable to fully ensure to integrity of the process. As a first foray into our elections' process, it was utterly disheartening, so on top of coming down with the flu, waking up to another 4 years of "you know who," 2004 was a pretty depressing election experience for me.
When it came time to comment to the BOE, I think a number of us sent back scathing reports. However, despite this experience, I was determined to stick with the process because if there was one thing I learned it was that smart, diligent election judges were desperately needed.
Take Two - 2006 Primary Election
This year I signed up again to be an election judge, but since I got my forms in a little later, I was assigned to a new precinct, but this didn't bother me because the new one is only a mile (roughly) from my apartment. I screwed up and didn't get my party affiliation changed in time, so as an unaffiliated voter I was again assigned to a Republican Chief. I was also given the role of Assistance Chief again and attended another 3-hour training on August 31st. The training session was certainly better this time, focusing more directly on our duties as provisional balloting judges (the 2004 training had us paired with the Chief Judges and covered EVERYTHING - again, in 3 hours!), but it was still too brief. This time they did include a lot more role-playing scenarios and they had the voting machines and the new Electronic Polling Books (EPBs) set up for us to get a little "hands on" experience. I was excited to see the new EPBs because one of the biggest problems we had at my previous precinct was all of the paperwork associated with checking a person in and getting them to the voting machine (I can try to explain in the comments if you want, but it was a mess!). Still - three hours to process all that is going to happen in a 16+ hour election day filled with ridiculous minutiae and useless paperwork??
Oh, at the training we also receive a 3" binder filled with info about the roles of the different judges and how to perform the different functions in opening and closing the polls. The way the materials are organized is pretty poor - in chapter 6, say, you have the duties of the check-in judges, but the actual procedures for opening and closing the EPB machines is chapter 11-and in some places there is conflicting information and in others there were references to sections that didn't even exist!! ARGH!! And, then there are the supplemental materials that they mail to the Chief Judges with a supposed run-down of the process and expectations--lots of paper folks, lots of paper. But, I guess I could see some efforts to address some of the problems we had experienced in 2004-in an incredibly bureaucratic (read: not practical AT ALL) way.
A few days after the training I received a call from my Chief Judge about a pre-pre-election meeting for the Chiefs and Assistant Chiefs. I was paired with some great folks-all three had served in the precinct previously and the Chief judges had been Chiefs there before. We spent about 1 ½ hours going through the basics and planning the physical layout of the room (a middle school cafeteria). Good meeting, but we were all a little nervous about the new stuff. We also found out that night that we were short 4 judges and had NO Voting Unit Judges AT ALL. To avoid any confusion, here's a quick run down of what we were supposed to have:
2 Chiefs (from different parties)
2 Assistant Chiefs (from different parties)
4 Check-In Judges (2 each to staff 2 check-in tables)
2 Voting Unit Judges (to escort voters to the voting machines and along with the Chiefs serve as assistants to voters requesting help)
We had: 2 Chiefs, 2 Assistant Chiefs, and 2 Check-in Judges-that's it!
Monday night, 9/11, we had a second meeting to set-up (but not open) the voting machines, get all of the indoor materials/signs put up, and some other stuff that I don't even remember at this point (I'm NOT going to go consult the binder at this point, so just let me be a little fuzzy with the details). The meeting started at 7pm and was supposed to last roughly 1 ½ hours. Because of some of the conflicting report and missing materials, we didn't leave until 10pm-even though we had to be back at 6am the next morning. Still, I was glad we stayed because we had a good set-up and got a good feel for each other and how we were going to work together (which we did quite well, I think). The frustration is that there are a lot of things you simply CAN'T due (it's the RULES, baby!) until election morning.
Election Day
We arrive at a little before 6am to do the final prep, which was a lot more that I think we had realized, to get the polls open at 7am. Outdoor signs, various papers to fill-out, remaining materials to unpack, and turning on the voting machines. I don't know how it happened, but we were so frantic in getting everything done that we didn't notice that we had no Voter Access Cards (cards encoded by check-in judges to pull up a ballot on the voting machines) until we opened the doors at 7am. We only had 3 machines up and running at that point because we got lost in some of the paperwork (some of which was also MISSING) and because we just didn't have enough judges.
There was a quick search and call to the BOE and we were informed that it was a systemwide problems and that the Voter Access Cards were on there way, but by this time we had about 20 voters in the room starting to ask questions. Mind you, the BOE gave us NO direction about what to do with the voters other than wait for the cards, but, fortunately, we had smart and independent-minded chief judges who made the executive decision to issue provisional ballots to the voters who said they weren't going to be able to come back. I honestly don't know how many voters left and didn't come back. I wasn't fully aware of all the dynamics in the room because once the decision was made to allow provisional balloting, my other assistant chief and I became charged with all of the voting that was taking place. I think we processed about 10 provisional voters (want to know how many times you have to sign your name to vote provisionally???) by the time the access cards arrived at 7:45am. During this time, the chiefs got the rest of our voting units (the machines) online (we had 10 total).
By 8am things were running fairly smoothly-as smooth as they could being as short-handed as we were. Again, we had NO voting unit judges, so the chiefs (and once we finished with the provisional balloting, the assistant chiefs) had to escort the voters to the voting units and provide assistance. Oh, I should note that we had 3 EPBs (2 for the check-in judges and one for the chiefs) and 2 printers, so we had enough machines. We weren't able to use both of the EPBs all the time because there weren't enough people.
By midday we were into a pretty good rhythm. We never had a huge rush or more than 15 people in line at a time, so I think we were pretty efficient. But, then our EPBs started acting up-the crashing problems that a few others have referenced. Our chiefs began a process of tracking "problem" voter access cards and I must say found creative ways to make the machines behave (don't read anything sinister into this at all-it was just using a little technical know-how and the features of the chief judge EPB to clear out the problem cards). I think we had a couple of problems with voters incorrectly showing up as having voted or not voted, but I never got behind one of the EPBs, so I don't know all of the details.
I spent most of the day acting as a Voting Unit Judge-escorting voters to the voting units and explaining the machines to them. Perhaps a few people rolled their eyes at me, but I spent probably 2 minutes with each voter (MUCH more with some) telling them what to expect from the machine and making sure they understood how to go through the ballot. I stayed with each one until the ballot came up on the screen and, fortunately, not once did the wrong ballot come up (ALL ballots came up as what the person was registered as...of course, that doesn't address the problem of the BOE improperly processing some people's registrations, but I digress).
I was also charged with assisting Spanish language voters, which, if you know me, is a little funny because while I understand Spanish fluently, speaking can be a challenge. But, my Spanish was the best of any of the judges and I think we had 6-10 elderly Spanish-speaking voters with VERY limited English, so I tried my best and ended up essentially going through every single screen with them. WHEW!! We also had a large number of disabled voters (and Raskin's people were bringing in TONS of seniors--which is cool, but it just meant more time explaning the machines) and I spent 25-30 with an older deaf woman who was shown to be registered as an unaffiliated voter, but wanted very much to vote for Raskin and didn't understand why she couldn't. I went through a long written communication with her explaining the primary system and what could have happened (damn BOE!) that she wasn't registered as a Democrat and I helped her fill out the forms to get her registration changed, but that won't take effect until the November election. I only tell this to illustrate that our team of election judges tried really hard to create a welcoming environment and positive voting experience for our voters, but damn if the BOE didn't screw us over in so many different little ways.
By 6pm we begin hearing rumors about voting hours being extended until 9pm, but we hadn't heard ANYTHING from the BOE. Our poor chief judges also hadn't eaten much of anything and even those of us who had eaten lunch were getting hungry. I ordered us a pizza about 6:30, it arrived about 7pm, but we got a wave of voters and I could hardly stop to collect the money to pay for it. Big thanks go out to our Dem precinct chair who stepped up and paid for the pizza for us...and you know, I never even got his name. That's the kind of day it was.
By 7:45pm our chiefs had already made the decision that we were going to open the extended voting materials (we had received enough info from reliable sources, just NOT the BOE) and allow the voters to vote provisionally from 8pm (those who weren't in line at 8pm) until 9pm. Maybe 5-10 before the original poll closing hours we FINALLY got the call from the BOE. There were about 10-15 voters in the room at 8pm and we processed them through on the machines before setting up for the folks who arrived after 8pm. We had 18 voters after 8pm and the provisional balloting went very smoothly and we seemed to get positive feedback from all of them. In total, we had 33 provisional ballots cast-of those 25-28 were due to the BOE screw-up (our first and last voters).
So, at 9pm we finally begin the process of shutting down the precinct. Lots of different accounting forms, reports to print out from each of the machines, all the supplies to round up and put back in SPECIFIC bags (one of those details for which the BOE will dock you evaluation points...another one being the placement of all of your signs....(sigh)!), and the EPBs and machines to pack-up and seal. Being short-staffed all of this took longer than usual. One of the jobs of the Assistant Chiefs is to return all of the "critical election materials" (provisional ballots, memory cards and printed reports from the voting machines, printed Voter Authority Cards (these are what are printed by the EPBs) in the tally sheet envelopes from the machines) to the BOE in Rockville. The little BOE book says that Assistant Chiefs are supposed to leave by NO LATER THAN 1 ½ hours after the polls close. My other assistant and I left at 11:30pm. We arrived at the BOE almost right at midnight, only to wait in line for about 35 minutes. I finally got home around 1am....and THAT, my friends, was mostly my day all the polls.
Thoughts/Reflections
- If you have smart, honest election judges (and most ARE!) some of the problems created by the system can be overcome. BUT, it requires a lot of mental energy and ingenuity that SHOULD NOT BE NECESSARY.
- A lot of attention has focused on the machines. I believe strongly that we need to have a paper trail, BUT talking so much about the machine problems misses the bigger picture, which is that the SYSTEM is completely nonsensical-it is a bureaucratic nightmare that invites incompetence by even the best-intentioned people. If the election procedures were more transparent and straightforward, if the election judges received sufficient training and were fully staffed, and if the BOE staff were themselves well-trained and responsive-it would be a good bit more difficult, I think, to mess around with the machines. Even with the comedy/tragedy of errors that was our day yesterday, I would vouch for the integrity of our precinct.
- This is a random thought, but it said something to me about our political system/lack of participation. As I was escorting folks to the polls, I noticed lots of campaign materials and realized that a lot of it was being distributed just outside the precinct-perfectly legal and I admire the dedication of campaign volunteers. I guess I was just amazed by the number of voters (I would estimate as many as 1/4) I escorted to the voting units who based their votes solely on who handed them a piece of paper in the parking lot. I'll probably get called a snob, but this made me a little sad about the state of our democracy.
Recommendations (and these are just preliminary, a little off the cuff if you will)
- I think perhaps that election judge duty should be a civic requirement like jury duty, so long as there is proper training and adequate oversight (see next point). In the meantime, folks, I know it means you can't be campaigning for your candidates on election day, but election volunteers are DESPERATELY needed. Here's a linky (PDF) to the MoCo BOE application/questionnaire to be an election judge. I don't have time to gather more links, but I'm sure you can find info by visiting your county BOE website or calling the BOE. We need at least 2,000 more judges in MoCo alone.
- All election judges should go through at least a FULL DAY of training, including a run through of poll opening and closing procedures. In addition, fully-trained BOE staff should be on-call (1 per every dozen precincts or so) on election day to provide immediate help to precincts.
- SIMPLIFY! (K.I.S.S.!) Consolidating reporting forms, providing sequential instructions/check lists, and reorganizing the materials could lessen a lot of the confusion. After all, it was a missing check on a check list that gave us no voter access cards in the first place!!
- FIX the SYSTEM (not just the machines). Lots of things to say here, but first, require that all full-time BOE staff be non-partisan or set up a system similar to the one for election judges-each official position should be staffed by 2 people of different parties. Make voter registration easier. Involve someone besides bureaucrats (and I can get a bit wonky myself, but it's beyond that) in creating a secure voting process. I know Kos likes the Oregon system (mail-in), but my tendency to lose things and skepticism about the USPS doesn't make me a huge fan. I dunno what else, but lets move away from screaming at Diebold - as bad as the machines are, the system is worse.
Well, that's what was and a few thoughts from me. I know I was just one election judge, but I know there were some other Kossacks out there helping out too, so maybe this diary can serve as a place to share experiences. I'm incredibly frustrated with and angry at the BOE, but at the same time I'm incredibly proud of my election team and I really think we did a helluva job with the hand we were dealt today. So, after a 19-hour day yesterday and 5 hors of sleep, I'm gonna end this, but I'll stick around a few for any comments that might happen to drift in.
And, for those who do drop by, here's your reward for sticking with me: