This is only one of many thousands of stories that could be told about the nation's polling places yesterday, only one of thousands in Montana alone. So I have not endeavored to extrapolate too much of widespread significance from this singular experience. It's mine, tied up with that of a handful of other election judges, and a few hundred Bozeman, MT voters. It's just a story about one precinct, on one day, a day that was both tedious and momentous. If there are ways our precinct's story intersects with yours, however, please weigh in. The vast tapestry of American elections is pieced together out of these patches that are small, local precincts.
AlanF (I believe it was) is collecting poll worker diaries for the dKosopedia page on "Serving as an Election Official." Please consider contributing yours to the mix, if your story is too long to contain in a comment.
Last June, I signed up for the first time to be a poll worker in the primary. I was one of only two people of my generation (both women) at the training session; my precinct crew of 6 was made up of five retirees, plus me (age 34). The day was long and slow, our precinct small: only 64 voters showed up to vote, or just under five per hour. We workers, on the other hand, spent long swaths of time simply getting to know one another; by evening, small talk had given way to the free exchange of highly personal information, like strangers on a long plane flight.
Nevertheless, I was eager, even excited, to do it all again on November 7. It's no secret to anyone who knows me that I get all sentimental about voting-- it's the closest I ever get to patriotism. And this election day was special-- hopes were so high-- I loved the prospect of being part of it. While I can be highly partisan on other days, on Election Day I enjoy taking on a neutral role. I want everyone to vote, Democrats and Republicans, crazy MT Libertarians, everyone. I desperately want every last voter on our rolls to show up, and my passion on this point appears matched by most of the other poll workers'-- precincts housed in the same building catcalling when they see one another's booths are empty, looking on enviously when somebody else's line gets long. We want voters, and lots of 'em.
Things began inauspiciously. A week before the election, I hadn't yet heard from my chief judge, Bill* (the organizer of our precinct crew), and I had to track him down through our county elections supervisor. When I called Bill, he sounded flustered, as if I were calling unaccountably prematurely, and suggested I meet him and his wife, Nancy, at the polls at 7 am Tuesday. "Don't the polls open at 7?" I asked, confused. "No, they open at 8... don't they?" Bill said. Bill's been doing this a lot longer than I have. He was, however, as I later verified, mistaken. A few days later, I left him another polite phone message telling him so.
I mention this only as an example of how many things can go wrong, even with no ill intention on the part of the election judges. The potential for sheer human error throughout the process remains astronomical.
Fortunately, when I arrived at the polling place at 6:30, bearing donuts and fruit (we'd nearly starved during the primary, a 14-hour day with no food provided by the elections department), everybody else was already there. The correct information had spread itself around somehow. There were Bill and Nancy, Montana residents since their young married days, friendly and gracious, with a country-club air, but never particularly confident about election procedures. Nancy looked twenty years older than she had in June. Bill muttered to me under his breath that she'd been suffering "some health problems." The expression of pain on his face let me know they were serious. Ken is a highly cosmopolitan, chatty, intelligent 60-something with a distinctly effeminate air and a tendency to continually name-drop and talk about people he's met travelling in foreign countries. However, he demonstrates a high degree of curiosity about every subject, discussing English gardens, Virginia politics, and slug diversity with equal aplomb, and I enjoy talking with him very much. Lynn is a divorced elderly woman of a disposition sometimes sweet and sometimes sour, with a traumatic past (I heard all about it in June), and some later history of service and activism. As far as I know, all of the above are Democrats. Tuesday, one of our group was out sick (a smart, loud-mouthed retired female attorney from NYC), and a new person replaced her, Ida, an eightyish lifelong Bozeman native who's been living in the same house in my neighborhood for over 40 years, as other houses and businesses grew up around her. Over the course of the day, it became apparent to me that Ida did not fit in, ideologically, to the group as a whole: she was a conservative, and one fairly bitter about the changes befalling her state and hometown. (Of course one is not allowed to openly discuss the races on the ballot while working the polls-- this constitutes electioneering. However, there are oblique ways of discovering one another's political identities.)
We went through our usual disorganized attempts to sort through and set up our various forms, envelopes, ballots, sample ballots, signs to post, pens and pencils, books and registers. This is not as easy as it sounds, even in a paper ballot/optical scan area like ours. The ballots came with a note from our county clerk, warning us of a potential problem. The printing was too light, and, while the names and races were perfectly legible, the fine-lined ovals to fill in were barely visible. A person with good vision could complete the ballot under optimal lighting conditions. Others-- mostly, but not all, elderly-- would, as the day wore on, come out of the booth with a questioning look: it literally appeared to them as though there were no ovals there at all. The note from the clerk suggested that such voters be directed to the "Automark" machines, which are capable of reading ballots aloud to voters and marking them automatically according to choices on a keypad. However, very few elderly voters were comfortable using this new technology, and most opted for a magnifying glass or penlight.
By seven o'clock, voters were already lined up at the door. Our official in charge intoned, in the wonderfully formal way one is legally required to: "The polls-- are now-- OPEN!" The voters surged in. (Please bear in mind, throughout, that when I talk about surging and so forth... this is Montana. Tens of people in the room at once, that's a crowd.) Our precinct, which covers a large mobile home park and a couple of nearby streets, has a total of 553 registered voters (there were two other precincts in the same room with us, and several others in an adjoining space). 109 out of the 553, the poll book said, had already voted absentee. This was in comparison to perhaps 6 or 9 absentees in the primary. The huge upturn in early voting was a big part of the story here in Montana this year.
And more voters began lining up at our table. By 10 am, we'd had the same number of voters we'd gotten all day in the primary. There were certainly spells of time when voting was light, because our precinct is so small. But, comparatively, it felt busy and energetic. The two larger precincts in the room had lines forming almost continually. Voters came through the line, asking us how turnout was, and were excited when we told them it was high. In the early afternoon, we heard rumors (confirmed Wednesday in the newspaper) that another precinct had run out of ballots. Other voters, whose search for the correct place to vote had, for one reason or another, included a stop at the county elections office, reported that the line there stretched out of the building and around the block, and the wait was at least three hours.
The reason for this was a new state law which had just gone into effect. The law allows same-day voter registration; but voters wanting to register and vote on election day are required to do it at the elections office. The Gallatin County elections office is a very small physical space, with a couple of receptionists and, the last time I was there, only two or three voting booths set up. They can't have fit very many more, even Tuesday. While same-day registration is a wonderful way to encourage voting, our county was clearly unprepared for the deluge of new voters in this election. Hopefully, by the next go-round, they will have learned from yesterday's experience. Voting continued at the elections office, therefore, until nearly midnight-- one of the factors that slowed Tuesday night's MT-Sen returns.
Still, I am amazed by the dedication of many voters. The most memorable voter of the day showed up visibly shaken and terribly punchy. He ogled our table of snacks and declared he'd been in line, breakfastless, at the courthouse all morning, only to be told at the end he was already registered in our precinct. He spoiled (mismarked) his first ballot, brought it back to us, took another one. After a minute or two, he reemerged. "I need another one," he said. I wrote "SPOILED" across his second ballot in red pen, marked another number change in the poll book. Gave him a third ballot. After what seemed like a long time, he came out, holding out his ballot. "I need another one." I looked at him in horror, and his face relaxed into a grin. "Just kidding." Finally he'd completed a ballot, though it had taken him all morning. I sent him away with a banana.
That guy, and many others, gave up a major chunk of their day, endured hassles and hunger and misinformation, in order to vote. Quite a few voters described having already driven to two or three wrong polling places (the locations keep changing, and some were changed at the last minute). They did not give up. By the end of the day, our precinct had given out 306 ballots, or around 55% turnout. Most of the remainder of our registered voters were listed as "inactive," meaning they had been registered there for years, but had not voted in the 2004 presidential election (this category likely includes some people who have moved away): of "active" voters, we estimated our turnout at more like 80-90%. Montana is known for its high turnouts, however: our secretary of state's website asserts that "Montana consistently has had one of the highest voter turnout rates in the nation." For Gallatin County's overall turnout results (over 80%), see this article (which seems to contradict previous assertions about why lines at the courthouse were so long, however. I don't have a good answer for this one.)
There was not as much time for chat as before. I still managed to hear quite a few of Ken's stories, as he is the register judge and I am the poll book judge; we sit next to one another to check IDs, get signatures, and record the voters along with their ballot #s. There was still time for Bill to tell me about how his family grew their Montana roots. Ida and I still had the opportunity to get into an argument over one of our most liberal city commissioners, whom I love and she apparently hates. But the conversations were constantly interrupted, and we straightened our backs and grabbed our pens as voters approached.
Out of the 200 or so ballots we dealt with that day, only 4 were irregular in any way. Three were spoiled, and will not be counted, but the two individuals that spoiled them voted successfully on another ballot thereafter. We took one provisional ballot, from a voter who was listed in the register as "Absentee Sent," meaning he requested, but did not return, an absentee ballot. Provided no absentee ballot is later located for him, his provisional ballot will count.
That's the wonderful thing about working in a small state, in a small precinct. I remember all the anomalies, specifically, and who they belonged to. I remembered the faces of many of the voters from June, recognized their names, recognized that their spouse or children had been in to vote earlier in the day. I remembered the little kids, noticed that the babies had grown. I don't know most of these people, this is not my neighborhood. But, if I keep on working this precinct, I will know them.
Towards the end of the evening, when Bill had been perched behind me on a chair for hours, murmuring snippets of his family history into my ear between voters, and lulling me into the kind of sleepiness one might feel listening to one's grandpa telling a story by the fireside-- he began to talk again, with some hesitance, of Nancy's unidentified-but-certainly-serious medical problems. I could tell he was sorrowful. "This," he said, glancing around him at the polling station, "will probably be the last go-round for me." I know he and his wife have been poll workers for years, and he seemed saddened by the idea that this might be the last time. "The doctor said to me, when he talked to us: 'Life as you know it is ending.'" I can't help but share his sense of sadness, vaguely communicated though it is. And Bill will not be our Chief Judge again.
Who will take his place? It is strange that we leave the administration of our elections almost entirely up to our retirees, who may suffer health problems, have difficulty seeing or writing in the book, experience discomfort sitting in a hard chair for 14 hours... while the rest of us bustle on with our days virtually uninterrupted. I'm not belittling the contribution of these workers; instead we should be tremendously grateful that so many of our seniors are willing to undergo what can be in effect a physical endurance test, because they are committed to preserving old-fashioned democratic values. But why don't some of us younger people help out more? The answer I generally hear is, "we have jobs, children, other responsibilities; we can't do anything on a weekday." Well, personally, I took off work Tuesday, and arranged for someone else to cover my lab responsibilities. I do have a child, so I made elaborate child care arrangements involving my daughter's father, the after-school program, and the mother of one of her kindergarten friends. Obviously, some people, in some situations, can't make such arrangements. But some of us can-- and some of us should. In particular, if we are concerned for the open, clean, and error-free administration of elections, as many of us are at Daily Kos, one of the best things we can do is to insert ourselves into the polling places in an official capacity. Not to push a particular candidate, but to guard our fundamental rights, and those of our neighbors.
I'm thinking maybe, the next time around, I'll volunteer to be chief judge for a precinct. I notice that I have what's considered an abnormally keen interest in learning the election laws and correct procedures and following them. (The rest of my team, I can tell, occasionally finds this "attention to detail" irritating.) I think I have the organizational skills to make it work a little more smoothly, and I love it beyond all reason. If you love the process of voting the way I do, if you feel a little pang of disappointment when you've filled out your ballot and leave the polling place, all finished and ready to go back to your private life... consider spending a blessed few hours or a day there, once or twice a year, in the service of democracy.
As for me, I think I'm addicted.
(*All names have been changed to protect identities.)