Which party will YOU be this election?

I will be a poll worker this tuesday in King County, the county that contains Seattle. Further, I will be in charge of the "AVU" machine at my polling place. Why? Because I want to get a look first hand if there are problems. But I learned something AMAZING about how voting in King County works, more below...

In King County polling places, there are a variety of roles. There is the Inspector, who runs the polling place, and is in charge, poll book judges, who look up people's names in the voter rolls and check ID, a provional ballot judge, and a judge each for the Accuvote machine (which tallies bubble forms) and the AVU machine. The AVU machine is a Diebold touch screen voting. In Washington, ALL ballots have a paper record, thanks to Sam Reed, our Secretary of state, an honest guy by all accounts who happens to be a Republican (the exception that proves the rule in my book). Our election data is unusually accurate, and public, at least compared to a lot of other states. I signed up to run the AVU machine because I wanted to see first hand whether the "summary" screen vote-switching problem happens in Washington, but I found out something else.

In Kind county, there are several situations that call for two judges, one each from Democratic and Republican affiliation, to participate. These are situations when ballots must be invalidated, taking the machines to the depot after the election, etc. Here's the kicker: In Washington, nobody registers with a political party. You have to declare one to vote in the primary, but nobody is "affiliated" (as a voter) with any party. So how do we get those two judges asssigned?

It's simple, you get designated to be a Republican or Democrat randomly!! Aint it grand? Both parties aggreed to this, by the way. The polling location judges are randomly picked to be 50/50 from each party (major political parties only). So I could actually be a Republican on Tuesday! (Actually, the AVU judges require special training and are picked by the county regardless of party, so I'm not sure if my randomly selected party will matter at all). Here in Liberal King County, I'd bet that a good chunk of the assigned Republicans, aren't. HA!

Well, I just thought it was totally surreal. By the way, there were tons of younger people signed up this year to be poll workers. Way to go people!