Ok, so you want to get out the vote for your candidate, of course you do - we all do. But if the people running the election don't have enough workers to run the election, then that literature you gave out with teh election day location will be wrong. They'll have to combine precincts, causing confusion, and some voters will be disenfranchised.

More below the fold.

Weekly Voting Rights News Update

By Erin Ferns

An increase in turnout among historically underrepresented voters Tuesday brings hope for outstanding voter participation that represents all Americans in November. Project Vote's Super Tuesday exit poll analysis found young and minority voters made a strong presence at polls in key states across the country, including record-setting turnout among Latinos in California. While voter participation appears to be on the rise in this critical presidential election year, polling place problems persist as some voters – and their precincts' poll workers – were unaware of state and federal voting procedures, creating the risk of intimidation and disenfranchisement. In order to maintain fair and open access to voting for all Americans, it important to prepare voters and facilitate effective poll worker training before November.

copyright © 2007 Betsy L. Angert.  BeThink.org

Florida Primary voters reporting problems at polls  What are we to think?  Oh, it is just Florida, again.

We've got a problem: not enough election workers (called election judges in Illinois). Our elections are run essentially by volunteers and we have a lot of them (four or five in a two-year cycle depending on the state). Many election judges are senior citizens and they have to put in a 13 or 14 hour day. It's a challenge every election cycle to generate more volunteer election judges. What to do?

In a debate last week before the Los Angeles City Council on a motion to study instant runoff voting and several other reforms put together by rising star Eric Garcetti, President of the Council, Member Janice Hahn expressed a really interesting idea. (You can watch the debate here -- jump to Item #28 on the agenda).

Ohio Secretary of State Jennifer Brunner told the Ohio Association of Election Officials (OAEO) this week that she would be a friend and ally and help them out by modeling a system to recruit poll workers on how jurors are selected for jury duty.

The proposal, one of several the new Democratic chief election official shared with directors and members of Ohio’s 88 boards of election (BOE) at their winter conference in Columbus this week, was offered as a broad approach but with assurances that program details were being worked on.  She told her attentive, eager audience that the idea would also be shared with state lawmakers, who are needed to make her bold idea come to life.

Previously: Parts 1&2: What it's like being a pollworker; mood of the electorate as I (over)heard it

Part 3. What I did as a pollworker, in mind-numbing detail.
(yeah, I said there would be stories about people next. I lied.)

I've been voting in Hopewell Township, Mercer County, NJ since 1985, so due to the extreme inconsistency of US voting practices I have no idea what goes on elsewhere. Thus, this report will be mind-numbingly detailed.

And I mean that.  Mammas, be aware. Don't let your babies grow up to be the kind of Republicans that I encountered this week.

While working this week for the Democratic party watching the provisional vote qualification for the NM-01 race (Madrid v. Wilson) I encountered an entirely new breed of Republican. I have thought of so many words to describe them but the very best word is entitled. They are entitled to whatever they want and whenever they want it. This includes elections.

More on the flip.

Back in October, Elise encouraged us to volunteer as a poll worker (Take action, as she would say), and I signed up.

I did not expect to gain anything particularly profound from the experience, but surprisingly, I did. I knew that my pasty white rural town of 9000 people would not be this year's Ohio - plus, we have same day voter registration.

My town's elections illustrates what we SHOULD do. It won't make the news or anything, because it's boring when everything goes right. Still, I'd like to share my experiences so everyone can have an idea of what it looks like when things go well.

Please, please, help me get the message out - we should all be poll workers in the future.

I signed up to be a pollworker because Robert Menendez (NJ-Sen) voted for Bush's detention bill. Just as I was in the pit of despair, feeling as though all politicians are morals-free authoritarian suckups, I got an email from Pollworkers for Democracy (they probably got my name from Working Assets) asking me to join their non-partisan voter protection movement. "Now that I can do with a clear conscience," I said, and so I signed up.

The US election system is an incredible mish-mash of state and county-level procedures -- the Carter Center doesn't consider it up to international standards for consistency & transparency. I'm going to write about my experiences as a pollworker in Hopewell Township, Mercer County, NJ.

I'll get into the details of what it's like being a pollworker in later installments (yes, this looks like a series). First I'll talk about the experience in general.

FIRST - check out this awesome video about the virtue of preparedness.  Provisional Toothbrush http://www.youtube.com/...

Okay - now a story about pollworker training in OH.  
Some background: In Franklin County (COlumbus) we are using the iVotronic machine made by ES&S.  Yes, it prints a "voter-verified paper trail" though we were not trained to tell the voters to verify their vote by looking at this tape and as far as I know no one looks at these tapes except the pollworkers at the end of the night to make sure the count on the screen matches the count on the tapes (then theoretically the PEB card or flash memory card contains those same numbers and are counted by a master machine in some room by ES&S people - see this article on 2004 counting of votes from this machine in Chicago: http://www.votefraud.org/...)

Now - from the training:

This all began about a month ago when I got an email from Working Assets saying I could be a pollworker and observe the integrity of the election process through Pollworkers for Democracy (P4D).  I never used to care about politics.  Then came the 2000 election. Then came the 2004 election. Then I began to search for information (because it certainly wasn't in the MSM) on what was REALLY going on with this government. Thanks to DailyKos and other blogs I became more informed. I also became more and more concerned. I became more interested - no, compelled - to do something about the erosion of our Constitution and our democracy.

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...

I was scheduled to be a Precinct Inspector for the election this November 7.  I was looking forward to it.  

My training class would have been today.  Instead, I received a call from from a woman named "Holly" who told me that she was the supervisor from my precinct and that I would not be allowed to work in the election.

The reason?  I had posted concerns on the Black Box Voting website.

What could be more wrong than the leader of the precinct seeking out information about the vulnerabilities of the systems used in his precinct?

We have received over 5,000 names of members from progressive organizations in last two days,  38,623 voters off voters list, 389 Democratic workers. And this from only 3 people, imagine if we could get this from all 1,000 members. We would have in excess of 14,000,000 names in our data base.... Sounds exciting doesn't it, well it will get better.

I have volunteered to be a precinct judge during this November's general election.  I received two hours of training established by my local county Board of Elections.  Now, I am exp;ected to arrive at my polling location and begin the process of conducting, monitoring and controlling not only my workers but an electorate that will want to vote and very wary of those running the election process.  

Today I found an article on Salon.com of another precinct judge in Ohio and I'm slightly overwhelmed and I used to work at the board of elections.

I voiced an interest in working my town's polling place on election day at a recent town Democratic Party meeting.  A few days later, I got a call telling me where and when to show up.  Very anticlimactic, but I'm excited about being involved.

I'm pretty sure that our town is still using the mechanical lever machines, since New York has not complied with HAVA yet.

Anyone have any advice for me to prepare for a day at the polls?  I'm going to bring a digital camera to record anything out of the ordinary, but any other suggestions?

Please people, consider seriously signing up to be a poll worker on Election Day. As has been shown in the Allen v. Webb elections, the strategy is to slow down the voting process to the point where access to polls is limited. You can help. We all can help. We can be there to answer questions quickly, we can unjam paper in the printers, we can help reboot stubborn machines, we are tech savvy. Part of the reason that high-tech has been forced upon the eletorate, I'm sure, is that it actually does the opposite of what is intended, it causes inefficiency. Please, please, please, take the day off and work the polls.

http://www.pollworkersfordemocracy.com/

We all have a part to play to get this country turned around. This November 7th, and in the time left before these historic elections, we all have to do everything we can to help. For me, the single most frightening thing to happen is a loss in confidence about how the votes are counted, and how access to the polls is unequal. I care that we have honest elections even more than I care about who gets elected, and that is saying something. I wondered what to do ON election day. Should I drive people to the polls, stand on the side of the road with a sign, or what?

Well, I was inspired by AlanF and HistoPresto. You see, I want to get a closer look at how the polls actually work. Besides that, I think that managing this new technology is going to overwhelm the Poll Workers. So I signed up in Seattle... More under covers...