Last night, Friday, Oct 18, I went through a couple of hours of training to be a poll worker.
There were about 20 of us in a meeting room at the Monterey County Government Center. There were chairs spread out widely around the room. Each chair had a book filled with training materials for us.
About half the room was empty chairs. I’m not sure if that is because there were a lot of no-shows last night, or if some nights they have a lot more people scheduled.
The lesson was a marathon. There was no breaks schedule as we powered through two hours, and I had to get up in the middle to use the restroom, so I hope I did not miss anything vital. I think that was a mistake in planning to not have any breaks.
In California, every active voter got a ballot. Active voter seems to be someone whose election mail does not get returned. Because voter data is address specific, ballots and election material does not forward if someone moves. As such, much of this year’s election poll working will be collecting vote-by-mail ballots that were not mailed in time. There will also be people who want to vote with an official ballot so they surrender their vote-by-mail ballot so they can get an official ballot. There are lost ballots and random people who did not register or moved without changing their voter registration addresses.
We started by talking about COVID protections. Sanitize-sanitize-sanitize was the motto of the night. After each person votes, we were to wipe down their station before the next voter arrives.
A focus was on various security measures to ensure the ballots were secure. We were also told to be sure to help everyone who shows up to be able to cast a ballot, whether by turning in their vote by mail ballot, surrendering their vote-by-mail ballot to get a regular ballot, or a provisional ballot in case they lost their vote-by-mail ballot, the dog ate it, left it at home, or whatever.
In the end, if someone shows up and does not have a mail in ballot to surrender, or if they are from a different precinct or even from another county, we can let them vote with a provisional ballot. We were told that sometimes people show up who are not on the voter rolls at all, or had never registered at all, but still want to vote, and they get provisional ballots. In short, we as poll workers don’t decide who casts a ballot, only that we give them the appropriate ballot (provisional, official), and let the ballot counters decide whether to include it.
We were given instructions on how to use the computer touch-screen voting machine. It lets people cast their ballot by selecting on a touch screen their choices and then prints out a ballot. There is no electronic record of the vote, only the printout. Assuming the voter checks the printout to ensure their Biden vote didn’t get switched to Kanye, it should be OK.
I asked the programmer, who was at the training, what happens if someone says that the machine is changing their vote, and they were sure they didn’t just touch the wrong button. He seemed insulted and angry at the question I could hear the irk in his voice as he said that doesn’t happen and these machines were new and those problems in the past have been fixed and there were no such problems (reported) when these new machines were used in the primaries.
The person running the training had a more calm and reasonable response when he said that they should try to vote again and to be careful to do everything to be sure the problem is not a typo and if it does it again, to call the elections department.
There was a bunch of other stuff as well.
Later at the very end, as there was a call for the last questions, I asked what we should do if “disruptive” people show up and start causing problems with intimidation or even destruction. I asked if there had been any special arrangements made with the police for rapid response in case something like that happens, especially given the state of the current election.
He seemed taken aback by this question as though he had not considered it. He said to call 911 if something like that happened and then the election department. He made a point of implying that because this is Monterey County, such things do not happen here, and while I hope he is right, I fear he may not be.
#jtg