I have written a few diaries on my experiences working the polls in the 6 years I have been doing this work. In all these diaries, I don’t think I ever explained the actual process for how we run a precinct in Nassau County. I am writing this tonight to contrast how things are run as brillig explained last night in her diary on working in MA.
In NY, voting on election day runs from 6am to 9pm. We workers are required to our polling locations by 5:15am to begin setting up to be open by 6am. Every location has at least 2 tables with each table comprising of one election district. All tables must have 2 Republican and 2 Democratic inspectors (what we wall poll workers) one of whom is the designated chair for that table. People who are not registered with either party can work the polls if they sign the oath of office designated for one of the parties. In the rare event a location contains only workers from one party are available, one person must sign an oath to represent the interests of the missing party. This allows them to sign all forms on behalf of that party since everything must be recorded as being bipartisan. This has never happened where I work though we did only have 1 Republican for two tables once. The only difference between the chairperson and the inspectors is the chair is responible for bring the election bags to either the county BOE office or the nearest police precinct at the end of the night. In addition to the 4 inspectors, we have 2 poll coordinators: 1 Dem and 1 Rep. These workers are responsible for unlocking the cabinet where the election bags and poll pads are, setting up the room’s privacy booths, putting up signs inside and outside the polling location. They are also responsible for setting up our Automark machine, absentee ballot drop box and directing people to the correct table. The Automark is a machine that can mark your ballot for you, but it does not cast the ballot. While anyone can use it, it has accommodations for people with all kinds of disabilities and can translate ballots into Spanish. The coordinators are alos taught how to fix minor issues with the DS200 like a paper jam.
In the picture above is a DS200 which is the machine all marked ballots are scanned into to tabulate the votes for each table. If there are two tables in a location, there will be two DS200s each marked with an election district. We workers are responsible for making sure voters scan their ballots in the machine corresponding with out table. We are required to do everything in a bipartisan fashion, so when we set up the DS200, one Dem and one Rep must work together to set up the machine while the other two inspectors set up the Ipad we use for voter sign-in. There are a number of seals not shown on the machine that must be recorded some which will be removed and replaced prior to opening the polls and some will be removed and replaced at the end of the night.
Just under the screen you should notice a small opening. This is where ballots are inserted to be scanned. Once the ballot has been accepted, it will fall into the bottom locked cabinet where there is a box to collect the ballots. Just above this cabinet, there is another locked cabinet with a slight opening. This is our emergency ballot drawer. If something should happen to the machine and cannot be fixed by the coordinators, we must call the BOE and open the emergency ballot drawer. Because we are not allowed to stop voting, voters will put their filled out ballots in the emergency drawer. Once the issue is fixed, we close and reseal the emergency ballot drawer and go back to normal voting. At the end of the night, the inspectors will scan any ballots in the emergency drawer bipartisanly. Should any ballot not be accepted by the machine, we have a bag to put those ballots in and the BOE will count those ballots.
Any voter who makes an error can spoil their by stamping it spoiled and placing in a spoiled ballot bag. Voters only have three chances to fill out their ballot correctly to vote using the machine. I have explained the affidavit (provisional) ballot process previously. This is used for anyone who is either not in the poll pad, in the wrong location or inactive. People at the wrong location are encouraged to go to their correct location but we cannot force them. By law, we are not allowed to deny anyone who cannot vote using the DS200 to vote by affidavit. Most people are allowed to the county court to try and get a court order from a judge. Anyone with a court order will be allowed to vote using the machine as long they sign the order in front of us and we keep those in our records.
At the end of the night when we close the polls after scanning any emergency ballots, the DS200 prints out two copies of the vote totals. One copy is posted on a wall for the public to see. After a short time, both copies are signed by all workers at that table and placed into a bag along with any seals removed from use and unused seals. In addition, we remove a USB drive, which we place in the bag, from the machine to bring to either the BOE or the police precinct. We then reverse the process to close the machine and poll pad doing everything bipartisanly and recording all the seals used. All stubs and unused ballots are placed in the ballot box and locked in the cabinet at the bottom of the DS200. We confirm the number of all ballots used to make sure we have an accurate count and note any issues which may have arisen during voting. One year, I did not notice our table was grabbing random ballot stacks throughout the day. I had to list all the ballot numbers used and add up the numbers to ensure we had an accurate count of used and unused ballots. The whole process takes anywhere from 30 minutes to over an hour depending on whether there are emergency ballots to scan and how long the printing takes. The bag with the USB drive and seals along with the spoiled ballot, affidavit ballot, and unscanned emergency ballot bags and blue carrying case and absentee ballot drop box are all brought to their correct location by the chairperson while everyone else finally gets to go home to watch the results come in.
One funny story we were told during training. One year a chairperson forgot to bring the red bag with the USB drive to the BOE and instead drove immediately to Florida for a vacation. The BOE had to track the person down and get them to overnight the USB drive securely back to Nassau County. I do hope that person was never allowed to be a chairperson again. LOL
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