Election Judgery

Stream of consciousness notes from the journal of an election judge. Dena and my first time judging together!

4:30 Alarm. Gotta get to the precinct "between 5:00 and 5:30." Showered last night. Shaved last night. Even deodorant last night. Fell asleep at 1:30 last night. Fog begins to lift.

4:45 Short-cropped hair allows for rise-n-go. Glasses, no contacts. Comfy clothes. Sweats. Dress can't hint political - Democratic party judges (yours truly... all judges must pick a party even if they have no party) can't all wear blue for example.

5:05 Survival kit is packed in a canvas shopping bag. Water bottle. Bag of apples. Avanti's gondola bought the night before. Assortment of magazines (none of which end up being read, as it turns out). Cell phone. Couple of Coke Zeroes in case of caffeine-required emergency.

5:15 Roll into church (polling place) parking lot. Door is locked. Joyce the other judge is there. (Wait... usually ten judges... today three?) Morning chill is too cold to stand outside in. Back to the car, crank the heater.

5:30 Church is still locked. Polls open at 6:00 a.m.

5:45 Still locked. Ummm...
5:46 Joyce makes a phone call.
5:50 Pastor arrives to unlock facility. Overslept.

5:52 How do we calibrate the electronic ballot box?
5:53 Why is the TouchScreen printer not working? Someone call the Techies (high school student specialists on call for election day).
5:54 Does anyone have a suggestion as to how to spool the printer tape?
5:55 Really? Only three judges?
5:56 Why doesn't the listed election day hotline number work? Out of service.

6:00 Hello, voter #1. What's that you say? The signs outside that signal this as the polling place are facing the wrong way (parallel to the street, so can't read until driving past them)?
6:05 Re-orient the signs. Drive the stakes into the ground. Better.

7:00 Draggin'. Manning station 1, the voter check-in station. Sitting on a metal folding chair. Got my eye on a wheeled padded chair in the corner. Meanwhile since I'm out of sight line for people coming down the hall toward the room entrance, I take mini-naps until someone shows up at the door.

8:15 Voter (to me): "James E. Fleitsch."
Me (announcing the voter to station #2 which then validates the voter's signature): "Jamie E. Fricks."
Mr. Fleitsch: "No, James E. Fleitsch."
Me (to station #2): "F-L-E-I-T-C-H."
Mr. Fleitsch (to station #2): "No, F-L-E-I-T-S-C-H."
Me: (stupefied silence, thinking about my next nap)

8:30 Voter who works for the radio station comes in. FBI choppers are in Bloomington air space. A drug bust? A meth lab? What? For real or not?

9:00 Donuts from HQ! And a packet with articles and games for bored election judges. Beast! Sugar rush injects new life.

9:30 Techies enter to work on TouchScreen printer. They call HQ. Follow instructions. Sound unconvinced. Trust the system and leave. Diagnosis: Printer is touchy, but okay to use.

10:00 Four hours in. 67 votes so far out of 1,437 in the precinct. 4%. Didn't think we'd top 10% in a non-federal springtime election. We're on pace to top it though. Time to switch to station #2 for a four hour shift.

10:30 Donut #2 in full swing, chased by an apple for fresh-mouth scrubbed feeling. The Ibuprofen I popped at 10:00 may be contributing to my high too.

10:45 Techies are called because the TouchScreen printer has broken. They call HQ. Tone is a bit more skeptical this time. Work on the printer. Berate the computer and wish it dead (to paraphrase).

11:00 The signs by the road are GONE! Run out there. What possible black market value could "Normal Precinct 5" sign have? Oh, the 30 mph gusty wind blew them over. It occurs to me why the signs were turned in their original direction. Dilemma: Nearly unreadable sideways sign, or readable-but-possibly-frequently-toppled sign? Go with the latter. Stomp on it extra hard to ground it.

11:30 85 votes. Still plugging along at one vote every 4 minutes or so.

11:45 Hey! My phone gets Internet, how about that. Thought it was too primitive. Mail check. Spam, spam, random uninteresting Facebook post. Awesome.

12:00 Call the Techies, the TouchScreen printer is broken again. Thank God only 3 have desired to vote that way (the rest do it on paper) so far. Techies dismantle the TouchScreen, drag it out, beat it in the parking lot. Install new TouchScreen. Works brilliantly.

12:30 I cast vote #100! Feel bad about the elderly couple I split up in order to be the magic voter. But not extremely so.

12:45 Stat it up! Youngest voter so far is 22, oldest is 89. Amazing how much older a 70something can act than an 89-year old. Spry, dude. A full 75% of voters so far have been OVER 60. One twentysomething. We have passed the halfway point (polls close at 7:00)! No evidence of sugar crash.

1:15 Hey, my old ISU mentor Dr. Edge is voting. He was key in getting my SF job. Forever indebted.

1:30 Apples-n-sugar diet continues with Joyce's home made cookies.

1:45 Dena's giving the hard-sell to voters about the TouchScreen. The number of users grows to 8 and stops. See demographic notes from 12:45.

2:00 Ibuprofen! The back's holding up remarkably well given my sedentary 14-hour odyssey. Rotate to station #3. 124 voters means that when I was at station #1 we had 67 voters, when Joyce rotated there we had 57. Superior salesmanship?

2:15 People keep wandering directly to station #2 rather than first stopping at station #1, despite the fact that station #1 has a bold-lettered sign that says "START HERE." Inspired for change, I scrawl a sign and mount it on station #2: "START THERE." With arrow pointing to station #1. In five minutes it is clear that no one reads signs. God knows how they decide who they're voting for, do they just make random dots in pleasing patterns?

3:45 Solved a level 4 (out of 5) Sudoku puzzle. On 3 hours' sleep. Huh. Maybe I was too well rested all those other times I'd tried.

4:00 Sugar crashing. Gondola snarfing. Onward.

6:00 One hour to go.. chasing 200 voter mark. Sun's shining. We're reading up on the close-out procedures so that we can get back to HQ quickly after polls close.

6:55 Voter #200! Final tally, 14% turnout. Abysmal, by most measures. However I did read an article saying that only 25% of the nation voted in the 1796 election. Just two decades after spilling blood to escape the British and gain democracy! I think it's like church. There's a core of utterly committed, and varying levels of interest beyond the core, ranging all the way out to the fair-weathered, or those who only come for the presidential elections.

7:00 Polls closed! My job is to fold up the TouchScreen. The directions are excellent. Therefore, I only nearly break the screen once, and the printer once.

7:30 Off to HQ. A cafeteria's set up. Chilling with Dena, celebrating how well it went, eagerly awaiting "the call" from the head office saying that our ballots were returned in good order and we can go home. Snacks, pop, a cozy booth. Before I can finish a soda, it's go time!

8:00 Time for a refreshing shower, swig an Ibuprofen, stretch out on the couch and drift off to the sounds and sights of Law & Order. No, wait, first to blog...