Surviving an election

No, I am not talking about any of the candidates. I am talking about my experience working as a poll judge (or whatever you want to call it) at the Town of Delton polling place yesterday.

I got there a bit before the designated time of 6:30 a.m. Polls open in Wisconsin at 7:00 a.m. and close at 8:00 p.m. I left there at 10:30 p.m. Loooooooonnnnnnng day!

It was very busy, with only one little lull in early afternoon. We had an incredible turnout and 10% of the people who voted yesterday registered to vote on the spot.

I understand the value of letting people vote on the day of the election -- and trust me, the ID'ing process was thorough and firm. At the same time, this meant that our town clerk spent her entire day filling in forms. So she was not able to do lots of other stuff to make things go faster after the polls closed. Registering is no longer a "show ID, sign here" thing. (NB: I am not talking about voting if you are already registered to vote where you live. That is a breeze.)   It takes a bit of time, and at times the line for people waiting to register was much longer than thost for people already registered and waiting to vote.

There was very little waiting for those already registered. People who had to register first had to wait up to half an hour and a number of them had to go back home and return two or three times before they got the required paperwork. So to all of you who are working to get out the vote and getting people to registered: Please try to get them to do it before the election. It will save them lots of time to register when the clerks aren't swamped and it will make their actual voting experience better. We had one woman snap. "This is why people don't want to vote!" I am happy to report that after she had voted, she was all smiles and thanked us profusely.

Excursus: This is the United States of America, people! If you are eligible, you should be registered and you should vote! And not just every four years in national elections. Your individual vote probably has much more impact on local elections where only a few thousand people vote and where the outcome will have more direct impact on you because those elections deal with your school system, your roads, your garbage pickup, your property taxes.

Thanks for your attention. We now return you to our regular rant, already in progress.

Things went smoothly with only a couple of ballot machine jams, caused by absentee ballots that had been poorly folded. We only had three or four "difficult" voters, but I think the eight workers all handled themselves well. And the difficulties were not disruptive, just annoying.

A local caterer provided food, which meant no one starved.They do the food thing differently all the time, but everyone else (I was the only newbie) thought the catered thing was the best choice. They brought tons of food, perhaps assuming they were going to be feeding police and fire personnel. Apparently they threw in some extras, and I imagine they will get to do it again.

Another little rant, and this is serious, although I doubt any of my readers need to hear this. DO NOT WRITE IN JOKE CANDIDATES OR ANY CANDIDATE UNLESS YOU ARE VERY SERIOUS. When the polls closed at 8:00, there was every reason to expect we could be done and out of there by nine. Instead, because two or three dozen people, out of all those who voted, chose to write in Mickey Mouse of None of the Above. I know how you feel folks, but we spent an extra hour and a half tracking down, sorting and recording those ballots. Voting machines detect that a someone circled the write-in line, but each one has to be located and hand-recorded. No one was getting paid to do this. So unless you are serious -- and I know that there have been incredibly successful write-in votes -- please don't just make more work for people. Serious write-in campaigns can register, and the state provided us with a list of all those who had done so. None of the write-ins we had to search for was for one of these candidates.

So please, please, please -- poll workers are volunteers. They are providing a valuable public service which helps make our democratic (or republican) way of life possible. Thank them when you vote, and don't mess around with things. Eight people spent 16 hours each -- a total of 128 work-hours -- yesterday at our little town polling place. Multiply that by the numbers of polling places across the country and you get an idea of the magnitude of what is happening.

Register. Vote. Be responsible.

And in the immortal words of Bartles & Jaymes, "Thank you for your support."