Wish me luck. I am off to be a poll worker in my district. The job lasts from 6:15 am to somewhere around 10:30 pm. I hope we are very busy. I hope we all come out of it by tomorrow ready to mend bridges and fences.
I’m assuming you’re open for questions: What kind of polling machines do you use in your district? What kind of training did you get? Have you done this in years past, or is this the first time? Are the people working with you worried about the same kinds of faulty machinery that’s been in the news lately?
Good luck, and may you have a better time of it than I had when I worked the polls.
I am not the original poster, but I AM a poll worker.
We use paper ballots, fill inthe circle type.
About 2 hours of training every two years, plus a lot on the job as problems happen.
I’ve been a poll worker since November 2004.
We don’t have machinery problems.
Of note, we have a very tough Senate rate in Montana. In my precinct there were 1, 149 registered voters . . . .
and 1,010 of them voted.
Not a bad turnout. Many precincts in Helena had 70% turnout by 2 p.m.
This was my first time as a poll worker too. When they called and asked if I was willing, I said sure. I’ve always wondered how it works, from that end. The coolest thing is I thought it was volunteer, but when I went for training, I learned that we get paid. 
$7.50 an hour, including training pay, plus mileage.
We had three hours of training – two hours in general stuff, what to do with a voter who isn’t in your register, how to handle poll watchers, don’t comment about the candidates, etc.
We trained for about an hour on the machines – hands on, setting them up and closing them down.
We used two machines, one that scans paper ballots where voters “darken the oval”, and a Touch Screen.
There’s some security. The machines come to us with numbered seals. They have little printers inside. At opening, we print a report and verify that all the candidates and issues are listed and that they all show Zeroes. At the end, we print a report that shows the number of votes in each precinct, by candidate or issue.
At closing, each machine is hooked to a phone line and the results are downloaded to the County Auditor’s office.
We have to look at all the paper ballots and note any write-ins in the Tally Book. We also re-count all the paper ballots. The number of used, unused, and spoiled ballots has to agree. If we started with 200 blank ballots, we have to end with 200 ballots.
Everything is locked and sealed and delivered to the Auditor’s Office.
I’d be interested to know what happens later, in the Auditor’s Office, and what happens if the machines fail. Maybe next year they’ll let me volunteer at that end. But I have a feeling they weren’t finished by 10:30 like we were. 
I feel better about the Touch Screen machine, now that I understand that there is a paper record showing the votes.
I was surprised at how many older people opted to use the Touch Screen.