Working at the polls on Election Day

In My Humble Opinion
1

I was just filling out an online application to work at the polls for this year’s presidential election, and I figured I’d ask who else out there has done this before.

My one and only other time doing polling station work was during the 2004 presidential elections. It was a long and fairly exhausting day, but rewarding in its own way, which is why I want to do it again. It’s fun to be another part of the process.

So my questions:

**1. Have you been, or are you planning to be, a poll worker? Why?
1a. If not, would you ever consider doing it? Why or why not?

  1. If you’ve done it before, what did you enjoy most about it?

  2. What did you enjoy least?

  3. Your state, age (approximate, if you prefer) and sex?**

I ask about age and sex because, during my previous experience, I was 29 at the time and by far the youngest volunteer there. I’m curious as to whether that was a fluke or a common trend.

Thanks in advance!

2

  1. Have you been, or are you planning to be, a poll worker? Why? Yep. I did it for the 2004 presidential election and a few other less major ones. I did it because I was curious, knew they needed some fresh blood, and thought it was an important way to serve my township.

  2. If you’ve done it before, what did you enjoy most about it? I liked having the insights into how the system worked, what the safeguards are, etc. I acquired new respect for the work of our local clerk, that’s for sure. And I liked the challenges of solving the problems that arose. I mean, I didn’t like glitches, but when they happened I got a lot of satisfaction out of knowing we were doing everything we could to make sure voters could cast their votes, and that it would be done honestly.

  3. What did you enjoy least? The hours were brutal–for various reasons, everyone who worked had to work the entire day of voting. We did break for meals, but we still have to cover 13 hours of voting, PLUS setup beforehand and securing the ballots afterwards. In the 2004 election we had a serious problem with our voting machine and ended up having to count and then run every single ballot again. It was a 23-hour day because as precinct co-chair I had been assigned to go pick up all the ballots at 5 am.

  4. Your state, age (approximate, if you prefer) and sex? Michigan, I was in my mid- to late-30s at the time I worked the polls, and I’m female.

3

I’m doing it. I like the extra money, and I like interacting with people. The general election is a big deal, and I like feeling that I’m a part of it.

Like Cranky, I’m not crazy about the long hours. In the 2004 general, we reported at 6 a.m. and didn’t leave until almost midnight. Luckily, we were busy all day, so the time didn’t drag.

If you decide to do it and they offer training, take the training. You’ll be surprised at the questions that can come up.

4

I was an Inspector of Elections* in my home town in New York from the time I
was 19 'til I moved away 5 or 6 years later.

*poll worker

Sticking with the format:

  1. Yes

  2. Felling like I was part of the process, and it was, as I mentioned, my home town. There was lots of “Why you’re Momsname’s daughter, arent’ you? How is she. Tell her I said Hi”

  3. Same as CrankyAsAnOldMan - we had the same deal, you were there start to finish which for us meant setup at 5:00am and not leaving until all the votes were recorded and reported to the Board of Electionsafter polls closed at 9:00pm. Both ends of the day were interesting but there were some slow times in the middle.

  4. My election experience was in NY when I was 19 to 25 or 26 (I’ll turn 40 this year, and no longer live in NY) I too was the youngest by far (really far) there was one woman who’d I’d work with occasionally who’d graduated HS with my parents so she was only 22 years older than me, but she was typically across town at the other polling place. Everyone else was from my grandparents’ generation or older.

I’d volunteer again, but my work currently doesn’t allow for taking Election Day off.

5
  1. Have you been, or are you planning to be, a poll worker? Why?

I was a precinct chair from 2004-2006, so I worked all the elections in that precinct from March 2004 - April 2006. I moved out of the precinct in 2006, and no longer have as much time to devote to these activities.

  1. If you’ve done it before, what did you enjoy most about it?

I liked seeing how happy a lot of people were about being able to vote. I was a Democratic precinct chair in Houston, so going to a Democratic primary here sometimes felt like being part of some underground revolutionary organization. This also ties in to the things I hated most about it – see below.

  1. What did you enjoy least?

The Republican chair of our precinct at the time was a complete psycho. I got along fine with the other Republican poll workers she recruited (and I grew up in an all-Republican, rightwing conservative family), so I’m serious when I say she stood out as a nut. She tried hard to question the eligibility of minority voters, and once I caught her offering to pray with a voter about their choices (I headed that one off at the pass). Fortunately, she no longer is the precinct chair. The other Republican poll workers were pretty horrified by her, except this one woman in her 80s who was just SURE that all the black voters were committing some kind of voter fraud. Thanks, Jim Crow Throwback Bitch!

I hated the repetitive training sessions that never seemed to clear up everyone’s confusion about things like provisional ballots.

I hated the electronic voting machines we had. They had problems and glitches, and many voters had trouble using them, especially senior citizens. The fact that many of the poll workers also were senior citizens didn’t help much, though a few of them were fairly capable with the machines and didn’t make our older voters feel so bad while assisting them.

I’ve never been a fan of getting up early, and it always was an 18 hour day, minimum.

  1. Your state, age (approximate, if you prefer) and sex?

Texas, 27-29 at the time (31 now), female

6

Volunteering? Your county doesn’t pay? What a rip. I’m getting $120 for working the primary IIRC, plus another $20 because I speak Spanish, even though (from what I hear) the poll I’ll be working at hasn’t seen a Spanish speaker in years. So:

  1. Yes, this Tuesday.

  2. N/A

  3. N/A

  4. CA, 21, male, of course. It’s definitely a field dominated by seniors here. At the training class for working the touchscreen, I was one of only a small handful of people under 45, and the vast majority seemed to be over 60. It makes sense, though; they’re the only ones who vote anyway. :wink:

7

You know, I honestly forgot that I got paid for doing this last time, but after looking at the county website, I see that we do get a stipend. Guess I need to change the title of the thread.

8

Title changed per request of OP.

9

I’m registered to be an election judge (as of this year) and even did the training for it but they never sent me my “we need you here” card. I called to make sure it wasn’t lost and apparently they’re having Republican judges cancel right and left but no open slots for Democratic judges.

So I’ve learned that Republicans are slackers :wink:

My election judge training class had a good percentage of people 35-45 there as well as the usual array of older folks and a scant few “kids”.

10

Even though you get paid, I have often called it “volunteering.” I do think of it as service (it’s not like the pay is great) and I have to use one of my vacation day from my regular job to do it.

11

Well, I wound up working the polls yesterday after all. My wife went in to vote at 6:15am and the election officials there jokingly asked “You’re not an election judge, are you?” Turns out that people flaked at the last minute and they only had three judges, two Republican and one Democrat, when they should have had five. Since you’re required to always have at least one judge from each party at the station, this was going to be a problem for them.

So my wife said “No, but my husband was supposed to be” and she called me and I called the county clerk’s office and they told me to scurry on over. We were later joined by another older woman who was called by the Clerk’s office.

All in all, it was a fun time but, out of the three precincts all polling at my location, I was with the only group that wasn’t all elderly and all one gender (one precinct was all men aged 70+ and the other all age 70+ women).

It was a pretty uneventful day in that we only had one spoiled ballot and almost had a provisional voter but it turned out that she was ineligible. We did have a poll watcher come by who yelled at us. You see, this was the first year that Illinois has issued a Green Party ballot after the Green Party picked up 15% in protest votes last governor’s race. Anyway, when you go to vote, you’re asked if you want a Democratic, Republican, Green or Non-Partisan ballot (NP ballots only have local referendums). Then you sign your receipt and someone slips it into the appropriate stack. Only they don’t always see which ballot you took and need to ask. The woman filing the slips was asking “Did you take a Republican or Democratic ballot?” and the poll watcher jumped on her, saying that she was disenfranchising Green voters and if she wasn’t going to state all three, she wasn’t allowed to state any at all. Which, I understand where he’s coming from, but the person had already selected their ballot and I know the guy with the ballots mentioned all three parties because that guy was me.

When I looked at the book where he signed his credentials, I saw that (of course) he was from the Green Party. Oh, and we didn’t issue a single GP ballot all day. I don’t think we’ll be having GP ballots on the table next election since they’ll have lost their 15% party status.

Aside from that minor excitement, it wasn’t “interesting” but it was a good way to spend the day. Because our precinct table was first, everyone came to us and we must have spoken to every voter, telling them which area to go to. Us judges were in good spirits and joked a lot. News out of Chicago was that two election judges got into a fight and one had to go to the hospital so that lent itself to obvious jokes. And more voter-fraud jokes than any onlooker would have felt comfortable with but, of course, they were just jokes.

Why did I do it? Because, after the country started shifting to electronic machines, there was concern that the typical seniors might have trouble with them. I don’t know if that’s true or not but I felt I should get involved rather than just bitch about the way The Man was trying to steal my votes.

Would I do it again? I hope I’m called for November.

What did I like most? I think mainly feeling like part of the process and trying to make voting a pleasant experience. I made sure to greet everyone with a hello or “good morning” and tried to be helpful as possible.

What did I like least? I was pretty happy with all of it except that we had some serious lulls. Fortunately I was with some fun folks but, if I had been with duller people, it would have grated on me.

I’m a 34 year old male in a southwest suburb of Chicago, Illinois. My group consisted of me, a woman of about 35-40, a woman of 50ish, another woman of 70ish and a man of 65-70. Two Democrats and three Republicans. No Green Party judges :wink:

12

  1. Yes, I have worked as a poll worker, in the 2002 California general elections. I did it in part to fill a requirement for a class and in part out of general interest.

  2. I enjoy watching the system in action, it offered an interesting glimpse at the neighborhood, and it was interesting to get my first experience in voting from the view of those working the polls, and not the view of the voter.

  3. Two issues: My polling place had large gaps in terms of voter participation (I believe we went two hours at one point between voters), and a couple of the voters behaved in ways that were both annoying at the time (one threw a ballot at the inspector) and which complicated things much later.

  4. I was 17 (being a high school senior, it was legal), I was resident in California (I’ve move to New York for grad school), and I am male.

13

What an exhausting day! After 16 hours of work and a hibernation period, I have two things to say:

  • I actually enjoyed myself, but

  • For the love of Og, San Diego, LEARN WHAT A FUCKING PRIMARY IS. NO, you can’t vote Republican, because you’re a member of the Salvation Through Artificial Selection Party. (California is not an open-primary state; you can only vote within your party, or, if you’re a nonpartisan, you can vote the Democratic or American Independent Party ballot this year.) NO, that isn’t disenfranchisement. NO, picking up the American Independent Party ballot (they allowed nonpartisan voters to vote on their ballot JUST TO FUCK WITH ME) does NOT mean that you can vote for whoever you want to. IT’S A FUCKING PARTY. Oh yeah, one more thing:

  • LEARN WHAT A FUCKING PARTY IS!

OK, I feel better.

BTW, Jophiel: almost had one provisional voter? Ye gods. We had provisional voters out the ass, because people finally figured out that we would give them the ballot for whatever party they wanted if they insisted that they were in that party and the Registrar had gotten it wrong. (No, I’m not misinterpreting–these were, with only one or two exceptions, the same people who were shocked to learn that they couldn’t vote for Ron Paul because they were nonpartisans.)

Another BTW: Boycott Ron Paul. His people blatantly broke the law by having a truck with “Ron Paul in 08” decals slowly circle our parking lot while people were voting. They only did it once, and by the time we realized what they were doing they were gone and we didn’t have pictures or a plate number or anything, so we couldn’t prove it. But it happened, and it pissed me right off.

Actually, since people are asking the questions post-poll, I’ll do the same. I will probably work the polls again for the state primaries in June and the big show in November. Although it’s apparently a much more exciting job in San Diego than in Chicago*, it didn’t wipe me out too hard, and I got an immense sense of accomplishment from taking part in the democratic process.

What did I like most? Being part of the democratic process, like I said. And my coworkers were enjoyable, other than the woman whose hearing was going faster than she thought it was, and who was permanently hunched over and shuffled slowly, and since she was at a lower angle and liked to chew her snacks with her mouth open, I had to listen to her masticate loudly. And she would get sidetracked into long conversations with her favorite voters about the importance of “coloring the bubbles”, while we tried fervently to get her to give the next voter a ballot so the line could move:

“One Democrat. Democrat, please. Um, Democrat. Democrat. DEMOCRAT. DEMOCRAT. DEMOCRAT! HELLO?!? BALLOT?”

What did I like least? Well, I’ve covered all that already. My group consisted of me, a woman in her 40s, the above-mentioned woman in her late 80s, and our delightful leaderess of about 75. From Chicago, actually. She didn’t think the joke in my footnote was all that funny. :wink:

  • Jeez, who knew? I thought they got the names of registered voters from tombstones, and the candidates showed up to vote for themselves a couple hundred times throughout the day. Maybe that’s just for local elections.
14

Yeah. Of course, we were a small precinct. About 420 registered voters on our list, a third of whom came out to vote. Also, Illinois has an open primary so there was no “But I wanted to vote for Ron Paul” complaints.

A good number of people grumbled about having to select a Dem/Rep/Green ballot which makes me think they weren’t used to voting in Illinois primaries. I had to tell several that selecting a ballot didn’t tie you to that party and you were free to vote for whoever you wanted come November. No one refused to vote because of it but we had some under-the-breath mumbles about it.

I guess Chicago Voting jokes are like ethnic jokes: only “funny” if you’re of the ethnicity making the joke. We constantly joked about getting an extra “I Voted!” sticker if they filled out another ballot or our Republican judge replacing our Democratic judge with a homeless person and then stealing the ballot box. Always followed up by “This is Chicago after all!”

15

I assume you are applying to work as a judge rather than as a campaign worker?

Yes, many times, and I expect to do it again in November. I have worked as a judge inside the polls, a committee person outside, and a campaign poll checker.

At least from the judge end of it, I appreciate the fun and friendships I have made. At least in my experience, it didn’t matter what party you belonged to, everyone has always been very friendly and we could speak as mature people involved in the process, rather than as a bunch of shrill partisans trying to push an issue. Extremely refreshing.

Outside it can get a little hairier. But most of the time its not so bad.

Waking up at 5AM.

PA, 35. I have been working elections on and off since I was about 19. Early on, I think some of the older folks were quite fascinated just to have a younger person involved. Now that PA is so short of judges, they recruit HS students to work the polls so I guess it isn’t so strange anymore.

16

No kidding! Three hours of sleep followed by sixteen hours of work, with the heaviest labor right at the end? Yikes.

17

Yeah, this thread has reminded me of how I was feeling after a long day the last time around. I need to remember to add the day after Election Day to my vacation schedule.

Neptunian Slug, I’m not sure if your question was directed at me or not. There’s a chance I may end up being a campaign worker after the primaries, but that’s not what I’m talking about in this thread. The topic of judges never came up during the time I worked up the polls. Either you were a regular poll worker or a…well, I can’t remember what they were called, but some people were tasked with driving between various poll places within a general area to make sure things were going OK at each location. I didn’t take that position the last time around because I didn’t have a reliable car, and I won’t do it this time because my wife and I are planning to work together at a single polling place.

I’ve gotten the impression from this thread that “judges” are specific to the primaries; am I mistaken?

18

Sorry local terminology problem. We have three judges who check the voters in and a couple of machine operators. Those folks are employed by and paid by the county. I figured that what you were referring to as a poll worker. Alternately you can work for a candidate or a party, which I have also done. And clearly, your jurisdiction has a further task of “roving poll watcher” for lack of a better term.

19

In Illinois (at least where I’m at in IL), we’re officially called “Election Judges”, so says the ‘The Judge of Election Manual’ we were given.

The only real “judging” we’re actually tasked with is deciding as a panel whether or not someone’s signature matches the one on their voter registration if it looks questionable. Of course, even if we decide it doesn’t match and the voter protests, they can fill out a provisional ballot (and we’d mark on the envelope that we didn’t think it was a match).

20

Troubleshooter?