Long day as election officer

By: snolan
Published On: 11/8/2006 7:49:00 AM

Just got back from a very long day working as an Elections Officer at Mullen Precinct in Prince William County, Virginia.  We started preparing the voting place at 5:00 am and finally called in our statement of results at around 10:00 pm.  We had 1063 registered voters cast their ballots, and one provisional voter.

Update: According to the Prince William County government website (click the unofficial results links for chairman or bond issues) Mullen precinct has 3,422 registered voters.  That amounts to a miserable 31% turnout in that precinct, which is making me feel sick to my stomach, though admittedly I've had very little sleep and the roof is leaking under all the rain.  In an election this important, only 31% could be bothered?  Hopefully I am missing a key element in my fog of sleep - perhaps there was a huge proportion of absentee ballots?
In Mullen, voters preferred Webb over Allen 587 to 449 with 21 voting for Parker and one write-in.
Mullen also preferred Feder over Wolf 533 to 493 with 17 for Wood and 11 for Nigam.
Mullen voters narrowly preferred Stewart over Pandak 493 to 488 with 5 write in votes, including some Donald Duck votes.

The really sickening news is that the Marshall/Newman bigotry and hatred amendment was approved with 567 over 485 votes (what the heck is wrong with people?).

The other two ballot questions and the Prince William County bond issues were all approved with overwhelming  margins.

We are very tired, but had a lot of fun.  We thoroughly enjoyed working with people in the precinct, though the hours are quite long.

Anyways, it looks like Cory Stewart may have won the race (up by more than 5000 so far).  I am nervous, as I just don't trust him.

Apparently Delegate Bob Marshall voted in Mullen, though I did not see him come though or recognize him when he did.  Update: Sorry, I got my facts wrong - Delegate Marshall did not come into Mullen to vote, he did come through to thank election workers in person.  I am sorry for the error and believe that as much as I dislike his politics he should be commended for at least taking time to recognize the volunteers.  I did not see him in person, but my wife did.

All day the more senior election officials (those who'd done this before) were saying turnout felt really high, but the numbers aren't adding up.


Comments



People are going to ask (snolan - 11/8/2006 7:57:23 AM)
At this point I'd be willing to serve as an election officer again.

Reasons why:

Reasons why not:

On the whole, I'd do it again I think.  We'll see in a few days to let it sink in.



Suggestions for improvement (snolan - 11/8/2006 9:47:27 AM)
(this is mostly so I don't forget, but it might be interesting as a discussion)

1) Sequoia AVC EDGE systems should be modified slightly so they have a different audible chime sound for when a voter activates the machine by inserting their active voter card and when the voter presses "Cast Your Ballot" and the card spits back out. As "machine officer" I was occasionally confused (with 5 machines running and busy) by when voters were activating and finishing, it would save a few steps and some confusion.

2) physical layout of the voting place where we were could be better for handling lines when they happen. Three places had lines sometimes: lines for the polling books which we'd broken into A-K and L-Z for speed; a line for voters to exchange vote permit tickets (paper) for activated voter cards (plastic computer cards) as the de-activated cards were recycled from earlier voters, and a line for actually getting time on the polling machine. We were limited in placement by electrical outlets and safety concerns about cables and tripping hazards. Sadly this meant that the lines were out of order (poll books, then line to vote, then line for active cards) and a few people were confused because we did not have enough officials to help direct traffic. In hind-sight, I'd have the activation station between the other to lines, though we'd have had to stretch an additional cable across the floor.

3) safety concern - we need several of those safety "ramps" that electrical cables can be stretched across the floor but be under the ramp so people don't trip. At least one for every machine, and one for the activation station.

Note: Language skills count. We had three very confused Greek speaking voter we could not help much because none of us knew Greek. We did have a deaf voter and she was very pleased two of us on staff knew some ASL.