Inside your local polling place

I know that you all appreciate your local election officials and are always patient and cheerful. As an election worker, that makes my job almost fun. Let me tell something about the workings of a polling place in California.

I have been working at my friend B's precinct for 5 years at least. It is in her former garage, now a cozy away-from-it-all den. B has gathered a group of us who work with her every election. The basic group numbers 5 persons and she augments it with student volunteers or a family member for the larger elections. B is the Inspector and the rest of us are Board Members.

We have the opportunity to attend a training session in the weeks before each election for which we receive $25. Our pay for the election is $80. The official day is 13 hours long plus an hour before the poll opens to set up the last minute stuff and and an hour or two afterwards to balance the number of ballots (voted, spoiled, unused) with the number of signatures and to break down and box up the booths and materials. That comes to $5.33 an hour. Obviously we don't do it for the money.

Why do we do it? Some has to and we do get a good feeling from it and many voters thank us. More importantly, we have a good time. Whether we have 21 voters (a recent county primary with nothing important at issue) and 748 as in the November 4th election, one voter per minute. We pride ourselves on handling the voters respectfully and efficiently. We did have a wait of an hour during the early hours, but that gradually shortened until there were no lines after noon or so. Strangely, we do not experience a rush in the 5pm to 8pm period.

Working in the same neighborhood election after election allows us see the voters as acquaintances. We have a some who always vote and we know many of them by name. In the recent presidential election, our voters were serious and patient. We managed to solve nearly every problem that came up, thanks to provisional voting. That helps keep voters happy. The process that keeps poll workers happy is the absentee ballot or early voting.

My most unusual election experience? In the presidential election of 2004, a man, seeing an old piano in a corner, offered to play patriotic music for us. He played probably everything he knew, then voted, and played it all again.