A Poll Worker’s Notes

By Sutton R. Stokes, 11-06-08

	Caption: Photo by Flickr user debaird. Some rights reserved.

Instead of wasting Election Day in front of my computer, pretending to work but actually studying last-minute political prognostications while waiting desperately for the first returns to start rolling in, I spent 14 hours in an elementary school gymnasium, chatting with white-haired retired women and serving as what Missoula County Elections Clerk Vickie Zeier calls a “champion of democracy.”

In other words, I was a poll worker.

I was supposed to be on duty no later than 6:15 a.m., so I set my alarm for 5 o’clock. I ate breakfast, and then I packed a bag with two sandwiches, a Tupperware container of leftover spaghetti, two bananas, and a water bottle. I wanted to be well-prepared because — according to the manual I had received at the poll-worker training session in March — once my polling station opened, I wouldn’t be able to leave for any reason.

Traffic lights blinked yellow as I drove through empty streets in the pre-dawn darkness, keeping an eye out for deer as I climbed into the hills. I passed a school where other poll workers were unloading boxes from an SUV, two silver coffee cups balanced on the vehicle’s hood.

The school hosting my assigned polling place looked closed and dark, but the front door was unlocked. I followed the sound of voices into the brightly lit, wood-floored gymnasium. Eight or so other poll workers were unpacking boxes, erecting tables, setting out chairs, wrestling two M-100 optical scanners into position, and arranging privacy booths along one wall. Before long, a two-precinct polling place had emerged from the initial confusion.

A handful of voters were already waiting in the hall for the 7 a.m. opening when the polling-place manager asked us to raise our right hands so that he could administer our oath of office. We promised to defend the constitutions of the United States and Montana. Then two election judges (our actual title) walked outside to make the traditional announcement.

“Hear ye, hear ye, the polls are now open.”

In addition to the poll manager, there are five categories of election judges. I spent most of my time on Tuesday as the “register judge,” which meant I waited for the “poll-book judge” to determine whether each voter was eligible to vote, then entered the voter’s name in a list next to the number of the ballot that would then be issued by the “ballot judge.”

There was also a “scanner judge,” who helped voters insert their ballots into the M-100s, and a “provisional judge,” who figured out what to do about voters who weren’t eligible to vote at our polling place but believed themselves to be registered somewhere. This usually involved calling election headquarters downtown; since the poll manager was the only one who was allowed to have his cell phone on, he took care of most of these calls.

Perhaps it will be no surprise for you to learn that 14 hours is a long time to spend sitting in a plastic chair in an elementary-school gymnasium. Aside from occasional rushes of voters just after opening and around 5:45 p.m., there was a lot of downtime. Most of my fellow judges worked on crossword and sudoku puzzles, but I hadn’t brought anything for amusement and ended up making a lot of slow laps around the basketball court. Toward the end of the day, I started sneaking my cell phone into the bathroom to request text-message Electoral College updates from Amy and my brother.

Voters kept thanking us for volunteering. The moment never felt quite right to point out that we were actually earning minimum wage. Still, there was a volunteer feel to the day. I doubt anyone was there for the money, and — if you screwed up too badly — in the worst case you just wouldn’t be able to serve again next year or two years from now or whenever the next election is. But all of the poll workers took their jobs seriously and seemed personally invested in making sure the day went off without a hitch.

It was this sense of common purpose that I enjoyed most about being a poll worker — our combined efforts making possible the one essential defining characteristic of a democracy. I don’t mean to sound self-aggrandizing, because literally anyone could do this job. It doesn’t matter that I did it, it just matters that someone did.

On the other hand, maybe we are a dying breed. Close to half of registered voters in Montana requested absentee ballots in this election; some special elections here are already “mail only”; and some of the other judges told me they’d heard that the state is hoping to eliminate in-person voting altogether.

Perhaps one day, then, when we have moved on to voting entirely by mail or text message or mental telepathy, and when polling places are but a quaint memory, we will want to tell our children how it used to be done.

We will want to tell them how we reported to a local school, where the finger-paintings taped to the hallway walls helped us to remember what was riding on our decision and filled us with quiet optimism. We will want to tell them that, while we waited in line, we watched the slow, orderly, mundane action of democracy unfolding in front of us — so soothing, somehow, after several months of attack ads and partisan clashes.

We will want to tell them that, while we waited, we also talked to friends and neighbors, for voting was then the last remaining thing that gathered any of us together for a civic purpose. We will want to tell them how touching it was that, when we identified ourselves, we didn’t even need picture IDs. We will tell about hiding ourselves inside canvas-shrouded booths, about filling in the ovals darkly and completely, and about sliding our ballots into the M-100 optical scanners.

“Then, and only then” — we will say to our children — “were the ‘I Voted’ stickers issued.”

For more like this, read the rest of the Missoula Notebook.