Working At The Polls--A Very American Experience

When I agreed to work at the polls November 2nd, I really had no idea what it was going to involve. Now that I have been through the process, I have to congratulate all the Americans who have facilitated this process through the years.

I'm sure it is a slightly different process in other states, but here in Delaware, it starts with a letter asking you if you would like to be a poll worker on election day. If you agree to this, you may then get another letter telling you that you have been chosen to work at a given polling place. I later learned from the nice crew with whom I worked that they are not always at their "home" polling place, but are sometimes assigned to nearby polls.

Then you are given a choice of times and places for a training class. I chose an evening class at DelTech. This turned out to be about 3 1/2 hours of going over 2 detailed manuals and a half-hour hands-on training session with an actual voting machine. This was the scary part for me, because you have to learn about cutting the seals on the various ports and setting up the curtain and making the machine "kneel" down for a person who, for example, is in a wheelchair.

Then comes the news that the Inspector expects you to come in at 5:45 am on voting day to get ready to greet the voters at 7 am, and stay until perhaps 9 pm to read the tapes and sign various copies and send them various places where they are tallied. I later learned that some less organized crews had to stay much later, but our group had the manual out and read it aloud as we went through each step setting up and closing down.  There is one Inspector, two Judges, and two clerks (although one of the clerks had a sick child and could not come). But even with being down one person, everything ran very well.

I got to see lots of neighbors and old friends, some of whom tried to inject a measure of humor. One elderly man asked where he could vote for Nixon. The most worried voter was an elderly woman who, when asked for her identity such as a voter card or driver's license, asked if we asked illegal immigrants for ID.  She was told that we ask everyone for ID, and she quietly accepted that.  I was proud that in a non-presidential election year, our district had over 50% of registered voters show up.

Small children came in the booth with their parents to see how it all worked, handicapped adults were welcomed with a little extra help to register their votes, and adult children brought parents leaning on canes and walkers and led them into the booths. One proud man refused his wife's offer of eyeglasses until he discovered after an extended pause that he really could not read anything and gave in and reached out for the glasses as his wife sighed with exasperation.  Great stuff.