Working the Polls

Hey, so it may have been the slowest election ever, in the history of California. Apparently less than 1 in 4 people were able to spare 30 minutes to vote. But that doesn’t mean I didn’t have a spare 15 hours to spend at the polls!

Heh, going back to school was such an awesome idea. It’s an interesting combo of who works the polls: retired people (the average age was probably about a billion) and students. Except not grad students – high school students. Am I just on the slow track or something? I think I may have been the only 20-something in San Mateo County to be working the polls. There were definitely a few 30-somethings though… along with a similar number of 80-somethings.

Breakfast: (and lunch)

I didn’t get a picture of it, but my roommates brought me awesome homemade quiche and fresh strawberries for dinner! You rock roomies!

So over the course of the day, I signed my name off several dozen times. Initials a few more dozen times. Everything arrives sealed with serial numbers. Every seal’s serial number must be matched against a master list. Every action you take that could potentially give you access to the (virtual or physical) ballot box, you must do with a partner. You both sign off on everything. At the end of the day, we counted everything up, made sure every one of our 560 ballots were accounted for, and sealed all of them back up with more tamper-evident serial-numbered seals. Pretty comprehensive security. But it was kinda overload. 15 hours of trying to make sure you, your fellow election ‘judges’, and every voter crosses every ‘t’ and dots every ‘i’… I think we got nearly all of them.

I got assigned to my neighborhood polling place, which is at the church just over my backyard fence. Here’s our set up:

¡Yo voté! Y Ud… ¿Ud. votó? ¿Votará próxima vez?