Urgent:Everyone needs to experience this: I was a poll watcher.

[DebJ]

I was a poll watcher yesterday in York, Pa.
Because I was there watching, the counts were changed/corrected three times.

Good grief we must always, always have poll watchers, and they must be able to add and verify every number. What an educational experience! Multiplying my experience by all polls nationwide.......whew! My mind is blown.


Our very experienced poll workers, most with about 20 years of experience, were very pleasant to work with yesterday. But I am very glad that we were there, and that I paid attention, because I had them change the counts three times last night.

The largest change was that 100 extra votes would have been given to a Republican candidate....100 non-existant votes.

I was the first person to record the votes from the machines. I simply went up and wrote them all down from each machine. I watched the absentee count by standing right in the middle of it and looking at each of the 46 absentee ballots we were counting. Then I myself added up, for each candidate, the totals from each machine and the absentees.

During the absentee count, I had the workers recount specific candidates three times. Two of the three times, their reported counts changed after I had them recount. One of these I asked for because of a total of 46 absentee ballots being counted, they came up with 47 votes for President/Vice Pres.
As obvious as that was, they would have turned in a count of 47. They are nice people, but elderly and exhausted by 10 pm, and they needed to go home and rest. They did their best, but pain and exhaustion clearly become factors when our democracy rests upon the few willing shoulders of seniors who have been dedicated to this for many years, for decades, without assistance.

As for the extra 100 votes count, that occurred this way:
One poll worker called out the numbers from each machine, and three poll workers manually recorded them on paper as the numbers were called out. On one machine, the worker called out 298 votes for a Republican candidate. Two of the three poll workers wrote down 298. One wrote down 398. Then, after all the machine votes and absentee votes were recorded on paper, they each began adding the numbers on their individual, identical sheets.. First of all, the form forces them to add across. That's a setup for failure. The poll worker who wrote down the erroneous '398' count was using a calculator to add her numbers. As fatigue and pain increasingly set into the workers, they relinquished much of the task of manually adding up each of their own forms, and allowed the one with the calculator to read them the totals. So she gave an erroneous total with 100 extra votes for the Republican candidate. I looked over their shoulders and compared their final counts to mine, discovered the error, and they said oops and changed their totals.

Wow! Democracy all comes down to dedicated but very tired and in-pain poll workers forced to add by hand, and to add across instead of the easier version of down. Amazing. Times how many polling places? Millions? All with different systems likely just as subject to error. What an education I got. Vigilance. Vigilance. Vigilance. Without it, everything is lost. Wow. I wish every single American could see a film of what I saw. I repeat, these were wonderful people, pleasant, and dedicated to a fair vote count.

Also, we were unable to count two of the total of 48 absentee ballots received, because they were not properly completed. These were ballots that listed no specific candidates for any position. I forget the title of the form, but it was Scott who cleared some of our confusion by pointing out that we had actually received two different types of absentee ballots - two different forms with different form titles. One of the 48 ballots was able to be only partially counted.

As far as the voting process itself, I believe that my Democratic parnter and I actually helped out. As people came in to vote, we checked the street list for everyone, no matter the party affiliation. (The Republican watchers were working from their own list, which only listed Republicans and a few Dems whom it seemed they had recruited for Bush. And, they were missing a fairly large number of Republican registrants, which clearly was frustrating for them.)

Because we were working from the street list, I would ask for their address first. Quite a few people gave addresses from other polling places. So we would ask if they had voted at this poll or registered in this district under another address, and still see if they were on our list of October 12th. From our conversations, some voters were clearly never registered in our area, never voted here, etc.; two people from way across town come to mind as examples. They did not understand that they should not be trying to vote at our poll just because they came there with a friend or family member. We referred these people immediately to the election judge, who then gave them a correct polling place and/or called in for assistance. When a person's status was unclear to us...for example, our list was only updated through October 12, and some voter registration cards were seen for after that date...then they went through the line.

The line set up was a bit awkward, I thought, (in my inexperienced position I recognize,) because FIRST their names were written into the log, and a voter number assigned to them, and THEN they looked for the voters name and copied signature to sign in. As a result, several voter names and numbers were recorded, and then these people got provisional ballots, and then some type of notation or change had to be made in the original log of voters and numbers. Our poll watching with the street lists was able to avoid a lot of this type of problem, though. But by late in the evening, one lovely woman poll worker was getting frustrated with logging in people who could NOT vote at our poll.... I think we could improve this process for these dedicated people, you know? She was grateful for the people we referred to the election judge.

By the way, the recall of these 20 year average volunteers was just amazing. At one point, I heard one of them say, "Rickey...you spell that R-i-c-k-e-y, with an 'e', right?". She did not know this man personally. She said it just came from 20 years of elections. Wow.

[NV Whino]

1. Thanks for posting

These experiences are invaluable!

[JPZenger]

2. PA. Official Counts

The counts on election night by the poll workers are unofficial counts. The actual official counts occur a few days later by the professional elections staff, and they often find small errors that were made by individual poll workers.

[demodonkey]

3. I Am a Poll Worker... True About the Exhaustion

This is true, about poll workers having to record and add up votes at the time when they are reaching exhuastion.

To be a poll worker, you need to come in at 6-6:30 because the machines have to be opened, oaths taken, etc by 7 AM opening. The polls close at 8 PM at which time you start counting. Of course by then you are totally exhausted and your brain is numb -- at the time in the process when you need to be the sharpest. There are machine totals to be read, and then the absentees. Provisional ballots are not opened, but must be packed up to take to the courthouse. It is true that the return sheets require horizontal adding.

When you are on your 14th (or more) hour at the same task, well, it is easy to make mistakes, that's for sure. I would never intentionally alter a result (people died for the right to vote, so I consider the results to be pretty sacred) bit I can't honestly for sure say that I have NEVER made an error.

After all votes are tallied and recorded on the Return Sheets, the Judge of Elections from each poll carries the results to the county. In my county its at the courthouse. At this point you may have been working 20 hours or more.

Having extra (well rested) help come in to the poll for the counting process and actually assist in the election results would make things easlier.

[Patiod]

4. My S.O. also caught some errors

We were both poll-watching at different polls.

He caught a few errors.

We didn't have those problems, but in the middle of the count, the 75-yo+ Minority witness burst out "oh, my goodness, I forgot to vote myself!" There was almost no downtime, and when it got a little slow, the two smokers would run out and leave her manning the books. I felt so bad for her.