Election workers in Johnson County proudly wore special “Presidential Election” pins as they helped voters in Johnson County cast their votes in a number of contests, ranging from the U.S. president to Johnson County ballot initiatives.
In early October I knew I would likely be unemployed starting on Nov. 1, so I sent an E-mail to the Johnson County Election Office asking if I could serve as an election worker in any capacity anywhere in the county. At that time the election office did not need additional workers. But after some cancellations a few days later, they accepted my application.
I was informed I would be an election worker (and “designated driver”) assigned to the precinct Olathe 4-14. Voters in this precinct cast ballots at the Ethiopian Christian Fellowship Church just west of 119th and Pflumm.
My first assignment was to attend a 3-hour training session at the election office. I picked Monday evening, Oct 20, to attend this training at the Johnson County Election Office. Election Commissioner Brian Newby gave a very informative multimedia session. Additional details from the presentation could be found in the 100-page “Election Worker Manual,” which everyone was encouraged to study before election day.
I thought I was ready for election day but on Sunday, Nov 2, I twisted my ankle badly and went to an emergency room on Monday morning (which was my first day of unemployment). The X-ray showed a slight fracture in my fibula, so standing as an election worker on crutches would not be possible. I phoned the election office that I would need a “desk job.” The election office said that would be not be a problem.
On election day I woke up at 3 AM and didn’t get back to sleep. I got up about 4 AM to get ready. Getting dressed was a bit more difficult while on crutches. My wife was kind enough to prepare my lunch and a cooler for food and drink — we were told to take all three meals if necessary, since our day would be from 5 AM till past 7 PM.
I tweeted on Twitter at 4:36 AM that I was leaving for the polling place. Driving with a splint on my right foot was not so easy, but I arrived just minutes before 5 AM. I was carrying the cooler with my food for the day while walking on crutches, and a kind person at the door helped me. I thought this person was another election worker, but she was the first voter and started the line at 5 AM. This first voter said she didn’t want to wait in a long line to vote.
The election Judge guided us six election workers in setting up the six voting machines and getting all the signs and tables setup to process the voters. He commented that about 500 from the precinct had already cast advance votes, so we may not be as busy as usual. I couldn’t help much during the setup because of my crutches.
We opened the polling place promptly at 6 AM in compliance with Kansas law. The line had grown to about 50 voters at opening time. We could only see the one voter and hadn’t noticed how long the line had grown outside — at least the weather was mild for November for those waiting outside.
The very first voter, who had helped me through the door, had a problem with her voter registration because of the DMV issue. I had been assigned to the provisional vote table, and the election judge reviewed with me the procedure for helping this first voter. There’s a fair amount of paperwork to make sure everything is in order with a provisional ballot. After processing the first provisional ballot, I was confident I could handle any others. [An estimated 1000 voters in Johnson County may have had a similar problem with voter registration through the DMV.]
In about the first 100 minutes we had processed about 120 voters, but work at my table had been quite slow since I had only processed two provisional ballot requests. By 8 AM there was surprising a bit of a lull, and we were never as busy the rest of the day. [In comparison, other workers said only 50 total ballots were cast during the August primary election.]
All the voters were quite polite and took their responsibility quite seriously. Several questioned if they had to vote on all the contests. The answer was they could vote on whichever contests they wanted to. One voter needed some assistance in creating a write-in name — perhaps the user interface on the machines could be a bit more intuitive on how that is done.
The election judge rotated us through the various jobs: greeter, check-in desk, ballot encoder operator, voter machine assigner, “I voted” sticker person, and the provisional ballot table.
After working the provisional ballot table I was assigned to the check-in desk by late morning. At the check-in table voters are found in the official list of eligible voters and given a paper slip to be processed by the ballot encoder operator
In Kansas only first time voters need to show an ID, but it was surprising how illegible the printing is on drivers’ licenses due to the security emblem. The official voter list showed which voters had to show an ID, and which ones did not. Surprisingly, some “first time” voters had been pre-qualified through some sort of automatic match by the Secretary of State’s office.
“Lost voters” are those that show up at the wrong voting place and usually need to be given direction on where they should be voting. Usually, the election judge dealt with these problems and either gave them directions on where to go to vote, or initiated the paperwork for a provisional ballot to be cast.
Only one voter wore clothing that could be interpreted as “electioneering,” which is not allowed by law. None of us noticed this voter’s clothing, but the election judge on the way out gently informed the voter that such clothing is not normally allowed.
Twice during the day Olathe police officers stopped by to make sure everything was in order. While all voters had been quite polite, the security check was re-assuring.
By about 3:30 PM we estimated that with the advance ballots that had already been cast, about 70% of the voters in precinct had already voted. We were expecting an after-work rush, but that never happened. There were no lines at all late in the day.
I spent the last few hours working the ballot encoder machine, but there were very few voters. In the last hour, perhaps six voters showed up. The last voter left 12 minutes before the poll closed at 7 PM. We had estimated that almost 75% of that precinct voted.
The election judge guided us all through shutting down the voting machines.
I saw the results for one machine where 77 ballots were cast. I noticed McCain narrowly won that machine by 5 votes, and that Howe led Guinn in the DA race by only 3 votes. While only the results from one machine, the results were similar to the later county-wide totals.
All the election workers signed the tally sheets for each of the machines. At that point, as the “designated driver” I was the courier for the election results to a designated collection point.
All of us election workers were proud to have been part of what is an historic election and have the special pin to remind us of the day.
[Now it's time to look for a new job. One of the other election workers was also unemployed and delayed an interview to serve.]
Tags: Election Worker, Elections
