Poll Workers: Sense of Duty Drives Them

As the sky lightened from gray to pearl on the morning of June 3, an 8,000-member citizen’s army fanned out across Orange County, reporting to schools, church gyms and garages to help friends, strangers and neighbors exercise their right to vote.

They began working half an hour before the polls opened at 7 a.m. and continued for two, three or four hours after they closed at 8 p.m. Clerks and judges got $35 for their day’s work, while inspectors received $40.

It was a familiar ritual--one which Orange County election workers have traditionally carried out with dispatch and little fanfare. Until this year.

In the wake of a growing controversy over results in the Democratic primary for the 40th Congressional District, questions have been raised about the competence of poll workers and the instructions they receive from the county registrar of voters.

Bruce Sumner, county Democratic Party chairman, had entered the 40th District race as a write-in candidate to block Art Hoffmann, a follower of political extremist Lyndon H. LaRouche Jr. Hoffmann was the only Democrat listed on the congressional ballot, and Sumner did not want him to become the party standard-bearer.

Sumner, in a dramatic upset, appeared to have won on June 3 when the first unofficial returns were counted by machine. But later, ballots hand-tallied by precinct workers reversed the machine count and put Hoffmann into the lead.

A debate quickly erupted over how many voters had actually cast valid write-in ballots for Sumner and, more importantly, whether sizable numbers of voters had been given erroneous information by poll workers.

Several workers said they had mistakenly blocked voters from writing in Sumner’s name, and other voters reported that they had seen poll workers giving false instructions on how to cast write-in ballots. Some workers said they had received false instructions from employees in the registrar’s office.

The revelations caused Sumner to charge that poll workers had not properly counted the write-in ballots cast for him and to request a recount.

On Friday, Hoffmann defended the handling of the election and said he believes “the numbers aren’t going to change.” But if he loses in the recount, Hoffmann said, he will not seek a special election and probably would not challenge the vote count unless the margin is slim.

Meanwhile, Registrar of Voters Al Olson said he will throw out ballots on which Sumner’s name was written in but that were not punched with the voting machine--an action that he said was permitted by state election law.

Sumner, however, disagreed, citing another section of state law that permits counting write-in votes when only the name of a candidate is written in. Moreover, Sumner reasoned, voters who bothered writing in his name clearly intended to vote for him and should not be disfranchised for failing to punch a hole--especially if they received improper directions from poll workers.

Aside from its political fallout, the brouhaha has raised questions about the qualifications and training of the election-day workers. The vast majority of them, Olson insists, are extremely competent.

For Ginny Kuester, inspector at the polling station in the gym of the Calvary Baptist Church in Yorba Linda, June 3 was much like every other election day of the last 15 or so years in which she has manned the ballot booths.

Clerks checked the names and party affiliations of voters, handed out ballots, explained how to use the machines, dropped the completed ballots in the box and handed back the stubs to prove that the voter had cast a ballot.

“We didn’t have any of the problems” that have been reported in the 40th District race, she recalled Friday. Only about 219 of the 515 voters showed up at her polling place, making it a slow day.

Of her work, Kuester said: “I must like it or I wouldn’t continue to do it.”

She can’t remember exactly what got her started working on election days, except that “I guess it just looked like it was fun, and it has been. I’ve enjoyed it. I enjoy seeing all my friends and neighbors I don’t see normally.”

People like Kuester, working usually in four-member teams of two clerks, a judge and an inspector, are the backbone of the system but are becoming increasingly harder to find, according to Rosalyn Leven, chief of election operations in the county registrar of voters office.

“Recruitment is very difficult because people just don’t stay home any more,” Leven said. “They’re working.”

Although many of the election workers are retired, “we have a lot . . . who literally take a day off from their job or take a vacation day,” Leven said. “We have some really dedicated people. They’ve been doing it for 20 years.”

Inspectors and judges are required to attend a one-hour training session before the election, view a slide presentation and listen to descriptions of what has changed since the last election. Clerks don’t attend the sessions, Leven said, and are instructed in what to do by the judges and inspectors.

Leven said the problem of finding people willing to put in long hours at polling places at voting time can continue up to the day of the vote itself.

Five field representatives work to line up volunteers, relying on the cadre that has done the job in years past.

“A lot of times the inspector will put her own board together,” Leven said. “They’ll call their friends.” But at times, the registrar’s office, seeing vacancies, goes down the list of registered voters and their telephone numbers, asking people if they would be willing to help out at the polls.

“That’s not always the most pleasant job, but we do get a lot of people that way,” Leven said. The registrar’s office has also enclosed pleas for help on postcards sent with sample ballots or on blank pages of sample ballots sent out before election day, she said.

Mildred Brown, 77, paid a price to work as precinct clerk in the 40th Congressional District.

“I didn’t vote,” Brown said, adding that she had requested an absentee ballot to vote in advance so she could spend the entire election day at a polling place where she was assigned to work as a clerk.

Otherwise, Brown said, she would have had to leave her post to go to another polling place where she was registered to vote.

As election day neared and her absentee ballot did not arrive, a concerned Brown contacted the registrar’s office where an official could only advise her to “talk to your mailman.”

“The mailman didn’t know anything about it,” Brown said.

But Brown didn’t abandon her post. Three days after the election, she received her absentee ballot.

Olson said that other election material has been delayed in the mail. Occasionally, as occurred in this primary, lists of authorized write-in candidates do not arrive in time at polling places, he said. Those lists include the names of authorized candidates such as Sumner, the only official write-ins.

Some volunteers, like Betty Book of Fullerton, did double duty.

Book lets the county use her garage as a polling place and works as a judge on election day.

Several weeks before the election, the county delivered the booths to the garage. A week before voting day, the ballots and boxes were given to a clerk who passed them on to the inspector. Tuesday at 6 a.m. Book was up and getting ready.

Although her precinct is not in the 40th District, she said the polling place was prepared to deal with write-in candidates.

“We did instruct voters if they wished to put in a write-in candidate, they were to put in the name and punch the name,” she said. “We did instruct our voters to that effect.”

Book was recruited for the job several years ago by a neighbor who had been a voting inspector. She said she occasionally thinks of giving up the job.

“The last time I said I don’t think I’ll do this any more, but I figure when it comes time for voting again, I’ll be back,” Book said. “It’s kind of a civic duty, or a citizen’s duty, I guess.”