Election Daze

I was an election worker this year. Not one of Florida’s famed go-the-distance poll workers, but here in California, where the job lasted just one long day.

For the past few years, my wife and I have volunteered our garage as a polling place. Being from Los Angeles, it is one of the few times we get to see our neighbors (who, this being L.A., includes celebrities like Milton Simmons--better known as Richard--and Iran-Contra babe Fawn Hall and several cast members from “Friends”). My wife bakes cookies and dresses our young daughter in red, white and blue and we all feel good about doing our civic duty.

Things start months before election day, when we get a call enlisting our support in helping America vote. We say fine on using our garage, but we decline to sign up as poll workers. We’re realists, though. Experience has taught us that we’ll be drafted to work on election day because some poll workers won’t show up. All election workers--ourselves included--are just average citizens with little or no training who have volunteered to participate in the system.

The person in charge of the polling place is an inspector, which sounds official, but is actually just someone who took a 1 1/2-hour course on how to do things and who has been given a box containing flags, the polling place sign and the little Votomatic machines--if you call them machines--and of course the ballots. At the end of election day, the inspector has to be able to account for each ballot--whether it’s been used or not.

A few days before Nov. 7, the folded brown stalls that serve as election booths are dropped off. My wife cleans the garage and we set up the booths. The inspector comes over the night before to drop off the ballot box, sans ballots, and we give her the clicker to the garage so we won’t have to get up at the crack of dawn.

Election day starts off hideously early--most of the workers arrive before 6:30 a.m.--and doesn’t end until around 10:30 p.m. when we turn in the ballots. For that long-day’s work, volunteers get $55 (a little more if you’re an inspector). This is probably the only area left in politics that is not about the money.

Inside our house, the day begins with our daughter standing in her crib, announcing “People! People!” That would be the theme of the day. Still in our pajamas, we peer out the window and see our driveway filled with a line of would-be voters. Throwing on jeans and a sweatshirt, I go out to the garage and am immediately put to work checking off voters as they arrive. My co-workers are two Democrats from Los Angeles and two Republicans from a posh neighborhood just outside Beverly Hills. In the few years my wife and I have been doing this, we have never had an election worker who actually lives in our Hollywood Hills precinct.

At the polling table, there’s always one person making sure voters sign the master book, which is alphabetical and includes the addresses of everyone who has registered in the precinct. Two other volunteers record names on lists organized by street, which will be available for inspection by Democratic and Republican field workers checking on how turnout is progressing. (In our precinct, only the Republicans come by to check this list.) If we have enough workers, one person hands out the ballots and another helps people after they’ve voted put their ballots in the brown plastic ballot box. You would be surprised how important it is to have someone at the ballot box. In the excitement of the day, voters sometimes almost walk out without dropping off their ballot.

We are not allowed to discuss politics in any way within 100 feet of the voting place, which is a strange form of torture since those who do volunteer are usually intensely interested in politics. But the Bush/Cheney bumper sticker on one worker’s car is a giveaway. The car has to be parked 100 feet from the garage to avoid the appearance of electioneering.

People who show up want to vote. It is an American right. And we feel like horrible bureaucrats telling them they have to go to their old precinct or that they cannot vote because we have no record of them. We know it could be due to bureaucratic error. On the other hand, what do you do when a homeless man stops by to vote, as did happen. He is registered at his old address and only confides he is homeless after he votes.

Issues of fairness come up. People arrive who are not from this precinct. Sometimes they called a number and were erroneously told to come here. Sometimes they were wrongly brought here by their sample ballot. Sometimes they were registered here, but have moved. Theoretically, they are supposed to go to their new precincts, but our inspector knows about a rule that says if you have moved within the last 29 days you can vote in your old precinct.

If the person lives in this district and registered to vote but isn’t listed, we do a provisional ballot--where you sign documents and show proof that you live locally. But how do we know someone isn’t voting here and at their old address? We assume some magical supercomputer cross-checks all the votes.

Voters do not have to show identification, just be registered in the book. In Minnesota, you can register to vote the day of the election. I guess that is its own problem. The more free you are in allowing everyone to vote, the more susceptible you are to voter fraud.

(My mother lives in Palm Beach and has described to me the madhouse scene she saw when she went at 7 a.m. to vote. The woman in charge literally was sitting in a chair, her head tilted back as she tried to control a nosebleed triggered by all the excitement. When my mother asked about the now-famous butterfly ballot and why there were two holes across from Al Gore’s name, she was told you vote for president and vice-president. Later, Democrats descended trying to correct the inaccurate information being given out.)

Back in California, at the end of our voting day, we bring the ballot box into the house.

With the pizza next to us, we count up the number of ballots cast. And the absentee ballots that had been dropped off. And the provisional ballots. They all add up to about 500 votes, but the numbers do not match up exactly with the number of ballots we were issued. We double count. And triple count. And then someone reminds us we are supposed to have the ballots turned in at 9:30 p.m. and it is already 10 p.m.

Even during our quick counting of ballots, we are able to see often, by where the holes are punched, which votes are for Gore and which for Bush. We joke how easy it would be to accidentally misplace some of the ballots. Voting for the president of the United States is still pretty much on the honor system. No one is checking. We do not discuss or have any idea what a dimpled or pregnant chad is. And my daughter finds none on the floor the following morning.

At close to 10:30, the inspector and I drive to the Beverly Hills location specified where a truck is being loaded with the ballot boxes. From there, they go off to some official place to be counted. The rules say two workers should accompany the ballots to this location--to ensure there is no tampering--but we see other cars with just one election worker dropping off ballot boxes. As fellow volunteers, though, we are all happy to see each other and amazed just to have gotten through this day.

And we wonder nostalgically if this will be the last major election that’s done like this. In four years, we say, surely we will all just log on to our computers and cast our votes that way.

When Carl Kurlander is not a poll worker, he is a screenwriter and television producer.