Reply #9: You'll be tired, but try to be genuinely excited about ... [View All]

[demodonkey]

voting. It's catching; people will catch your enthusiasm!

Go to the pollworker training and learn all you can. If you don't understand something MAKE the trainers help you to understand. Know your machines. Know all about your provisionals and absentees and how to handle each type of ballot.

HELP people vote. Learn your stuff and be ready to answer questions; please don't be one of the stonewalling pollworkers we hear so much about. Be ready to show them how to mark the ballot (how, not who for, lol) or how to use the machine.

Be prepared for emergency. Such as what do you do if ALL your machines break down at the same time? Don't laugh -- KNOW. Anything could happen.

Have a map of neighboring precincts (or your town, with the precincts marked) so that you will be able to help lost voters find their poll. PLEASE DON'T EVER just send somebody away without at least TRYING to help them find a way to vote.

As others have said, do NOT be political (even though this can be hard, especially was this last time!) Just be neutral and friendly. Don't allow anybody else including voters to be political in the poll. Don't allow any candidates handouts to accumulate on the sign-in table (this happens a lot, people leave them when they sign in.) I am thinking about a recycling basket for next time (in honor of the Greens doing the Recount, but won't tell the voters that!)

Be prepared to be shocked by how little some people know about voting.

Bring a coffee pot. And lunch. And something to read when it is slow. And be prepared for EVERY voter who comes in while you are trying to eat or read to say something ignorant like "oh-oh, you're goofing off on the job, I caught ya'!" The always say something like that and oooooh do they think that is witty. Don't strangle anybody.

At the end of the day, when you are tiredest, comes the most important part -- counting, or getting materials ready to go to the BOE. Please DO NOT cut any corners no matter how tired you are at this point. This is when/where a lot of things happen that could be "fraud" but are probably just cutting corners to get out of there sooner. Don't opt for getting out sooner, please opt for getting it right. (This is sometimes an issue with the "old timers" they want to do it the quick and easy way they've always done it and may not take kindly to a whipper-snapper newbie wanting to slow down and follow every rule.) But after working on the 2004 Recount I can say that cutting corners is one of the worst things a Precinct Board or a BOE can do. Can really screw things up in ways nobody intends.

Good luck, have fun, be a PROUD POLLWORKER -- you will be on the FRONT LINE in our fight for Democracy!

PS -- If anything I can answer or do to help, let me know... I have been a Pennsylvania Pollworker since the 1980s!