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People keep telling me our precinct convention went pretty well. Here is a email I wrote to some friends the day after that say WHY it went well. Although we're two weeks out, now, I want to put all of the things I learned up here, for posterity (and so I can find it later, haha).
We had almost 400 (to be exact, 397) at our convention at 2228. And there was no blood and very little yelling. And we were done by 9(ish). And we passed four resolutions. Do I get a prize? LOL.
Things that went well:
- No voters in line at 7. Wow. Big help!
- Having it in a different place from the voting location. Voted in auditorium, caucus in gym, so we were able to close the polls in peace. Also, the gym was bigger.
- Telling the custodial staff we'd probably be there a while, so call and get the overtime and the extra help.
- Asking people if they were returning tonight, during the day when voting was going on, so that by noon, I was starting to get a sense that this thing was going to be huge.
- After I'd figured that out, having the custodial staff bring us extra tables so we had eight (8) sign-in tables and four extra tables for different stuff.
- Opening up the cafeteria for the overflow.
- Having a neighbor bring a PA system.
- Having half a dozen volunteers there early to herd people around like cats.
- Calling the precinct captains from each campaign earlier in the week before to let them know what was what so they were all reasonably ok with me doing the driving.
- Writing out an script I could read verbatim. By the end of the day I was so completely brain dead that about all I could do was read.
- Designating a corner as the "trouble table" for those who had no proof of voting so we could look them up in the pollbook without holding up the line. Everyone else, we just checked their proof of voting and they were ready to go.
Things that could have gone better:
- I wish I had trained my clerks better about closing the polls. Poor things, we made quite a mess of the forms since I was running back and forth to keep the folks in the gym happy. Also I think I forgot to seal the provisional ballot box. And the PCMCIA card got left in the ADA machine. Thankfully no votes were on it, and we still managed to get the essential results out the door even before the convention closed.
- I wish I had had my precinct captains give me some designated volunteers to work the sign in tables and designated them ahead of time so I could train them ahead of the day. I think they mostly checked everything pretty well but I had six provisional voters during the day and I am not entirely sure if any of them came back and were accounted for properly.
- Even though I made copies of the sign in sheet, I still did not have enough. Some folks got a little annoyed about having to sign in on a sheet of paper.
- I wish I had had my script more complete so I didn't have to keep flipping back and forth between the script and the minutes. I think there were some things that weren't entirely Robert's Rules-y. Also I was unclear about how the sign in sheets were supposed to close. Were we supposed to vote on that? I just sort of gave a five minute warning and then closed them.
Things that were extremely fun:
- The expression on the Republican judges' faces as a zillion people filed past them and showed up for the convention.
- The cheer that went up from the crowd as I waded in and hollered, "I'm the precinct chair, and I'm here. Where's the microphone?"
- The satisfaction of knowing that going to the training three times and giving some serious thought to the logistics of it all actually paid off.
- The fun of serving the voters & serving democracy, yeah baby!
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