Polling place refreshments?
The big problems with our voting - electronic voting machines, vote-suppressing ID requirements, long lines - get attention in the media and by advocacy groups like Common Cause. Less attention is paid to the face of voting - the tens of thousands of pollworkers who run the polling place in neighborhoods across the country. Of course, most are dedicated, do a good job - but some don't. This story came to my attention recently:
We shared a polling place with another precinct whose poll workers were a bunch of friends who seemed to see it as an all day party. They brought thermoses filled with margaritas and laughed and giggled and altogether made a very poor showing for democracy. ... One of them became and ugly drunk who went into a rage when I gave a provisional ballot to a black woman she had prevented from voting in her precinct.
And this dispiriting conclusion:
Those people that day made me ashamed of all of us, that we care so little about the franchise that people like that could ever be allowed to stand as gatekeepers to voting.
But that was not nearly so shaming as coming back for the next election and seeing that - despite the complaints and an Elections staff person coming out and seeing them - they were back on the job.
This is the full story:
One of the reasons I like Vote by Mail is the lack of professionalism among poll workers who are just temp worker plucked from anywhere.
Before we switched to VBM, I was a precinct supervisor and responsible for hiring the entire staff for the precinct. The county gave me a list of folks who expressed interest but it was up to me so long as I had 1 person minimum from the Republican and Democratic parties.
We shared a polling place with another precinct whose poll workers were a bunch of friends who seemed to see it as an all day party.
They brought thermoses filled with margaritas and laughed and giggled and altogether made a very poor showing for democracy. They seemed to enjoy preventing people from voting- ignoring the fact that people can vote in the wrong precinct, but only on a provisional ballot.
They also asked people for ID although there was no such requirement.
They also refused to give anyone a provisional ballot even though people were allowed to vote out of precinct - except for local races for which ballots would not be on hand. My precinct ran out of provisional ballots twice because we were providing for our folks and theirs. One of them became and ugly drunk who went into a rage when I gave a provisional ballot to a black woman she had prevented from voting in her precinct.
Needless to say I called Elections several times during the day, but the frantic busyness of election day and the sheer impossibility of replacing an entrie precinct's staff kept these incompetent drunks on the job all Election Day. I will admit it was their performance and the glee they showed when they prevented someone from voting that makes me a strong VBM adherent. Those people that day made me ashamed of all of us, that we care so little about the franchise that people like that could ever be allowed to stand as gatekeepers to voting.
But that was not nearly so shaming as coming back for the next election and seeing that - despite the complaints and an Elections staff person coming out and seeing them - they were back on the job.
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