Thursday, September 07, 2006

Working the polls

I love Election Day.  Signing my name in the big book, taking my ballot into the screened booth, marking off the boxes next to my choices, dropping the completed ballot into the sealed box.

At least, that’s how it used to be in those innocent days before Bush v. Gore, before Black Box Voting (either of them), before Diebold, before the 2004 Washington gubernatorial recounts and their resolution.  Actually, I switched over to permanent-absentee, AKA vote-by-mail, status before the 2004 general election, so that I could do as much GOTV work as possible on that ill-fated Election Day.

This year, though, I’m doing the next best thing to voting at my assigned polling place.  I’ve volunteered to be a King County pollworker, for the September 19 primary and probably also for the general election on November 7.

So, what have I volunteered to do?  It’ll be a 15- or 16-hour day, beginning at the ungodly hour of 6 o’clock in the morning (ugh, ugh, mega-ugh), checking in poll voters, making sure there are no difficulties in the process, collecting and accounting for all ballots cast.  It probably involves helping to set up and take down the voting booth apparatus itself.  Though I haven’t yet gone through my half-day of training (that’ll be tomorrow afternoon), I’ve been told semi-officially that I’ll be assigned to work at what would be my own polling place if I still cast my ballot the old way.  Since something like 70% of King County voters cast absentee ballots, and since this is merely a primary election, it is unlikely to be particularly busy ... maybe I’ll have some “quality time” to dig deeply into my current reading project, the Federalist Papers (I’m reading a dead-trees version).  I’ve also been informed, irony of ironies, that I’ll probably be covering the Republican side of things at the polling place (whatever that means).  The precincts voting at my polling place are all at least 80% Democratic, so I can foresee being really unbusy.

Now, when I say “volunteer” I don’t mean I’ll be doing this gratis.  No, I’ll receive the princely sum of $118 for the day of the election, $30 for the training session, and mileage reimbursement.  Whoopee, I’m rich!!

It’s not too late for my fellow King County activists to join me in participating in maintaining the integrity of the electoral process by becoming a pollworker.  You can sign up easily via the County’s online application form.  It literally takes less than a minute, and they’ll get back to you within a couple of days.  If you prefer, a call to the King County Elections office at 206-296-1606 will do the trick as well.

I hope it turns out that I won’t have anything of particular interest to report afterwards.  I’d greatly prefer to muse about the winners and losers rather than the process of choosing them.  That’s the way it’s supposed to be.